What do September, Labor Day, 9/11, tennis and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have in common?
One word, one four-letter word — work.
I’ve been thinking a lot about work lately, particularly after I read an article on The New York Times’ website about why tennis players are so miserable. It was the latest iteration in The Times’ inexhaustible exploration of the anguished psyche of Naomi Osaka. While tennis, along with boxing, is a psychologically brutal sport in which there is an immediate, individual winner — and thus an immediate, individual loser — I don’t think tennis is any more miserable than, say, ditch digging or architecture or the presidency of the United States. Because in the end, once you take money for something, once it becomes a job, it will be laden with expectations, pressures and deadlines. And there will be things you discover that you love about it — and things you hate.
September is the month of workers. We celebrate them at its beginning on Labor Day. And on 9/11 we commemorate the idea that the victims were just going about their jobs as office workers, commuters and first responders. Particularly at the World Trade Center, as the name implies, they were workers engaged in global commerce. That’s why terrorists targeted the Twin Towers in 1993 and, having targeted them once, were determined to try again.
Now Covid has transformed how we view the workers’ landscape, the workplace. The proximity of death — which is always near, we just choose not to recognize that — has held up a mirror to our professional choices, and we do not like what we see. While some have dug in — leaned in, in the parlance of the day — others have opted out. Some have quit jobs, because they wish to remain unvaccinated. Others who are vaccinated are refusing to work among those who may not be.
Much has been made of the supposed laziness engendered by government “handouts,” but the truth is the virus has merely exposed underlying problems that we have ignored far too long. One of these is our dissatisfaction with our employment, either because we think we’re getting too little and others too much or because we no longer find fulfillment in it.
Those of us who remain employed may recognize that our relationship with our careers was always about painful tradeoffs. The tennis player’s and ballet dancer’s feet bleed. But they play and dance on.
Sometimes a crisis precipitates a radical rethinking of a job. In Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book “Peril,” Milley is portrayed as so alarmed by President Donald J. Trump’s behavior on and after Jan. 6 that he took the unusual step of reassuring his Chinese counterpart that we weren’t about to attack China. (Well, that’s a relief.)
Now Republicans and even military men opposed to Trump are calling for Milley’s ouster, saying he violated the chain of command. Do you think anyone asked for a permission slip in Lower Manhattan on 9/11 as two buildings fell on them? No, they were too busy trying to escape a tidal wave of dust and debris, concrete and steel, bone and flesh.
I think in protecting the people of the United States, Milley was just doing his job.