There are at least two views of work.

One is shown in Eric Jackson‘s tribute to CBS-TV’s Mike Wallace, who died Sunday after a career that was longer than TV, on Forbes.com:

If you don’t wake up in the morning excited to pick up where you left your work yesterday, you haven’t found your calling yet.We all have a calling in life.  For some of us, it’s to play professional tennis; some it’s manage money; and for others it’s to seek out truth (with a capital T) in their investigative work.  A person’s calling only has to be to them; it’s not for others to judge its importance.  Mike believed passionately that his job was the most important job in the world.  Just imagine what kind of world this would be if we all woke up feeling that every day.

That’s one view. Then there’s this view from Bradley J. Moore of The High Calling:

… I often find myself thinking hard about the choices stacked up against the years I have left. I wonder, what would it be like to run full throttle towards the things I really love doing – writing, for instance, or other creative endeavors?

Why not risk it all and pursue what I love? Isn’t that what God wants for me? …

Pursuing one’s creative dreams may sound glamorous, but the reality is that the top of the economic pyramid for those in the arts is so tiny, with the vast majority of talented people planted firmly at the lower-echelon base.

The difference between doing what’s important and doing what you want is that the important stuff is usually harder. It’s not so much fun. It won’t generally fulfill all of your deepest personal longings. Working a boring job to provide your family with financial security often gets a bad rap from motivational wonks who would have us drop everything to pursue our dreams, but I believe there’s something valiant, even noble about it.

Some mistake their desire for creative expression as a divine calling from God. Don’t even get me started on this. God never guaranteed that all of our deepest career fantasies would be fulfilled like an American Idol episode. There is no magical, theological formula for forging your vocation. You just have to figure it out like the billions of people who went before you. All I know is that shirking family responsibilities to chase some fantastical dream is immature and self-centered. …

So, stay at your dull job, give it your best shot, and save the music gigs for the weekends. You never know — the path of greatest significance may be right there in front of you, if you give it enough attention.

Reality for most people is somewhere between those two poles. I wrote when I started opinion-blogging that you should not love your job, because your job does not love you. (See “Marketplace Magazine, 1989–2011.”) In my 10 years at Marketplace I met a lot of people who claimed they had not worked a day in their lives, because they enjoyed what they did too much to consider it work. I’ve never hated what I did, but I’ve never loved it either. And I don’t think that’s because I have a poor work ethic, because I don’t. If you hate what you do, you’re not going to do your job well, and you are therefore cheating the person paying you. If you’re one of those who truly loves what you do, you should get on your knees every day and thank God, because most of your fellow human beings are not so fortunate.

There are some (perhaps Jackson) who espouse the school of You Are As Happy As You Decide to Be. That seems somewhere between unrealistic and self-delusional, depending on what’s going on in your life or the lives of those you  love. (Despite being known as perhaps the world’s preeminent investigative reporter, Wallace suffered from depression and once tried to kill himself.) At the risk of appearing afflicted with anhedonia, I doubt our ancestors who risked their lives and gave up what they knew in their lands of origin for a new no-assurances life here spent much time wondering if they were happy. Read the Bible, and you will find that God wants us to be holy, which is not the same thing as “happy.” Nor is true happiness very likely on this flawed planet full of flawed human beings and flawed human-created institutions.