Elevating the Human Experience

Chapter 1Work

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.

—Buddha

A Personal History of Work

As a single parent, my mother worked as a teacher at the Catholic school my brother and I attended so that she could keep the same schedule as we did. She taught me sixth-grade science and math. I remember thinking how ironic it was that she would help me with my science terrarium at night and have to grade it at school the next day. On weekends I got extra practice on decimals, percentages, and fractions as she had me calculate coupons and sale items when we went grocery shopping at the local Publix. It blew my fuses to learn that you could take 70% off of an item that was already 50% off. We rarely bought anything “full price.”

At 17 years old, I went to Harvard, where I studied sociology and worked as everything from an aerobics instructor to a librarian shelving books. Later, my mother and I would laugh about the fact that I was the girl from Fort Lauderdale who showed up freshman year prepared for Boston's subzero winters with three cotton sweaters, a fashionable fedora-style hat, and cotton socks. I didn't understand that I had just entered a world where I would be surrounded by an easy privilege that I lacked, as obviously as I lacked wool, cashmere, and fleece. I was almost daily reminded that I did not quite fit in, and I clung to my unworthiness like a familiar well-worn blanket that reminded me of home.

Upon graduation, I enrolled ...