Does work define us?

Career guidance is offered from adolescence onwards. Later, during social interactions, one of the first questions asked is: ‘What do you do for a living?’

Work gives us the opportunity to connect with others.

It allows us to contribute to a common effort within a structure.

It puts us to the test: can we turn the task into an activity?

It challenges and transforms us.

As we transform ourselves, we also transform the structure.

It challenges us, pushes us to strive, to exceed what we thought were our limits.

It sometimes makes us proud of our success.

This is what makes France unique, according to Yves Clot.

We have made work a value.

So, when our job leaves us, when we are devalued and harassed, when we no longer see the point of it all, what do we have left? What can we offer the world? Who are we?

Only the last question matters, followed by these: what do we become again? What can we rediscover about ourselves? Who are we in life, rather than in the structure?

Because work provides us with a framework, but the framework is not the work. The work is ourselves, much greater than the framework. We step outside the framework, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes under pressure. And perhaps those who suffer harassment were those who couldn’t be contained within the framework.

Sometimes, simply returning to a question that attempts to define us can open up a new path. That of searching for who we are, beyond our degree, beyond our job title, beyond those who confine us to a definition, and above all beyond our belief in that definition.

Suffering, of course, must be taken into account and never minimised. The person who is suffering must be protected and supported so that he/she can leave behind the image of themselves for others and return to their image of themselves for themselves. Canguilhem writes: ‘I am well insofar as I feel capable of taking responsibility for my actions, of bringing things into existence and of creating relationships between things that would not exist without me.’