Is it Better to Get a Job or Focus on Having Meaningful Experiences?

Is it better to get a job or focus on having meaningful experiences?

As soon as we are old enough to get a job, how much we should work becomes a question. The answer shifts as we go through life, whether it’s when we graduate high school or college, if we have children, or as we approach the last third of life. Each stage of life has different responsibilities and can provide different opportunities to glorify God and serve one’s neighbor.

Even when we choose to trust in God and not money, money is a factor in how much we should work. When you need to support yourself and/or a family, it’s important to earn money and limit experiences that cost significant time or money. However, when you are young, support from parents can free you up for other possibilities and a job is more of an extra than a necessity. There are also many opportunities for meaningful experiences when you are a teenager, and these can have a significant impact on your faith and your life.

At the same time, as Our World Belongs to God highlights, “we work for more than wages.” Work is a way of loving our neighbors by “providing useful products and services.” What those services look like will depend on our skills and experiences: the kind of job you are likely to get in high school will probably not be your dream job or necessarily allow you to use your gifts and passions like future jobs hopefully will. But that does not mean you cannot honor God in what you do and how you do it. Furthermore, having a job can teach you important things such as faithfulness in showing up and perseverance in spite of boredom and frustration, greater respect for those who do menial labor or service jobs, and how to be gracious to people who are not always kind to you. In this way, a job can also be a meaningful experience.

I encourage you, before you turn 20, to have a part-time or summer job or spend time volunteering in a significant way. As you do that, expect God to teach you things. Perhaps what you learn is that you would like a very different kind of job in the future. But hopefully you will also grow in wisdom and generosity so that you are more able, in response to the Lord’s generosity to us, to “give freely and gladly of your money and time” (Our World Belongs to God, 48).