What’s Your Livelihood?
There are questions about what we would all like to see change post COVID-19. I’d like to see a conscious change in the language and scope of our feelings about work.
“Remember, it’s just a job”
“Live to work, not work to live”
Common idealistic expressions in the language of work. I would call them platitudes. But for some people, COVID-19 will be shedding new light on those turns of phrase.
For those that have lost secure work, maybe it was just a job in the past, but now it’s absence shows it is so much more. And in fact, we do work to be able to live.
I know what’s like to lose everything I had because of prolonged illness that rendered me unable to work for a long period, it has happened to me. It certainly changed my perspective (and I am currently recovering from illness).
The Australian Government has titled it’s relief package“JobKeeper”.
What about other words to describe what we do to stay alive? Occupation. Employment. Vocation. Profession. Career.
But when governments are more interested in economic slogans, those words don’t sound as catchy with “keeper” stuck on the end like an after thought. Kind of like a goal keeper in a ball game, jobs will keep coming at you if you just stand there and be ready (a quite ridiculous notion in this context). Very prosperity cult.
Language is not just combinations of words, the way we use language shapes the way we engage in the world, often in subtle ways that we don’t always realise.
Job is like a cost code word. A piece of something, but not anything particularly meaningful. It also suggests that the people losing their jobs, just have jobs, not professions, or occupations or dare I say it…passions, commitments, dedication or investments in their work. Just a job.
Scott Morrison and his government’s rhetoric has emphasised economic survival and that might seem like a good idea. Integrally it is. But it also glosses over what that a job really means for most people.
The current government hedging over extending JobKeeper certainly doesn’t take seriously what jobs mean to people in real terms.
Now modern culture can rattle on as long it likes about success, money, achievement and work ethic as though they are separate from life. Which, when you really think about it is well…weird.
Before the industrial revolution, which is a relatively recent thing in human history, we had did not make such artificial distinctions about the activities we do that keep us alive.
What we do to live — means food, shelter, family, friends, love.
While I am not suggesting we only just work in whatever allows us to survive (in fact I would suggest the opposite), human work does so much more than just an act of survival.
I like the old fashioned word livelihood instead of any of the more frequently used words we use to describe our work and adapting it for a modern context.
Okay, I agree it’s, no good for a political slogan. But probably better for meaningful policy development.
Livelihood.
What’s your Livelihood?
What is it about your work that helps you live? What is it about your work that makes you lively? What is it about your work that brings you to your hood (another word for community!)?
Now we can apply this word to most experiences. Even for those on JobKeeper (and other government benefits) right now. If you talk to people who work in homelessness services, you will find a portion who know what it’s like to be homeless and that is why they do the work they do. If you speak to people who’ve been on welfare, there is a work to surviving on welfare, a work to looking for work, living with less and it’s tough and hard work.
Because changing how we look at work to livelihood- references our collective human rights to shelter, love, food and meaning.
For some people, being on government benefits has evoked shame, because they have spoken ill of others in the past in the same situation. Now many are realising that it’s not an easy life. COVID-19 has been quite the social leveler.
I’d like to think in the future we start thinking about livelihoods. How our incomes and our activities influence our ‘hoods’, our communities.
There’s been lots of people writing about how the spirit of volunteering is dead, and how the great Australian dream is about investment properties and not community. I could name you a few studies that looked at the poor mental and physical health outcomes of this. It’s really no secret.
I hope more people shift to livelihood thinking when COVID-19 is not such a threat — to ways we can recognise humanity through our work. I hope this period of time takes away some of the stigma away from welfare and moves us to start building our ‘hoods’, our communities again.
To a lively strengthening of our communities to be kinder, more thoughtful about each other, and less focused on possessions and the appearance of status.
I hope this collective experience moves more of us to livelihoods built on a safer and healthier people, community and the planet.
Again, I ask you to think about: what’s your livelihood?
*I am aware the word ‘hood’ has different meanings beyond my application here and I in no way wish to culturally appropriate it, but rather use it in a generic context of a shortened neighbourhood.