Earlier this week, I had the privilege of talking to a Vocation Project reader about some of the topics we’ve spent time considering lately. One topic came up time and again in our conversation: the idea of third places. A third place, as defined by sociologists, is a social environment other than work or home. It may be a church, a bar or cafe you frequent, a library, or any number of similar public places.
Much has been written about the disappearance of third places. Churches, bars, and social clubs have lost their importance for many people. It’s easier than ever to isolate yourself and still find plenty of ways to distract yourself.
Now, losing these third places doesn’t mean a total loss of meaning or belonging. Work is still a clear source of identity. Of course, for most people, the home is the most important place to find a sense of belonging. It’s the place where we spend the most time, where we build family, and where we slowly come to find a place in the world in a very literal way.
We take it for granted that everyone will have these two places—work and home. But what happens when these are reduced even further?
In our conversation, my friend mentioned that some of his coworkers didn’t seem to have anything outside work in their lives. Some would spend nearly all day in the office without anywhere else they particularly needed to go. The home, instead of being a place to build identity, is just a utilitarian space. No doubt, some people would never leave the office if they could bring a bed and a shower into work.
It’s easy to dismiss this as simple workaholism. Some people don’t want anything more than to work, to succeed, and to climb the ladder. What better explanation is there for these long hours at work?
Yet I don’t think this is the sole reason for this attachment to work. I’ve seen this same thing happen to many friends of mine, and it’s almost always the same story: after college, they move somewhere far away without knowing anyone around and struggle to find a life outside of work in their new home. They might have a few interruptions to their daily routine—among men my age, the gym is the most common—but it’s often a relentless back-and-forth between work and home.
In a new place without a real social structure to fall back on, what does the home become? Often, it’s nothing more than a place to waste time between workdays. There’s no opportunity to build a sense of identity. There’s nothing that really makes this place a home.
Where can you turn, then? Work is the obvious answer: it offers a clear sense of purpose and belonging. In a concrete way, you are needed at work.
But work alone is insufficient. There’s a quote I’ve heard attributed to everyone from Socrates to Pope John Paul II (which I suspect wasn’t created by anyone especially famous): “We’re not human doings, we’re human beings.” It certainly feels incredibly cliche. Nonetheless, it speaks to something important about who we are as people: we aren’t reducible to the things that we do, and we’re not reducible to one part of our lives.
This sort of workaholism strikes me as an attempt to take control of life when everything seems out of your hands. The workplace is somewhere you can rely on. In times of instability, it’s a near guarantee—though, of course, all bets are off when you someday have to leave for good.
How can we turn the home into a place where we come to recognize ourselves more clearly? When we’re in an unfamiliar place, how can we eke out a bit of familiarity for ourselves?
More than anything, it’s clear that there must be some way to give the home a greater sense of purposeful living. When the home is a place for directionless time-wasting, it’s no shock that it’s little more than a brief stop between working hours. Without a doubt, we’ve all had the experience of finding ourselves wasting an entire Saturday doing nothing and asking where it all went.
Structure and routine are useful tools, but just as importantly, we need some manner of goal in the home. The home should be a place to pursue something worthwhile.
When living alone, what offers this sense of direction? The best source is authentic and directional leisure. Far from simple time-wasting, this leisure is a sort of contemplation. It comes when we can take a moment to do something just for its own sake and recognize why we’re doing it. It demands focus and intention, though it also requires us to get away from the constant demand for productivity. The home shouldn’t just be a place to work more—it should be a place to find another part of life.
These pursuits don’t have to be anything extraordinary. Reading, listening to music, working on a hobby of yours, watching a movie without spending the whole time focusing on something else—all that’s needed is the opportunity to give your full attention to something that isn’t just meant to waste your time. We have to get away from distraction and find something that makes life clearer instead.
Just as much as this can bring meaning to the home, it can and should bring meaning to work as well. When work is the only meaningful place in your life, it’s hard to see what goal you’re working towards. All these hours of hard work go towards things that you can’t quite explain or identify. It’s when you find meaning at both work and home that you can recognize an integrated purpose to them: each helps you more fully become the person you want to be.
If work is the only place you feel you belong, then it’s likely that you need a greater sense of belonging. The first place to start is with yourself: the only thing you need to start is time and attention.
As for the lack of third spaces, that’s a question that I don’t think anyone has a clear answer to right now. But if third spaces are rooted in a common identity and set of values, perhaps the first thing to look for is other people in search of something more.
I've come to think there's an inescapable dark side to labor's being a source of one's identity.
I'm a Xennial, having grown up watching, reading, and listening to media that radiated subtext such as "Find a job that will make you who you are," "You can change the world through your job," "If you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life," "Your job can unleash your creativity."
I wish someone would've grabbed me by my collar and said, "Look, no matter what job you get, it will be fundamentally formed by and subject to market incentives, the profit motive, financialization, rent-seeking, etc. Not only will your creativity be ordered toward commercialization and commodification, and not only will any identity you make of yourself in your job be predicated upon these things. More than these, encouraging identification with your job or your employing corporation is a pretext for denying you a living wage and reasonable protections. It's okay to work a job you don't find all that fulfilling. Too much of the important stuff, the uncommodifiable stuff, happens outside the bounds of market logic."
After years of adjuncting, out of the sheer love of philosophy and teaching philosophy to berry farmers, future truck drivers, and retired cops, this little lesson certainly speaks to me now. I don't know if I would have taken this advice back when — I love philosophy too much. But it would have been good to know.
The ability to be in the present takes so much effort in our chaotic environment. Resisting the distractions to participate fully in tasks and activities is hard- takes discipline.