#17 - Work & Love

This article discusses:

Time spent at work
Loving what you do and doing what you love
Being of service to others.
Tell me about you.

Karl Thompson studied the average time we spend at work based on a life expectancy of 79.05 years. He found that “The average person in the U.K. will spend 19.6% of their total waking hours … Based on a 50-year full-time working life they will spend 29.4% of their waking hours during their working life at work.” (Thompson, K., 2022). Based on an 8-hour night’s sleep, we will be awake 16 hours a day. Based on this 16 hours per day, we will spend 19.6% working on average! Don’t forget the two days off a week most people have.

It got me thinking. In a previous article, I expressed my love of being with people. A six-month volunteering experience in 2015 with the French Red Cross completely changed my path as I decided to be of service to people. Full-time.

I’ve been a humanitarian worker, a personal carer, a support worker. I am now a nature-based therapist and holistic counsellor. The main commonality between all my past experiences is being with people.

We all spend so much time at work. As we spend on average one-third sleeping, we also spend one-third of our lifetime working. It better be something we love, right? Sometimes it is not possible, and I get this completely. Sometimes we just need to pay the bills or we accept something else while waiting for our dream job. Completely understandable. Good things take time.

But I quickly realised that I want to be passionate about my work.

I want to wake up every morning with a sense of excitement and accomplishment, knowing that I am going to work. At the moment, I spend 50-60 hours per week at work. It is a lot and it is temporary but knowing that I love what I do makes the process so much easier. It doesn’t feel like hard labour at all.

I was born and raised in a French-Italian family and culture. I quickly understood the importance of working and being “productive” and “helpful” for society. It is probably not the right way of thinking, but it is important in my culture. I grew up with hard-working uncles, aunts, grandparents and parents (especially my dad). He was working 12-hour a day and I didn’t see him much in my childhood. He was quite absent, actually. I do not blame him anymore. I know why he did this.

Becoming a counsellor and completing this other degree is going further into embodying what I love doing: being with people, healing and growing together as a collective, as a community.

This is how I could summarise this article:

Love the work.

Work with Love.

Loving what you do is okay.

Tell me about you. What makes you wake up in the morning?

How do you love your work?

How does work feel for you?

Are you in service to others?

I’m sending you pure and genuine love, filled with light and warmth.

Take care of your whole self, each other, and your community.

Nurture and be mindful of the natural world around you and within you.

Resources

Thompson, K. (2016, August 16). What Percentage of Your Life Will You Spend at Work?

ReviseSociology. https://revisesociology.com/2016/08/16/percentage-life-work/

Written 13/04/2024

Published 28/08/2025

#17 - Work & Love

#16 – Benefits of Nature-Based Counselling