The Human Condition of Labor
In The Human Condition, the 20th-century historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt observes how Hercules and the story of the Twelve Labors has shaped perceptions of work and labor throughout history. In the medieval period, for instance, the word “labor,” along with its equivalents in other languages—such as travail in French and trepaliare in Latin—carried connotations of struggle and a fighting spirit. In Christian thought, martyrdom and the trials of saints are framed as “labors” for the faith. And in the modern world, the concept of “Herculean effort” is a common metaphor, symbolizing the notion that great achievements require superhuman strength, effort, and resilience. “However,” Arendt writes, “the daily fight in which the human body is now engaged…bears little resemblance to the heroic deeds [of] the Herculean ‘labors.’” Unlike the heroic qualities Hercules needed for his tasks, the traits required today are far less likely to inspire epic tales or translate to the movie screen. Yet, despite lacking the grandeur of myth, these traits are Herculean in their own way, essential in the daily fight against the challenges of our time…
The Pains of Relentless Repetition
Hercules was born out of wedlock to the god Zeus and a woman named Alcmene. Zeus’ wife, the goddess Hera, furious about her husband’s infidelity, hated Hercules. In her vengeance, she cast a spell on Hercules, driving him mad and causing him to tragically kill his wife and children. When the spell wore off, Hercules was devastated by his actions and sought redemption at the Oracle of Delphi, who instructed him to serve King Eurystheus. Under Hera’s influence, Eurystheus assigned him the Twelve Labors—tasks designed to kill Hercules. For instance, Hercules had to slay the Nemean Lion, a beast with impenetrable skin that no weapon could pierce. One tasked him with fetching the golden apples of the Hesperides, guarded by a hundred-headed dragon in a remote garden. In another labor, he had to battle the Lernaean Hydra, a monstrous water snake that grew two new heads for every one Hercules cut off. In every case, they required immense brute strength, cunning, and an insane will to survive. But, Arendt writes, “the Herculean ‘labors’ shared with all great deeds that they are unique.” They were distinct, varied, and novel, each presenting a new challenge in a different place, allowing him to continually engage different aspects of his abilities—physical, mental, and strategic. And once each task was accomplished, it was done for good, with Hercules moving on to the next, never having to revisit the same task. Unlike Hercules’ unique tasks with clear and final resolutions, in the modern world, our tasks are often unvarying, the same day after day, with our efforts rarely reaching a point of true finality or closure. “The daily fight,” Arendt writes, “what makes the effort painful is not danger but its relentless repetition.” Instead of moving from one novel activity to another, we find ourselves bound to a few essential tasks that must be performed over and over again. In this endless cycle, good outcomes often hinge not on grand, conclusive acts, but on the quiet perseverance required to endure the pains of relentless repetition. (File next to: You Have To Be Every Day).
The Infinite Options To Cut and Run
A while ago, I overheard the clinical psychologist Dr. Alexandra Solomon discussing her course, Building Loving and Lasting Relationships, which has supposedly been the most popular course at Northwestern University for years and years. Asked about some of the common issues her recent students face, Dr. Solomon said that with the prevalence of social media and dating apps, many are burdened by the possibility that a better, more perfect soulmate might be out there somewhere. She explained that this notion of a flawless match, fueled by the sense of infinite options, is an illusion that leads people to “cut and run” the moment things get challenging. And so she spends a lot of time freeing her students from this illusion and teaching them that the value and rewards of a relationship often come from “sitting in the messiness” of its inevitable conflicts. While I didn’t resonate with this problem in the context of relationships, it reminded me of a similar pattern I noticed about past periods of frustration at work. Whenever stress, anxiety, or a down and uninspired mood lingered past a day or two, I’d begin imagining all the other professional opportunities out there, gradually convincing myself that somewhere out there was something I was more perfectly suited to do. Over time, I realized that I was almost always confusing dissatisfaction with the job itself for the pains of relentless repetition. It’s been helpful to be freed from the illusion that those pains could ever be avoided. Whether it’s an artist, a doctor, a chef, an entrepreneur, a scientist, a lawyer, an aerospace engineer or an AI researcher: all professions—even the most romanticized, idealized, high status—are, at their core, collections of tasks that must be relentlessly repeated. The value and rewards of work often come from sitting in the pains of its relentless repetition.
