To Break Bread

There is something hidden in the words "company" and "companion" that I'd like to bring to the surface.

When you break it open, these words mean:

com = with + pane = bread thus "One who eats bread with you."

This should give us all pause.

So a Company should be a place where we share a meal. Where we feed and nourish one another. Where we are companions on a journey.

If the idea of a company is for people to be in a relationship where bread is broken and shared, then what? A friend sent me this quote from the philosopher and poet Gibran:

"Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy."

Is your work "love made visible?"

In her note to me, my friend added this final line: "How fortunate we are to be in a field that brings such continual satisfaction."

It's true. She and I are in the field of Learning and Organization Development where we help people to be more adaptable, more resilient, more productive, and more effective. We guide, we coach, we train, and we mentor.

This is the key, I think. To work with love requires that the work be a source of satisfaction to you.

Taking a closer look at the word satisfy, it comes from the Old Latin:

satis + facere = to make enough

What is enough? Our capitalist culture tells us that you can never have enough. That you must always have more. That more is better. That bigger is better. The result? We are never satisfied. We are always craving. Though we don't know what it is that we lack. But how much do we truly need? Maybe that's what has gone wrong in our collective psyche these days.

The ancient sage Horace said, "He who is greedy is always in want.” This is one of the sins, I believe, made by the main character Walter White in the TV series Breaking Bad. While starting with the desire to take care of his family, he fell into greed, a trap that is so commonplace in our culture as to be invisible to us.

G.K. Chesterton once said: “There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

If your work, whatever it may be --from music, to medicine, to sales, to engine repair-- is a source of nourishment for you and for others, then that may be enough.

*Special thank you to Kenny "the monk" Moore for teaching me about the hidden meaning in the word company.

🗺 I'm Terry Seamon, creative & collaborative leadership development & career transition coach. Let me know how I can help you navigate to your goals.

📖 Follow me for practical and inspiring content each week. I post frequently about job search, careers, change, leadership, resilience, well-being, success, and more. Subscribe to my newsletter Here We Are. Now What?

📞 Let me know how I can help you.