For many people, work is drudgery. They feel like cogs in a tremendous meaningless machine, showing up to work just in order to get paid, or out of habit, or being unsure what else to do with their lives.
Others feel oppressed by their work. They toil at their own loss, trapped, obliged to labor on under the knowledge that they will not be rewarded justly for their efforts.
Others feel the emotion of arbejdsglaede, the Danish word for the joy of being at work. Arbejdsglaede isn’t about getting a big paycheck, or social status from one’s job. It is the experience of the delight intrinsic in the act of work.
In arbejdsglaede, a task might be menial. Labor might go unrecognized by others. Work might not contribute to a greater moral cause. Nonetheless, when we are in arbejdsglaede, we feel an effervescent pleasure in our experience of the work.
Arbejdsglaede is an obscure word for an uncommon emotion.
