Work should not be a job

Good news.

According to a Gallup poll conducted last year, only two out of 10 employed people in the U.S. hate their jobs.

Now the bad news.

Only three of the 10 like their jobs, leaving the other five who describe their daily work as "blah."

I can be counted as one of the three lucky ones, having enjoyed teaching high school for 38 years before retiring four years ago.

Teaching is not a glamorous career, and it's often maligned by a segment of our population.

It comes with an enormous responsibility that lies outside the lines of the academic curricula. I embraced the challenge to teach teens, many who did not want to be in school.

I found myself, however, parenting the kids as much as instructing them, addressing their concerns about everything from what they wanted to do with their lives to a particular teary-eyed girl who walked into my homeroom one morning and said, "I'm pregnant, Mr. Strack. I met this guy at a party. Please don't tell anyone, especially my parents."

Then there was Eric, an honors student, who told me he didn't want to live anymore. His parents would not let him pursue a career in musical artistry; they wanted him to get an engineering degree.

Our school counselors didn't believe he was serious about suicide.

One day, instead of going to his engineering class at Rutgers University, Eric stood in front of a freight train.

I remember a time, that with no formal training, he played beautiful classical piano in front of my class.

Eric, I hope you're now performing concerts before the smiles of angels.

Most of us will spend more than nearly 40 percent of our lives working for money.

It should make sense that we choose something we love to do.

Where I worked, Frank was a custodian who cleaned my classroom each day.

He whistled Broadway songs while he pushed his broom, and when he was done, he would look across the room and say, "Perfect."

One afternoon I asked him why he always seemed so happy to clean. Frank said he had spent 25 years in the FBI chasing bad guys. He pulled his gun "too many times."

Despite being the envy of his friends, he would go home feeling unsatisfied, wondering if he had done anything to make a difference.

"When I finish cleaning your room," he said, "I can SEE what I have done. I love to build birdhouses too and then I give them away. You can imagine how I feel seeing a family of birds living in my houses."

Frank was happier pushing a broom than drawing a pistol. I get it. When I cut my grass or rake leaves, I look across the lawn and say, "perfect."

Working a job that's not rewarding is common. It's just a paycheck. Unsatisfied employees would rather be fishing or hiking in the woods or baking gourmet cakes than what they are doing every day.

British journalist Katharine Whitehorn said, "Find what you love to do and get somebody to pay you for it." It's a beautiful truth. Right now I'm getting paid for having a love affair with the written word.

My friend Don has a law degree. He was a lawyer for six years, but he hated representing clients whom he felt did not deserve compensation, so he quit.

He loved tinkering with cars. For the past three years, Don has worked as a happy mechanic despite never coming close to matching the annual money he made practicing law.

Somebody who hated his job once told me that we should work two days and be off for five.

Pool hustler Danny McGoorty had called working for a living "an invasion of our privacy."

Tennessee Ernie Ford sang a song about the end of the workday that leaves us just "another day older and deeper in debt."

On Monday morning, consider driving your car past the road that leads to your job.

Go straight instead. Then make the "right" turn where you see the sign that says, "Pursuit of Happiness Lane."

It might be a long and winding road, but the trip will be well worth it.

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.