“Why do you come to work?”
I attended a meeting recently with a group of coworkers. At one point, the meeting moderator posed this question to the group; “Why do you come to work?” I thought the answer would be easy. I’ve been going to work every day for almost 30 years, right? Of course I know why I do it. But I’ll tell ya what, the more I thought about it, the harder it became to put into words. The rest of my colleagues seemed to know what made them get up in the morning, why couldn’t I come up with anything? I started to panic. You know, the whole sweaty palm, increased heart rate thing. I still couldn’t get it into words. I’d hit on all of the usual reasons. I do it to help people, I do it to help the community, I do it to provide a living for myself and my family. All great reasons to come to work but none of those really seemed to sum it up for me. The question continued to haunt me until the next evening. I was driving home and it finally hit me. I do it for me. Pretty selfish I guess, but