About Soulful Work

Soulful Work Made Simple

In searching for soulful work, seek not just the pay, but the whole prosperity package.

Remnants of soulful work from a by-gone era exist only as reminders of our roots: a sewing machine powered by a foot treadle, book work lit by a gas lantern, or perhaps an Amish field worker silhouetted against a burnt orange sky. For us, in the here and now, there is no pristine horizon nor any semblance of soulful imagery at the end of the day -- no rhythmic sounds of horses trotting, no shocks of corn glimmering in the sun, no kaleidoscope of autumn colors except along the highways leading away from our metropolis.

More than soulful imagery has disappeared from the landscape at the close of the Agricultural Age. Soulful work itself has vanished as we lean into our work with added intelligence and the power of ingeniously engineered high tech tools. Cranial activity and command over information, however, are no substitutes for the animating force of soul that wanes increasingly with each passing day. Our functional familiarity with work, it seems, has slowly and insidiously resulted in a form of dysfunction. A loss of soul leaves us in the cold without our having ever noticed its quiet exit over time.

With access to the fruit of our labors and amidst a world of abundance, we find ourselves in want. Full of what the good life offers, we run on empty, nonetheless. This is soul-deep impoverishment, the price too many of us pay for working in ways that deny the delicate human spirit within. Poverty of this kind is a never-intended outcome of work in the 21^st century.

The facts of the matter aren't new. They are the unsolved problems of our ancestors, intensified over the years. Few dedicated workers escape this sacrifice of self, engaging in the dawn to dusk exercise of feeding their own families at the cost of starving their own souls. At first thought, this appears to be the non-negotiable terms of employment, but think again we must with the whole of our humanity in mind if we are to stabilize the human ecosystem at work. Moving in this direction is the central agenda of Soulful Work, LLC.