Manny likes fish tacos. I mean he really likes them. Dressing the trio on his plate with such meticulous craftsmanship, it’s a curious thing that he ever indulges. Glancing up with a wide-ass grin, he’ll take a long pause right before taking the plunge.
Born Manuel Caro to Filipino parents, his family moved from Laos to southern California when he was two. Growing up happy as a clam, he’d spend early mornings riding waves and the rest of the day playing the good son. At school, he ate his lunch solo but no doubt was the coolest cat on the block. At fourteen Manny’s dad up and left. “I know how to use a screwdriver and fix things because no one else was there to do it,” he reflects.
Setting his sights on becoming a marine biologist, he quickly realised how much he sucked at calculus. Instead, he opted to study anthropology; humans would make do over sea-life. With mom and younger sister in tow, the plan was to keep his head down and work hard. Everything would go according to script: study → college → job → success. However, life sometimes has other plans for us.
At the turn of the century as the dot-com bubble burst, and in post-grad limbo, uncertainty led Manny to a soul-sapping retail job. Several of them. Manny found himself cramped up in a meager shed in a shady part of Oakland. Things were dismal.
The turning point took place south of San Francisco, in a parking lot in the town of Pacifica to be precise. Manny, more a vivacious Latin soul housed inside a geeky 5’5” Filipino man, looked far from the beach blonde surfers that mocked him that day. They were rocking popular three-finned thrusters while he guarded a bizarre-looking quad fish board. As the name suggests the fish surfboard stands out both for its four fins as well as the tail which resembles a chirpy carp about to chow down on dinner. You could say the look was, well, whack but suited Manny just swimmingly.
Paddling out in his natural habitat, he performed one maneuver after another with grace. When ridden well, the big advantage of Manny’s odd-looking board is that it’s fast. Soft-spoken, Manny is outspoken in action — turning tightly on waves while turning heads. Out of the sea and back in the lot, “Hey, can I see that thing?” the one-time mocker now turned gawker asks.
“It occurred to me at that moment that the rest of my life isn’t going to be determined by what people tell me the formula is, I’m going to determine my own formula — because nothing else is really going to work,” Manny recalls of the experience. He started trusting his instincts and became a steward to his gifts. It’s here his shaping life began.
The Magic of Meaning
The great American dream of pursuing happiness has faded. One reason things went astray is the end of jobs for life — 40 years of working for one company, then retiring is a relic of a different time. Work hard and you’ll get ahead is considered a myth now by many. But another explanation is believing happiness to be something you get…and keep.
Last I checked they don’t stock bottles of happiness on shelves. O.K depending on where you shop and what’s in the bottle, perhaps they do. The point really is that happiness is fleeting. It comes and goes, flexes and flops, rises and pops. A double-scoop ice-cream cone might sadly fall to the floor or divinely melt in your mouth — but whichever way, it’s gone, temporary. Happiness is perpetually in flux and hinges upon getting what you want, or at least getting what you think you want at various times.
Meaning, a close cousin to happiness, is more astute. It can linger longer, possibly even a lifetime. The magic of meaning is how it rolls the past and the future into a juicy taco that you can savor today. When we weave a coherent story amongst these various phases of time, we gain a sense of meaning.
Indeed we can move towards and through meaning again and again. It’s not a destination to which we firmly arrive—but ensues from an ongoing process of discovery and defeat. It stems from uneasiness. Meaning may occur equally within pain or pleasure—and in between all the gnarly waves that life brings. Through searching, striving, and indeed, struggling, meaning emerges.
Different shades of meaning exist amidst chaos and order, love and loss, joy and sorrow. What appears a necessary condition is the ability to choose, direct, or believe in your unique story. We want both authenticity and the freedom to put our mark on our work. “If happiness is about getting what you want, it appears that meaningfulness is about doing things that express yourself,” reveals social psychologist Roy Baumeister.
Yet another reason why the American dream — hard work will bring great success — has shifted is that the good life has been, and in many ways always will be, a moving target. Case in point is how we’ve abandoned religion in favour of work in the Secular West. The altar has been supplanted by the office and bibles by our smartphones. We expect righteous Sundays every damn day. With such a drastic departure to where our attention goes — we seek a semblance of meaning not from the house of God but the church of work.
