In June of 2019 I finished 12 years and begin my 13th year as a librarian at Queens Library, my eighth year serving as a supervisor. With this milestone I believe I am accomplishing one of the pillars of a human being’s life journey: finding meaningful work.

We all know the game of information seeking has changed a great deal in the past century, or even quarter century. Thankfully I haven’t experienced radical shifts during my tenure in the career, not on the scale of those a generation before me, but what I have experienced is the adjustment to the changing terrain that mirrors that of a quality car’s suspension adjusting to the inevitable uneven pavement that maintains a smooth ride for all occupants.

Over the years changing administration has adjusted the focus of Queens Library, and while I acknowledge there were times over my tenure when faith in the work’s importance was disrupted, not only for me, but for my colleagues as well, over the overlapping larger narratives of other people’s bad behavior whether in the form of a city that wouldn’t adequately its most essential resource, and the resulting pink slips that were issued, and then rescinded, or other lesser known controversies the library has weathered, the importance of the work hasn’t changed much. In other words, 12 years ago this work was as essential as it is today, and my deepening commitment and relationship to the work has only deepened my understanding of the importance of this work, as opposed to a perceived objective worth. That’s the essence of meaningful work: our relationship with the work and with those for whom we work.

City libraries are heavily utilized by the community and relied upon as a foundation for a functional democracy. There are countless testimonies and I’ve witnessed and participated in the life-changing impact the library has had on our communities. Yet our question today is not merely in defense of libraries but in search of my own, and even your, or our place in these larger structures that this society produces, of which society itself is a product.

I started my career as a librarian in children’s services. Learning the ropes of singing toddler songs and engineering programs for our smallest “customers,” I still prefer to think of them as “patrons” although the prevailing winds see it otherwise, was a journey in and of itself. As with any career path, I sought more challenges for fear of complacency and ennui. This sense of professional “restlessness” soon gave way to the supervisor’s path wherein I was forced, due to circumstances outside of my control, to “lean in” to situations and problematic issues surrounding work that has, for the better part of the past seven of these years, deepened my own commitment to community service.

While we’re all forced into labor for economic self sufficiency, each day we must chose to be there, to be present in the spaces we inhabit, however unpleasant they may appear from a certain point of view. Work, ultimately, isn’t about money. Work’s about people, the land, the soul: shaping the environment for the maximum benefit and joy of the community and the self. For example, I might wish on one day that certain interactions with the community members were more pleasant, that everyone, whether it be an irate customer, or a disgruntled staff member, was on board with libraries as the foundation for a democratic space, that they verbally assented to this unalienable fact each day, reaffirming their commitment to supporting the library and its being. However, if we really stopped and checked isn’t their presence at the library enough testimony to affirm such assertions? Doesn’t action speak louder than words?

What I mean to say is, when a patron disputes with me aggressively about a small fee or fine, isn’t what they’re really asking is “Does the library value the struggles of our community over and above financial gain?”

There are fewer and fewer spaces in this country and generally in the world where one can pass time without the implicit expectation of handing over a few dozen dollars per hour. If you truly assess the community spaces we inhabit, you’ll find the library to be a vital and vibrant resource for community: a keystone to the right of assembly. Although these spaces do not always run as smoothly as your top of the line commercial spaces, the cost of a smooth operating convenient commercial space for our society is far greater for us as as a society. If we must weather the frequently dysfunctional self return or self checkout machines of the library, we must do so with the focus on the goal that fully funding seven day service for libraries is the path we as a society must enact.

For me, the path is facilitated by a connection with higher purpose. For some, it may be difficult to see working within a corporate environment that rewards its top administration a thousand times over its on-the-ground workers. Ultimately, meaningful work translates to mean discovering our own path within these circles and structures that allows us a connection to a meaning greater than our own role can suffice. In other words, each day I may perform actions, but my function within this structure is sustaining the structure I support. Which is to say, we transform the nature of the structure with every daily action. Which is to mean, we are the structures we inhabit insofar as we are the outward signs of them. When a person talks about the library, they meaningfully can only speak about interactions they’ve had with library staff when they visit the library. Otherwise, they would be speaking abstractly and not with grounded experience.

This testimony is to say that discovering meaningful work is within the reach of anyone who so chooses to align their daily actions with a larger structure and decide to embody the values of that structure within their daily actions. This does not meant to suggest that every action you take will align with the values of the structure, however, with the values firmly refreshed in your mind you can return to the object disregarding deviations and adjust your course as a bird would adjust its wings while in flight. As one gains more power and soars to greater heights, adjustments are less frequent and only intermittently disruptive to the whole; an eagle might flap its wings far less than a sparrow. With 12 years of librarianship under my belt, I’ve achieved a certain level of stride that permits me such lofty metaphors, mindfully borrowed from the meditative traditions. But even as a write this I know that each day challenges arise and only with a firm focus on the larger impact the greater whole is performing can I withstand the onslaught of the daily grind, transforming this grind into the sharpening of a blade to its sharpest potential.

For you, whether you be employed, unemployed, underemployed, or overemployed, it matters less than your commitment to meaningful work. What you define as meaningful is up to you. Thus the burden of freedom is yours and yours alone to bear. Whatever you chose will be what you are and what you will become. Chose with knowledge, an awareness of what’s at stake. If you do not define yourself, you relinquish such power to those who surround you.

To have a vocation, W.H. Auden says, is to be in a state of ‘subjective requiredness’ : your vocation is something you are required to do, but the requirement comes from within. You are the one who is called, not necessarily anyone else, and likewise you alone are the discerner of the call. ‘For this reason Vocational Guidance is a contradiction in terms. The only reasons another can give me why I should adopt this career rather than that are that I should be more successful or happier or it pays better, but such matters are precisely what I must not think about if I am really to find my vocation.’

— Alan Jacobs

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