The Secret to Joy: Not a Fancy Career

All but four of the top -20 happiness-producing jobs bring in under $100,000.

SURPRISE, money doesn’t buy happiness. The career site Glassdoor.com recently released its latest job-satisfaction survey, and all but four of the top-20 happiness-producing lines of work bring in less than $100,000 a year on average. Lawyer, doctor and investment banker are absent from the list. In our work- and status-obsessed society, that’s a revelation. Somewhere along the way, we Americans decided that work should bring us bliss, not just provide us with the cash needed to purchase shelter and food. We have tied work closely to our overall life satisfaction — indeed, to our very identities. It isn’t surprising, then, that our jobs are letting us down. It isn’t just our own jobs, either. We’re preoccupied with how much money other people are making. The Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez platforms depend on voters caring very much about the salaries of those around them.

But there is a wealth of evidence, dating back at least to, well, the Bible, that earnings don’t produce happiness. You can rage against the billionaire’s money, but you may be happier than he is.

Most people can’t choose to be idle, but we should all recall that work is supposed to be something we do until we get to go home. Sure, it’s possible to love your career and find fulfillment in it. But we have turned work into our source of ultimate meaning. “What do you do?” can yield the response “lawyer.” But if “lawyer” is also the answer to “who are you?,” there’s a problem.

“The New Midlife Crisis,” a 2017 essay on Oprah’s Web site about Gen-X women and their malaises, still makes the rounds on social media because it resonates with women. One subject especially, a

41-year-old woman who daydreams on her boring work conference call about quitting her job and becoming a cheesemaker, gets highlighted frequently in mom groups.

“And then, I spend the rest of the conference call thinking up names for my imaginary cheese truck: Hmm, some pun on a wheel? Fromage on a Wheel?”

But work is boring. And there’s no guarantee that Fromage on a Wheel will be less so. By all means, go pursue your cheese dreams. But the reality of it will be more paperwork and tedium and less snacking on goat’s-milk cheddar. We treat work as a sort of fantasy, and unfortunately the reality never matches up.

In January, Anne Helen Petersen’s viral essay “Millennial Burnout” detailed the way Millennials are already suffering the same discontent as the Gen-Xers in the midlife-crisis article did.

For Millennials, a job is an identity, and the idea that work should never end is internalized. Peterson writes: “Things that should’ve felt good (leisure, not working) felt bad, because I felt guilty for not working; things that should’ve felt ‘bad’ (working all the time) felt good, because I was doing what I thought I should and needed to be doing in order to succeed.”

Being able to see other people’s lives on social media plays a large role in being down on yourself. Notes Petersen: “We all know what we see on Facebook or Instagram isn’t ‘real,’ but that doesn’t mean we don’t judge ourselves against it . . . That enviable mix of leisure and travel, the accumulation of pets and children, the landscapes inhabited and the food consumed seems not just desirable, but balanced, satisfied and unafflicted by burnout.

“And though work itself is rarely pictured, it’s always there. Period- ically, it’s photographed as a space that’s fun or zany, and always rewarding or gratifying.”

But for the vast majority of people, work is anything but fun or zany. And how can that possibly be the goal? No wonder we’re miserable as we try to make work more like . . . not- work.

The college-cheating scandal consumed the nation’s attention last week. The craven behavior of the cheating parents reminded other Americans that going to a name-brand college shouldn’t be

that all-consuming. Ditto for work. Careers shouldn’t be the be-all, end-all of our existence. We need to treat our jobs as something necessary that we do, not sources of profound joy. Those amazing life-fulfilling joys should come from outside work. Family, friends, community, religion, volunteer work and all the happiness associated with those things should be most important.

When we look around at our careers and wonder “is this all there is?,” the answer can be resounding: “No, it’s not.” Twitter: @Karol