It’s A Game OF Tonnage
Back in the ‘80s, Jerry Seinfeld’s friend was teaching a comedy course at The Improv in Los Angeles. The friend asked Seinfeld if he’d be willing to visit the class and speak to the students. Seinfeld agreed. “I went in and there were maybe 20 people in the class,” he recalled. “I went up on stage, and I said, ‘The fact that you’ve signed up for this class is already a very bad sign for what you’re trying to do. The fact that you think anyone can teach you or that there’s something you need to learn, you’ve gone off on a bad track because nobody really knows anything about any of this.’” Seinfeld suspected that the students were looking for a shortcut to becoming great comedians, hoping the class would give them the secrets to bypassing the pains of relentless repetition. “You know,” Seinfeld said, “no one’s really that great. You know who’s great? The people that just put a tremendous amount of hours into it. It’s a game of tonnage, you know? How many hours are you going to work? Per week? Per month? Per year?” If he could do it over, Seinfeld said, “what I really should have done is I should have had a giant flag behind me, and when I pulled a string, it would roll down, and on the flag, it would just say two words: Just work.”
Nobody Wants To Be Anywhere. Nobody Wants To Do Anything
In one of my favorite Seinfeld standup bits, he points out how we all think the next thing is going to be better. At work, we look forward to the gym. At the gym, we can’t wait to be home. At home, after working all week, we want to go out. Out, it’s late—we’ve got to get back. We’ve got to get up early. Up early, we’ve got to catch a flight. At the airport, we want to be at the gate. At the gate, we want to be on the plane. Plane takes off—when’s the plane gonna land? Plane lands—will they open the door so we can get out? “Nobody wants to be anywhere,” Seinfeld finally says. “Nobody wants to do anything.” This endless cycle is a symptom of something Dr. Anna Lembke writes about in her book Dopamine Nation: we are living in a world of abundance with machinery perfectly adapted for a world of scarcity. Our brain’s reward systems adapted to environments where resources like food and water were hard to come by. In those conditions, dopamine hits—those feelings of pleasure and reward—were crucial signals, indicating a resource needed for survival. Because these rewards were rare, they became powerful motivators, driving humans to be “endless strivers, never satisfied with what we have, always looking for more,” Dr. Lembke writes. “The problem [is] we’ve transformed the world from a place of scarcity to a place of overwhelming abundance.” Food, television, news, drugs, gambling, shopping, gaming, hitting the gym, going out, getting back, catching a flight—“the increased numbers, variety, and potency of highly rewarding stimuli today is staggering.” And because these things are so easily accessible, our threshold for satisfaction has increased, making each dopamine hit less and less impactful, driving us to keep thinking the next thing is going to be better. This mismatch between our scarcity-wired brains and the infinite options of on-demand pleasures creates one of the Herculean struggles of our time: blocking out the relentless temptation to “cut and run” to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, to instead sit with with the relentless repetition of our everyday tasks.
The Blessing Of Labor
Another of the Twelve Labors required Hercules to clean the Augean Stables, which housed thousands of cattle and hadn’t been cleaned in over thirty years—a task he accomplished by diverting two rivers to wash out “the enormous quantity of dung” in a single day. “Unfortunately,” Arendt writes, “it is only the mythological Augean stable that will remain clean once the effort is made and the task achieved.” Fortunately, “The blessing of life as a whole, inherent in labor, should not be mistaken for the inevitably brief spell of relief and joy which follows accomplishment. The blessing of labor is that effort and gratification follow each other [so] closely…that happiness is a concomitant of the process itself. It is even identical with it…There is no lasting happiness outside the prescribed cycle of painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration.” Without the sense of accomplishment that we imagine Hercules experienced in completing his labors once and for all, our task is to embrace the game of tonnage, resist the urge to cut and run, and find satisfaction in the pains of relentless repetition, in the prescribed, endless cycle of painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration, where effort and gratification are inseparable.