Page 46 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

NARRATING VALUES, SHAPING VALUES, CREATING VALUE 25

5. Meaning: Beyond the basics of work—sustenance and security, a spirit of belong-
ing, and a sense of having a vocation—there is the need to find personal meaning in
work. Personal meaning differs with the individual. For me, having my financial needs
met, sharing a sense of community, and having a vocation collectively shape a sense of
meaning, but the sense that what I’m doing is redemptive or restorative as just as essen-
tial. Max De Pree, former CEO of Herman Miller, captures this sensibility about as well
as anyone I know when he notes that a company needs to be a place where “they will
let me do my best,” where I can realize my highest potential. 39

6. Usefulness or Purpose: While meaning involves internal validation, a sense of
usefulness or purpose has more to do with external validation. I would find it difficult
to work for a company, for example, that manufactured landmines. The work might
provide financial security, it might have a great sense of community, it might satisfy
my sense of having a vocation, and it even might provide a sense that I am realizing
my highest potential as an individual. But I would not find gratification in knowing the
work I do serves no useful social purpose. Is my work a legitimate calling (in more
than a mere legalistic sense)? Can I honestly say that what I am doing ennobles the
human condition, perhaps by enabling others to have a livelihood or to provide for a
healthy habitat or to have access to inexpensive and healthy food or to become liter-
ate or to have basic rights of governance? I think we shy away from thinking about
work in these terms in part because of the seeming grandiosity of it all, in part
because we have been conditioned early on to put aside these seemingly romantic or
quixotic ideals in order to “get on with life.” In so doing, we’re not getting on with
living, we’re getting on with the process of dying. Because something essential dies
when we allow someone else’s sense of the pragmatic to quell our capacity to dream
and enact.

7. Legacy: There is a deep paradox embedded in Western culture today. On the one
hand, advances in medicine have lengthened life spans and enhanced the quality of life
for so many of us. We have a material prosperity unprecedented in history. And yet,
with all of our progress—in medicine and science and technology—our general sense
of happiness has diminished. Max De Pree captures this conundrum elegantly:

To be a part of a throwaway mentality that discards goods and ideas, that discards prin-
ciples and law, that discards persons and families, is to be at the dying edge. To be at
the leading edge of consumption, affluence, and instant gratification is to be at the
dying edge. To ignore the dignity of work and the elegance of simplicity, and the essen-
tial responsibility of serving each other, is to be at the dying edge. 40

The implication of De Pree’s argument is clear: At the end of a professional career that
has aided a throwaway culture, we too will be discarded.
Our work and our works, though, should stand for something positive and good.
We should not indenture our children with our bad choices and practices. Thomas