Occupation vs. Vocation

"You are tired to death with work," I read. "Work with a little 'w' is killing the soul out of you. Work with a little 'w' always does that to men if they give it the whole chance. If you don't mix some big 'W' work in with it, then indeed your life will be disastrous, and your days will be dead."

"What is it you mean by big 'W' work?" he asked. "Of course, that's the work you love for the work's sake. It's the work you do because you love the thing itself you're working for."

I closed the book. "That is plenty enough to think about for a while," I said to myself. "I don't want any more ideas mixed with that until I thresh it out well."

This was written by Laura Ingalls Wilder in March 1920! Before she started writing her "Little House" books, she wrote articles for magazines to give advice and encouragement to farm women (some of these articles are reprinted in a book titled Little House in the Ozarks). As I'm reading through her writing, I can imagine her blogging today. I find it amazing that it has been almost one hundred years since she wrote this particular article titled "Tired to Death with Work", and today we are dealing with the same issues!

She goes on to explain what big 'W' work means:

There is also the young woman with the musical talent and the lovely singing voice, who uses it so freely for the pleasure and benefit of others; and the one who grows beautiful flowers because she loves them and delights in giving them away.

I know I would feel like a robot if it wasn't for my piano lessons, my little choir, and my blog! Even on days when I'm tired, I find new energy when I have time to do what I love, and share it with others! God gave me these gifts, and I take delight in them!

But we must also dig a little deeper. The reality for most of us is that our jobs are not the same as our hobbies. For most of us, what we do to earn a living is, at best, rewarding and likable, but not thrilling. And for some of us, our jobs are just a degree above bearable, but we put up with it in order to pay the bills. But we want more than that! We long for substance in our daily living! Who goes to bed at night and feel satisfied after a day of motions with no meaning and results with no reason? So where Mrs. Wilder suggests 'work' versus 'Work', I suggest 'occupation' versus 'vocation'.

Calling one's job (used generally here to mean the task that consumes most of your waking hours) an 'occupation' makes a job sound like it is simply something one must do. "I am 'occupied' by it", meaning "it is busy work". 

But the word 'vocation', according to Timothy Keller in the introduction of his book Every Good Endeavor, comes from the Latin word vocare, meaning 'to call'. Mr. Keller writes:

One of the hopes for our unraveling society is the recovery of the idea that all human work is not merely a job but a calling... A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it and you do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests.

If that is the case, then every job can be a vocation, and every little 'w' work can feel like big 'W' work! If we see everything we do as God calling us to do it, then it matters not if you are a toll-fee collector, a corporate/software/business person, or the mother of twin two-year-olds! It is not so much what we do, but why we do it. Because then you can find uncountable ways that God is using you and your God-given talents to serve others around you. And that kind of work can never kill the soul.