The dignity of work

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. 

Questions about work, purpose, and risk can sound abstract—until they show up in the story of a life. 

Here’s WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney.

JANIE B. CHEANEY: For most of his life, my husband was a risk-taker.

At the age of 19, after a summer job fell through, he decided to hitchhike from mid-Missouri to Montreal, Canada.

For the next three summers during his undergrad years, he sold Bible reference books door to door.

We met while he was in grad school, and for the next two years of college, his restless spirit took him to opposite ends of the country for temporary summer jobs. 

Then he followed his dream of steam locomotives to New Mexico, where he hung around the tracks of a tourist railroad until they hired him.

Even after landing a reasonably secure corporate job at the age of 32, he wasn’t afraid to quit 13 years later and start his own business.

Don’t get me wrong; there’s a lot to be said for steady employment with one company. 

Doug and I shared some anxious months between jobs that he might have been a little too quick to walk away from. But every new start promised excitement and adventure. And every job he held served the public in some way, contributing to the general good and his own satisfaction.

In his fifties, Doug gravitated to doom-casting, alarmed by fear of economic collapse. We should cut back on expenses, he said; make do with less.

Or, I thought, why not work to make more money?

At the point where he would either have to expand his business or retire early, he chose the latter. I don’t blame him, but the lack of structure and purpose that work provided may have led to a broader lack, as he gradually retired from planned projects, social life, and even church. 

I suspect the inactivity hastened and intensified his dementia.

In his book Full Time: Work and the Meaning of Life, David Bahnsen explains how America’s producer-driven, risk-positive economy created a level of wealth, comfort, and longevity the world had never known. 

But there, at the height of our game, Keynesian economics shifted us to a consumer-driven model, where demand creates supply rather than the other way around. 

Swapping producers for consumers doesn’t just devalue work; it also devalues people.

In 1990, the Hoover Institution released a five-part series featuring supply-sider Milton Friedman. Episode one was introduced by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger, who shared why he moved to America:

SCHWARTZENEGGER: Because I came from a socialistic country, where the government controls the economy. It’s a place where you can hear 18-year-old kids already talking about their pensions. But me, I wanted more. I wanted to be the best. Individualism like that is incompatible with socialism. So I felt I had to come to America.

You don’t have to have a Schwarzenegger-size ambition to pity eighteen-year-olds dreaming of retirement. 

In a socialist country they weren’t encouraged to see themselves as productive citizens, much less risk-takers. 

American teenagers in a consumerist society don’t fare much better if they’re continually scrolling bad news and bad advice from social-media influencers.

Moving to a house on the beach with no deadlines and no pressure has its appeal for someone way past retirement age, like me. But I’m not retiring anytime soon—or ever, if I can help it. 

It’s a bit like stepping out on a high wire when I attempt to shape words into useful thoughts, not always successfully. But adventure and satisfaction are right here, in front of my keyboard.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

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