why are we lying to young people about work?

You live in a world that tells you to work in eight hour stretches, and that is productivity. You live in a world that tells you to devote forty years of your life to a career you are lukewarm about, and that is safety. You live in a world that tells you to surround yourself with as many people as possible, and that is connection. You live in a wor

So: Do we sit down, alone, and struggle with our work? Work that may or may not go anywhere, that may be discouraging or painful? Do we love work, making a living to do work, not the other way around? Do we love practice, the way great athletes do? Or do we chase short-term attention and validation—whether that’s indulging in the endless search for

The more I studied the issue, the more I noticed that the passion hypothesis convinces people that somewhere there’s a magic “right” job waiting for them,

Aspire is the key word here. It’s not that she rejects all labor — she rejects how central it is to our sense of self and worth. Katherout’s idea is frequently misunderstood and dismissed as laziness, entitlement, and/or lack of ambition. That’s wrong. And I think we dismiss it at our own peril.