In our overengineered lives, one of the tenets to living the good life is so often overlooked: choosing how best to direct our energy. This path can be windy, messy, challenging, and unconventional – yet this is from where the richest lives stem. We want to feel a sense of belonging through what we do. It’s here, in the spiritual practice of work, where the hunt for self-actualization takes place. Indeed, we become what we give our attention to.
Duty and Luxury
In work, we’re searching for ‘daily meaning as well as daily bread,” wrote broadcaster Studs Terkel. And for some thing to hold meaning, it must be seen as valuable in the eyes of the beholder, by our culture, or both.
Marinating together in a special sauce, fulfilling work has a variety of ingredients. Chief among them are: money, place, passion, gifts, and impact. Until recent times, the stock has been dominated by money and status. Cash money provides for our basic needs and luxuries. Place (otherwise known as power or status) is important for a sense of professional identity. But alternate recipes now feature the freedoms to pursue our passions, cultivate our gifts, and make a difference in the world. Together they provide a zippy mix to serve up others and ourselves.
Observe any Japanese worker whether it be a sushi chef, tax accountant, or even airport cleaner — and you’ll get a taste of what I’m talking about. Now, whether a worker has all the above fixings is inconsequential – because they tend to behave as if they do. There is a distinct pride in one’s work — an implicit duty to perform to one’s best. The Japanese call this shokunin; once reserved to the domain of craftspeople, today seeps into all aspects of Japanese working life. Japanese sculptor Toshio Odate explains it best:
“The Japanese word shokunin is defined by both Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries as ‘craftsman’ or ‘artisan,’ but such a literal description does not fully express the deeper meaning. The Japanese apprentice is taught that shokunin means not only having technical skills, but also implies an attitude and social consciousness. …The shokunin has a social obligation to work his or her best for the general welfare of the people. This obligation is both spiritual and material, in that no matter what it is, the shokunin’s responsibility is to fulfill the requirement.”
Regardless of who it is or what responsibility they may be fulfilling – Japanese workers have pep in their step. They seek to become masters in whatever they focus on. There are many reasons for this phenomenon but two stand out. The first boils down to Japan as an island country. Just a bit bigger geographically than Great Britain, their respective island mentalities couldn’t be further apart. In Japan, there is the cultural conformity to bring your A-game to whatever it is you do. This ‘we’re all in this together’ sentiment is also reinforced by strict legislation. In other words, if an investment banker in the City of London shits the bed on a deal, he gets fired, but the same banker in Tokyo merely gets transferred to Osaka.
The second reason, and it’s related, has to do with family. The drive for this kind of conscientious behaviour in Japanese workers stems from deep-seated family bonds. It’s precisely why of all the businesses worldwide that have been around for more than 100 years, 90% percent are Japanese. And they all keep it tight with fewer than 300 employees. Instead of striving to grow faster, they last because they endeavour to grow better.
Whether in or outside of work, what spurs us to integrate is evolution itself. More countries could take a cue from the Japanese where good work, good business, and good citizenry for that matter, envelops a deep personal commitment to making your best contribution. Indeed, it’s this feeling that you’re making a difference that provides for a greater sense of purpose.
We join together in our communities and companies so that we may transcend the self. And never has there been more opportunity to indulge our impulse to do something meaningful work—it’s no longer a luxury as it is a duty.
Love and Work
This business of finding fulfilment is surely easier said than done. With less replication, stability, and certainty in work we’ve gained more choice but we’ve also gained a sweeping sense of self- doubt. Never before has the burden on the self been quite so heavy. Amidst more uncertainty, we yearn for a semblance of control often found by succumbing to that taunting voice in our heads to do more. There is always a better version of ourselves to realise.
We have to do the work on ourselves to quieten the inner critic, manage our anxiety, and minimise our stress. I’m exhausted just thinking about it, let alone writing about it. This all adds up to a thick layer of emotional labour that’s rarely talked about, much less acknowledged or even seen.
