Just as the sculptor shapes the stone with his exertions, the stone shapes him by resisting its shaping. The harder the stone is to shape, the stronger the sculptor must become. The tricker it is to work with, the more skilled and clever the sculptor must be to carve his desired shapes.
It is easy to think of work as a one-way process where you, the worker, exercise your will to shape some external object or circumstance. A farmer plants, waters, and weeds his fields to get his desired harvest. A politician campaigns and builds relationships with people in power to secure a position in government. A musician practices his instrument in order to play the music he wants to play.
The worker shapes his surroundings but, in the process, the work shapes him. You can see examples of this everywhere. Athletes from similar sports tend to develop similar builds. People in the same professions tend to develop the same views and habits (and body types, sometimes). There are two causes for this. The first is a natural preselection process whereby people who have natural advantages tend to stick around and push out those who don’t. The second is a homogenization process whereby the people in the same profession or sport develop the same skills because these skills are required in order to succeed.
The second cause is what is best described as “work shaping the worker”. The demands of the job dictate what skills the worker must develop in order to be successful.
If the worker can choose his work then he can use his work as a tool to shape himself. A bear needs a tree to itch itself, a car needs to road to push off of. In the same way, a worker needs his work in order to shape himself into who he wants to be. The worker is the marble and sculptor and the work is the chisel.
Everyone seems to implicitly understand that work shapes the worker when they go to the gym. People go to the gym to do work, physical work, in order to shape themselves into less fat, more muscular versions of their previous selves. Unlike at a job, at the gym, nobody gets paid and none of the work done is productive. All that the gym-workers care about is how their work ends up shaping them.
How Work Shapes You
Determining how a particular line of work shapes a person is simple. Look at people who are or have been in that line of work and notice the similarities between them. If you knew before they entered that line of work, that’s even better because you get to the see the before and after. Realize that some of the similarities you see are a result of the natural preselection process, but if you’re able to get a diverse enough sample, you’ll be able to eliminate some of this. Are the salespeople you see more charismatic than the average person? Are the lawyers you see better at speaking the average person? Are the roofers you meet stronger and leaner than the average person?
The second way to determine how a line of work shapes a person is by figuring out what skills and character traits are needed to succeed in said line of work. The simplest example here is that of a bodybuilder. A bodybuilder, in order to be successful, must have the discipline to work out every day and follow a strict diet regiment. You could guess, then, that if you become a successful body builder, you’ll also develop a healthy amount of discipline along the way.
Implications
If work shapes the worker, then what does this mean?
- You can’t grind for 10 or 20 years at a job you hate and expect that you’ll be able to retire after that. It’s a fallacy that you’ll be the same person on the other end of the job, just richer — you’ll be a different person and richer. After that many years working that job, you’ll become a miserable subservient drone that only knows the fear of the whip and how to follow instructions, not a free spirit who knows how to enjoy life.
- Work is now a viable tool for shaping yourself into who you want to be (or not be), not just a means for earning money. Each profession offers a different form it could shape you into, and you have the choice which one to choose. With this in mind, you might end up choosing a line of work that, despite paying you less and being less reputable than your other options, will eventually shape you into a desired version of yourself.
- You can always lose your money and status, but you can never lose who you’ve become. Work can offer you something that can’t be taken away from you in addition to the money and status that can be lost.
Choosing A Line of Work
Not everybody is in position to choose their line of work. If you are, look and see what type of people do the work in question. Do you admire those people? If not, don’t take the job. Also think about what type of people would thrive doing the things the type of work in question demands. If you don’t want to become that type of person, don’t do that kind of work.
People don’t get paid to go to the gym, but they still do it anyway because they like how it shapes them. You can apply the same idea to the work you do during the day. Look for work that you would do for free or even pay to have the opportunity to do, or work that you already do without getting paid. Maybe that’s the kind of work you should (or could) be doing.
