Let us recall what work looks like in people’s perception. Work is a place where a person must go, perform certain tasks there, or simply show up at a set time (though that last arrangement—completing some volume of work by a deadline—remains rare for us). We need work because it pays.
This perception is common among most people, not only Ukrainians—you will encounter it in the media, among politicians, and so on. Worse still, these ideas have acquired a reputation for being scientific, indeed for being the only possible ones. Ministers, experts, and various advisors discuss the “wage level,” “unemployment,” and similar “economic parameters” based precisely on such notions.
So the essence of work is that we endure it for the sake of money. But is money itself really the goal of our efforts? Folk wisdom takes a contradictory position on this issue. On the one hand, it asserts that “happiness is not in money”; on the other hand, it wryly adds that happiness is “in their quantity.” In reality, of course, money itself has no meaning. The goods that can be acquired for it have meaning. That is, we go to work because it will enable us to obtain goods that we value.