PragerU
Do you work to live? Or do you live to work? Most people today would probably affirm the former—work to live. Most people would be wrong. David Bahnsen, author of Full Time: Work and the Meaning of Life, explains why.
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Script:
Do you work to live? Or do you live to work?
Most people today would probably affirm the former—work to live. Most people would be wrong.
We should do both: work to live and live to work. We are meant to work. I’ll go one step further: it’s what we are designed to do.
If you have religious leanings, it’s right there in the Ten Commandments. “Six days you shall work.” And then rest on the seventh, just as God did.
If you don’t have religious leanings, well, it’s just common sense.
A productive and meaningful life means spending more time working than doing anything else in your life. No other activity comes close—unless you count sleeping as an activity.
What one has to offer in skill, innovation, and productivity—that is, the work we do—is central to who we are. Nothing is possible without it. All things are possible if you do it well.
If you want to have a family, you have to work. If you want to own a home or give to charity, you have to work. Working is what responsible people do.
So then why does work get such a bad rap? Why do movies and television portray ambition as an enemy of your health, your relationships or just about anything else?
Yes, some use their careers as an escape from other serious responsibilities and obligations. But you can be fully committed to your work without letting it take over your life. I daresay, you know people who have managed this. The far greater risk to our society is the popular view of work as a chore that simply must be endured.
Overachievement is not our problem. Deriding achievement is. We don’t suffer from an epidemic of workaholism, but of “no-aholism”—no passion, no purpose, and no plan.
The best prescription for all three of these modern ailments is work.
Like so much in modern life, it seems like we need to re-discover a traditional value our grandparents and great-grandparents simply took for granted.
So, let’s take a step back and look at the value of work.
Arthur Brooks, a prolific writer on the subject of happiness and a professor at Harvard, has coined the term “earned success” to describe the psychological lift that work creates, the feeling of not receiving something, but earning it. This feeling is the basis of self-worth and deserved recognition. We achieve immense satisfaction from becoming valuable to others through our work.
That’s why it doesn’t matter whether you’re a truck driver or a bond trader. With purpose and hard work—whatever work you do—you earn self-esteem and the esteem of others.
I absolutely love this video. It is one of the best I’ve seen.
Work??? America LET HOES GET ON THE INTERNET to SIT AND BEG for MONEY FROM THE POOR AND WEALTHY. America gives women section 8 benefits to keep men chasing the Invisible American dream and the women. American is giving illegal immigrants money and not the hard-working Americans. PragerU American Value is gaslight the truth again smh
I live to worship and serve Jesus Christ (and yes, I work).
Declare Jesus as your Lord, believe in your heart that God raised him from death and you will be saved (Romans 10: 9).
When I’m at work,I work. The second I’m off it doesn’t so much as cross my mind. I like it that way.
I like progressively cutting more and more corners in my life like skipping more meals and eliminating my A/C in blistering hot California and working more and more hours to make what I used to just so that my boss can get their full paycheck and continues to live comfortably. I must be lazy and entitled, I should be happy to work to enrich somebody else’s life at the expense of my own. I mean, they gave me the opportunity to work after all and a paycheck, even though I make them tremendously more money than they make me while they get frequent vacation time too. 🙂
4:42
This guy looks like someone who would accuse a person working 3 jobs and still living in poverty as “lazy” 😅
Mankind has ALWAYS worked to live until recently. Man, as hunters and gathers, then later as farmers, had to work to eat and to provide shelter. If you didn’t work, you starved. This is a fact. No government in history has given anything but the opportunity to work to support yourself and your government.
Later villages figured out that some men and women were better at certain skills. The people traded their skills and labor or food or objects. Later, man traded his labor for money that could be use in exchange for a wider variety of goods that he could not make or grow himself. But man still had to work. Those who could not had to depend of charity of others. When there was not enough to go around, those who were not productive, lost out. Somehow since the Great Depression, it has been ok not to work and accept welfare by those who can work.
Work-life balance is new. That doesn’t mean that you get to decide when you’ll work. It means that a company will keep its promise to the which hours, how many hours, and what days that you agreed to work. If the company doesn’t keep that promise or you no longer are agreeable to the companies terms, then you are free to work somewhere else. But do not expect me or the government to support you because you don’t want to work.
One more things, modern companies do not care about you. You are replaceable. If you are lucky and do not work for Wells Fargo, your employer might notice that you stopped working at your desk before 4 days has passed.
I want your job…
How does he pronounce the word “life”??? “Rife”? Please becomes prease?
when what you do is something you love doing then it is not work, it is play with pay. work is misdefined . if you love working, try doing something you hate doing for a living….you’ll soon find out what work is, it is not just having ambition and getting things done.
“Work” for leftists means:
Protesting, making signs, attacking people online, doxing non-leftists, complaining, being super racist to whites, and extremely sexist to men.
I am going to buy a farm in the old USSR region so I may live amongst fellow Christians and homestead. I need to get my hands dirty
Worked for 45 years I’m retired and loving it
Is this video talking about only working a job or work in general? There are a lot of people who live to work in general. Work life balance means that you can take care of your home and personal responsibilities and hobbies while making a living for a fair wage.
Yeah this wasn’t quite the lesson I’d hoped it would be. (And I’m a diehard Prager fan!) Sure work is important and valuable, but in an age where most companies are downsizing and expecting us to work 3x as fast and as hard to compensate for understaffing, I just don’t need a lecture on the value of hard work. Save that for the Gen Z’ers.
“Production is the basis of morale.” – L. Ron Hubbard
I’m actually on the fence with universal basic income …
It should and the generational welfare issue as anyone who can work would have to work at least a part time job
And they’d be able to do so without losing benefits that welfare provides
You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when the dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
My goal was always to retire before death. I made it!
This is a horrible video, and that’s coming from a Christian Conservative. I’m not sure if David is the one who wrote this script, but if he did, he could have brought it together with an explanation that working for an employer is optional, and what he really means is staying busy with tasks that help others. If that were the theme, I’d think the video was amazing.