Not really about the meaning of 'love'

A few days ago, Bruce MacEwen wrote,

Another set of firms … will also embrace the reality that the highest form of human happiness comes not with work alone, but with work and with love.

The good news is that those of us blessed in work and in love are often the most productive and creative as well. This is nothing more than centuries-old wisdom, but some of us lost sight of it at the end of the 20th Century.

I quoted him here. Stephanie West Allen picked up on the posts, reviewed some of the common traditional senses of the word love, then wondered, "If we love our clients and the people with whom we work, what type of love is it?"

I didn't read Bruce's words as suggesting that the love to which he referred would necessarily come from or be attached to the work. I feel strongly about the work that I do, the company in which I do it and the people that my work serves, but I would hesitate to use the word 'love' for that set of emotions. I thought Bruce was referring simply to having the time to cultivate one's relationships with family and friends. His point is still important: a person who has meaningful, caring relationships is more likely to be happy and thriving than a person who has fewer (or no) such relationships, but who spends endless hours working and gets paid buckets of money to do it. People who are concerned about how their work affects their quality of life as a whole human being still value professional achievement and working relationships, but they are willing to make some economic trade-offs to preserve their other relationships and other things that they value.

In drafts of this post I sought to explore further the theme that "quality of life" is not just about time spent at the office versus time in other activities. I quickly discovered (or not so quickly, since I had planned to be falling asleep by now) that I wouldn't be able to cover that territory and do it well. At least, not tonight.

So that must wait for another day, but meanwhile, consider these recent posts:

Rees Morrison: All management expresses values ("managers express values, explicitly or implicitly, as they exercise their power and decide on courses of action")

Arnie Herz: Law firm reinvention: nurturing the partner-associate relationship (law firms where partners hoard work and don't delegate don't do themselves any favors by it in the long run)