Experience, Inc.

CHAPTER 3More Than a Job: Purpose, Meaning, Connection

If your last name is Miller, then somewhere on your family tree you're very likely to find people who milled. If your name is Baker, there are bakers in your lineage. If you're a Butcher, you had butchers. If your name is Cooper, some of your ancestors made barrels.¹ You can draw a similar conclusion about the “occupational origins of surnames such as Archer, Barber, Bowman, Brewer, Butler, Carpenter, Carver, Cook, Draper, Farmer, Fisher, Forester, Fowler, Gardener, Hunter, Mason, Piper, Potter, Sadler, Sheppard, Shoemaker, Skinner, Tanner, Taylor, Weaver and Wheeler.”² In Spanish and Portuguese, there's Chaves (maker of keys), Herrera (ironworker), Machado (maker of hatchets), and Zapatero (shoemaker). You get the point.

There was a time when the connection to one's job was literally inseparable from one's name. Who you were was what you did, and vice versa.

With every generation, the world, and the world of work, grows more “complex and specialized, with many of our emerging professions orienting around abstract products and services far removed from the historical tasks of our species (e.g., nanotechnology, mobile entertainment, and business applications).”³ I haven't yet met someone with the last name CybersecurityGovernanceRiskAndComplianceLead, but maybe one day.

Once upon a time, theologians and philosophers validated work as a way of serving a greater purpose and greater good. John Calvin “affirmed the view that ...