An Ordinary Work of Staggering Normalcy

Recently, Nikil Saval released his new book Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace.

Now, if you work in an office, specifically in one of those vast cubicle farms so popular in high rise office buildings, I highly recommend this book—it contains much with which to commiserate. And if you are designing one of those high rise cube farms, I beg you to read this book, and then reconsider your color scheme, layout, or both.

It can be rather depressing, to think about what we do with our lives. I come in. I make calls, fiddle with Excel, take notes, go to meetings, and go home. Pretty sure this was not what Aristotle meant by living well. However, I would not encourage people to run away to the academy or the farm just yet. The fact of the matter is, most of us work some kind of office job, there aren’t enough tenured professorships to justify the academic route as a responsible decision for all, and self-sufficient farming is also not an option for many. The question becomes, until we reconsider our Marxist tendencies in urban design and workplace planning: How do I find meaning, when possibly nothing would change if I died tomorrow? How do I make an impact in the mundane?

The question, “What do I contribute to the human race?” fundamentally resides within each of us: I would argue that its answer becomes all the more essential when we seem to live a life of utter monotony. This is perhaps a fundamental reason why we ought to view our work as ordered to living well, rather than being the purpose, or telos, of our life. Life evinces a certain apparent vibrancy, be it in our families and friends, service to the Church, or contemplative pursuits. However, barring a unique windfall that provides the idyllic title of “independently wealthy,” most of us have to work for a living. For many, that job will occasionally border on soul-sucking. I like my job—but ask me when I am knee deep in Excel spreadsheets if it provides the fulfillment I was looking for upon graduating from Catholic-Great-Books-Liberal-Arts college, and I’ll probably throw a pen at you, participating in the Platonic form of Office Angst.

So what are we all doing for somewhere between 8 and 12 hours a day? Generally when it comes to the “what am I doing with my life” existential considerations, I like to turn to the saints. They are ordinary men and women who often times managed to make the most boring or terrible circumstances an opportunity to profess holiness. But still, when I think of their lives, I think of those who like St. Francis, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Dominic, St. John of the Cross, or Mother Teresa, lived a life far outside the confines of my 6 by 7 cube. A few days ago, however, I re-stumbled upon a saint who had a lot to say to the ordinary working man, St. Josemaría Escrivá:

Persevere in the exact fulfillment of the obligations of the moment. That work—humble, monotonous, small—is prayer expressed in action that prepares you to receive the grace of the other work—great and wide and deep—of which you dream (The Way, 825).

Do everything for Love. Thus there will be no little things: everything will be big. Perseverance in little things for Love is heroism (The Way, 813).

Through our union to Christ as members of His Body, we are enlivened by the Holy Spirit: St. Thomas Aquinas describes this as the “spiritual movement which results from the instinct of grace,” which we receive at baptism. Our participation in Christ’s activity is not limited to certain saintly ecstasies; rather our participation in Christ’s activity occurs in allowing Him to move us. St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote in her Story of a Soul that “I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifices to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.”

Both St. Josemaría and St. Thérèse saw in the most boring and monotonous parts of our days opportunities for heroic virtue. It sounds silly to think of sending emails or scheduling meetings for the week as a way to serve God and save souls, but perhaps that is just because of our perspective.

St. Faustina, who brought to the Church the devotion of Divine Mercy, is described in the following words:

She zealously performed her tasks and faithfully observed the rule of religious life. She was recollected and at the same time very natural, serene and full of kindness and disinterested love for her neighbor. Although her life was apparently insignificant, monotonous and dull, she hid within herself an extraordinary union with God.

In our daily work, which we know is not itself the goal of living, we can nevertheless subordinate the monotony of emails and filing and meetings and whatever it is in our jobs that just bores us to tears to cooperate with the movements of the Holy Spirit in our souls. Because our life, including our time of work, falls under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, we can become saints through the life before us.

The possibility that our activities extend beyond us—that the normal can become the heroic or the mundane an adventure—begins to add a depth of meaning to the monotony of life. No life is monotonous that participates in the Kingdom of God.

Perhaps the greatest saints of the mundane are the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph. St. Joseph was a carpenter who was not well-off. He probably spent his days working and with his family. A fairly non-descript life—no promotions or widespread fame. The Blessed Mother, as far as anyone in her village could see, was probably a lovely woman raising her son. Two very boring lives, in all appearances, and yet lives marked by an interior depth that we can, for now, only long to have ourselves. Yet, in perhaps the most normal of ways, they were two people who did what God willed them to do, and beneath the veils of boring, God willed them to do the most extraordinary of tasks: raise the Word made Flesh.

So when work begins to appear utterly inconsequential, a waste of your time, etc., I encourage you to re-frame your view and offer your day to Christ—to make a sacrifice of love out of all you do. Does this mean we should all refuse ambition or leave jobs we simply hate? Absolutely not. What it means is that during the time we find ourselves in those positions (and everyone tends to at one point or another) we can find a meaning. When we encounter those who are “just maids,” “just secretaries,” or “just janitors,” we can also check our pride by realizing that behind the most ordinary of appearances there can reside the extraordinary love of a saint.

How do we make an impact in the mundane and seemingly non-heroic lives many of us live? The answer is the same as what makes the most extraordinary of saints: We love. We love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our strength and with all our mind; and we love our neighbor as ourselves. That is how the ordinary life becomes extraordinary.