Enjoying One's Professional Work

Perceptions and preferences are subjective, and while they are experienced in a personal sense regardless of how different they are from person to person, they can vary to a great extent between individuals.  Preferences do not determine or reveal truth; the necessary laws of logic do.  Nonetheless, without believing assumptions or errors, someone can find pleasure in fulfilling certain desires.  While some people cannot relate to it whatsoever or do not experience it very strongly, it is logically possible for someone to actively enjoy their professional work for its corresponding sense of personal empowerment, its impact on others (this will greatly depend on what kind of job it is), or even its way of keeping them busy when boredom might otherwise strike.

Having a preference is not irrational or sinful.  What one believes and prioritizes and how one lives decide that, no matter how a person feels about their alignment with reality.  If someone enjoys their professional labor, there is nothing problematic about this, except if their work inherently involves them doing something evil, whatever it might be.  They need to realize that other people are not in error for despising how they need to labor to remain part of established society, and those who hate how they have to professionally work need to realize that those who enjoy it are not necessarily pretending like everyone is obligated to share their joy.  It is a subjective attitude that could be held to independent of someone's worldview or life experiences.

Those who might be frustrated merely with anyone's enjoyment of even morally permissible labor, if resentment over exploitation is at its root, also need to realize another truth.  To enjoy one's professional work is not to ignore, support, or partake in the irrationality and injustices that are woven into many industries and companies in America or elsewhere.  If one can secure and keep a job that provides livable compensation and an at minimum neutral work environment, then one is not tolerating abuse in order to pursue a passion, although passion can lead someone to remain in a harmful corporate setting out of appreciation for something else about their role.  If one derives genuine pleasure from expending effort or considering the results of this labor, all without holding to fallacies and contradictions, then one is not naive about any of this no matter how fierce the excitement is.

Delight in genuine productivity in a workplace context could still be taken advantage of by employers who only care about how people can benefit them.  Acting as if they encourage or nurture passion in their employees, they are ultimately only interested in ways they can use the excitement and talent of others for their own financial and social ends.  Working out of love for a job does not have to mean working under a tyrant who will exploit whoever he or she can, but it is an unfortunate possibility that this love can be welcomed under the facade of promoting the empowerment of workers or the betterment of consumers.  No strength of feeling for professional accomplishments or competency needs to blind someone to this.