You Are Not Your Job

I have been thinking about those who genuinely find their identites in their work--artists of all sorts, missionaries, people with a calling to heal in some way--versus those who just can't seem to stop thinking about the office and bring it home. Identifying with your job can be dangerous: some people die within months of retiring because of it. Others are just annoying, and my pet peeve here is the professor who remains pedantic in his private life--too close to home for this ex-professor.
     So I did some thinking with a pencil and a calculator about just how much of our lives is work. If you are fortunate enough to have a full-time job and also fortunate enough to be able to live on just one job, this is how it breaks down. If you begin full-time work at twenty years of age, work a forty-hour week fifty weeks a year until retirement at sixty-five, and live until you are eighty, you will spend LESS THAN 15% of your time on earth at work. Even if you go to work at fifteen and work until you die, you'll still be spending fewer than 20% of your hours at work. Even in a work year, only 2,000 of the 8,760 hours are spent at work. You are not your job.