It may be paradoxical, but finding meaning often happens when we stop searching for it. By plunging into something bigger than ourselves — setting aside our ‘convulsive little egos’ as the father of American psychology, William James would put it — meaning can gently bubble up. In other words, those ethereal states we crave occur when we’re not directly pursuing them. They are a by-product of performing peripheral activities. For example, I decided to study digital marketing to get into the music business, and low and behold, I bumped into the love of my life.
Meaning, if and when it does show up, can be beautifully random and randomly beautiful. And work, whether we like it or not, is a popular laboratory for making meaning. Like love, we throw ourselves into it. Sometimes we do so as a diversion from other aspects of our lives. Other times we do so to move just that bit closer to our dreams. And in some instances, we do both.
We feel stifled when we can’t see ourselves making progress in work. When there is no more career ladder – seeing our impact on others and on the world became more challenging. With work progression resembling more a labyrinth, oftentimes our growth can feel stunted. This topsy-turvy trajectory gets frustrating at times. But it’s this precise psychologically uncomfortable feeling that leads to meaningful change. These are the times where things don’t go quite how we expected, yet if we’re open to it, can lead to the most interesting turn of events. It’s an opportunity to nurture our talents, fuel our interests, and make an even bigger impact in the world. And should this dissonance be left untreated, we can slip into noogenic neurosis — more commonly referred to as existential angst.
In a large international study of the most meaningful things in life, work was mentioned 44% of the time ranking second only to that of family. Of course, if we poll different people at various stages in their life, and from across different cultures, we’re bound to get a wide variation in the space work occupies in their hearts. For many folks, work will always be their darling. We glorify love and work and the two will forever be enmeshed in an intricate dance. “They are also locked in mortal combat,” chimes Philosopher Alain de Botton. Like love, work is a practice – a daily operation that, over time, shapes the fabric of our lives.
Try Harder, Fail Better
Nestled in a quaint little town north of San Diego, Manny and his wife are at home. The town of Leucadia is an otherworldly place on this pale blue dot, brimming with heart and soul. It’s a community where strangers see one another and it feels like everybody knows your name.
Today, Manny is a beloved surfboard shaper. Alongside his boisterous laugh, that funny quad fish from the parking lot has become his signature. There were loads of mistakes along the way, but with each one he would only bang his head harder until he learned the lesson. “I failed at everything. So I’m not worried about failure — I’m worried more about not trying and regretting not having tried. It’s really all about learning for me,” he says. His gumption and grace make for a potent mix—he’s proud of his work and it does all the talking.
Meanwhile the incoming workforce isn’t fooled by pay and perks if the place is full of jerks. They seek resilient cultures where they can feel at ease and don’t have to divorce parts of themselves from their job. This new way of working is less about the quick wins and much more about the gradual gains. “I have a lot to prove with my shapes – It’s what motivates me,” continues Manny. To be sure, loving your work takes patience, practice, and persistence – but for many like Manny it’s all worth it.
After all, the only thing truly constant in our lives is change. The really important things are never finished, they’re always evolving. We ourselves are working prototypes striving to grow a little bit better every day. Falling and failing is part and parcel of growth. And when we see ourselves like this, as self-renewing individuals — we never quite arrive.
Sometimes we feel light, at other times heavy. It’s in between these tensions—fear and desire, freedom and responsibility, pleasure and pain — where we find our humanity. Our work and workplaces are not immune to these forces. Suppressing people and having them suffer at work is not a sustainable strategy, nor is it a humane one. And we don’t have time to mess about.
Sure as hell, Manny wasn’t going to let his life be determined by someone else’s blueprint. Like his surfboards, it would be through his own adversity and by his own design. With dedication and unshakeable discipline — he turned a hobby into a living, and a practice into a ritual. His expression, day after day after day, lets him reach his truest self.
Our future is right ahead of us, each of us gets a dance with our own destiny. When we configure our work so that it lights us up, our lives take on a totally different shape. We drum to a different beat. And when we model our work on something larger than ourselves, we have a much better chance of finding meaning. We all have our watershed moments, and it’s here where we can rise to find both our humility and humanity. The only question is are we listening and willing to strap in. If so, then ready yourself for the ride.