SELF-RESPONSIBILITY (3): WORK (by Bertrand Russell)

The second advantage of most paid work and of some unpaid work is that it gives chances of success and opportunities for ambition.

In most work success is measured by income, and while our capitalistic society continues, this is inevitable. It is only where the best work is concerned that this measure ceases to be the natural one to apply. The desire that people feel to increase their income is quite as much a desire for success as for the extra comforts that a higher income can procure.

However dull work may be, it becomes bearable if it is a means of building up a reputation, whether in the world at large or only in one's own circle.

Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for most people this comes chiefly through their work.

The satisfaction of killing time and of affording some outlet, however modest, for ambition, belongs to most work, and is sufficient to make even a person whose work is dull happier on the average than a person who has no work at all.

But when work is interesting, it is capable of giving satisfaction of a far higher order than mere relief from boredom.