         When you don't need to work for survival, purpose is all there is. And when you're twenty-one and you don't have the necessity to get out there, it's an enormous thing to struggle with at a young age. What do I need to do? I don't need to do anything! I feel like the money I inherited is like a muting forcelike right after a snowstorm, when everything is white and quiet and sort of neutralized. I feel like I've been subdued. Nothing stands out more than anything else.
- A young inheritor interviewed by The Inheritance Project |
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I N T R O D U C T I O N p a g e 2
Work works. At its best, work brings out the best in human beings. It provides opportunities for achievement and success, as well as opportunities to learn from mistakes and failures. Work provides structure and fosters discipline. It helps create a sense of identity. It promotes autonomy and self-respect. Work also helps people make connections with others: it strengthens community in a world where community is rapidly disappearing.
Most people work to survive. Work becomes their primary purpose and identity. The question "What do you do for a living?" says it all. But what of those who don't have to work for a living? Where does their sense of meaning come from? What is their purpose? To be idle is not to be fully engaged in life. Not working can be almost as devastating for inheritors as for anyone else. Theologian Matthew Fox explains why not working is destructive to the human spirit:
"Work is at the center of adult living. This is one reason why the unemployed can so easily succumb to self-hatred and despair: not having a vehicle through which to express our blessing - the basic meaning of work - results in psychological violence to the self..." 1
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Table of Contents | Other Trio Press Publications
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