This week in Bibliotherapy: books for when you’ve forgotten who you are outside work

“Aslı, my question isn’t only mine. The other day, while I was smoking with colleagues outside our office tower, this subject came up, and it turned out we all struggle with it. What place does our career, our profession, have in our lives, and what place should it have?

Gaye Ö.”

As you say, this is something many of us struggle with, so I’ll get straight to the point.

Our profession is often one of the quickest answers we give to the question “Who am I?” Our work is closely tied to identity, self-worth, meaning and a sense of belonging. And if it also makes us feel that we are contributing something to life, becoming skilled at something and connecting with others, it becomes deeply nourishing psychologically. It doesn’t just earn us a living; it also creates a space where we can fulfil ourselves, develop our abilities and feel that we have a place in the world.

And yet the work that once bound us to life can, when it no longer meets these needs, gradually turn into a source of unhappiness and burnout.

There is an important psychological distinction here: the fine line between success and self-worth. Success is mostly defined by things that can be seen and measured from the outside: the promotions we get, the money we earn, the recognition we receive, the work we produce, how productive we are or how far we have progressed in our profession. Self-worth, on the other hand, is a feeling that lies much deeper. It has to do with the fundamental belief a person holds about themselves, with the answer they give to the question “Am I a person of worth?”

The problem arises when we start to confuse the two. We begin to see our professional achievements not merely as the result of the work we do, but as proof of how much we are worth as human beings. Without our even noticing, a silent equation takes shape inside us: if I succeed, I am worthy; if I fail, I am worthless.

• In such a situation, a criticism we receive at work, an opportunity we miss, a promotion we don’t get or a failure we experience stops being merely a professional problem and becomes a verdict on ourselves. Instead of saying “I didn’t do my job well enough”, we think “I am not good enough.”

What’s more, we feel we must constantly prove the self-worth we have tied to success. When we achieve something, we feel good for a short while, then immediately lock on to the next goal. Even resting can sometimes make us feel guilty, because in the moments when we are not working, not producing, not moving forward, it feels as though we are losing some of our worth. This can heighten anxiety and, over time, pave the way for burnout.

• Yet at work we may make wrong decisions, or fail to reach the success we hoped for. These are experiences related to the work we do, not a measure of our worth as human beings.

But what if the problem isn’t only how successful we are at work? What if one day we ask ourselves a far more fundamental question: Did I choose the right profession?

This question isn’t really only about our profession. It is also about how much the life we live belongs to us, about the decisions we made in the past and about the person we are today. It applies even to work we once loved doing. When it begins to tire us, even to wear us out, we think we chose the wrong profession. Yet the problem may lie not in the profession itself but in our working conditions, in the load we carry, in the steadily shrinking time we can set aside for ourselves.

Sometimes this question surfaces when we reach the middle of our lives. The profession we chose with great excitement in our youth, and put years of effort into, may one day stop feeling as meaningful as it once did. We may ask ourselves, “Was that all?” We may also find ourselves facing the question, “Have I spent all these years chasing the wrong thing?”

And then, of course, there is comparing ourselves with others. In a world where we constantly see other people’s achievements, professions, working lives and lives in general, it is natural to doubt our own choices. When we cannot find in our own lives the freedom, creativity or success we see in someone else’s, the paths we didn’t take may start to look more tempting.

Especially if we have placed our profession at the centre of our identity, the possibility of having chosen the wrong one doesn’t simply mean we made a wrong decision. We may feel as though we have lived our whole life wrongly.

But there is one thing we must not overlook: people change. A profession that excited us at twenty and gave us security at thirty may not bring the same satisfaction at fifty. When we are young we define success as rising, earning and proving ourselves; in later years we may come to value freedom, meaningful relationships, creativity or the time we can set aside for ourselves more highly.

• So a choice that was once right may not meet our needs today. That doesn’t mean we made the wrong decision in the past.

When we start judging past decisions with what we know today, we may idealise the lives we haven’t lived. We may believe that the profession or path we didn’t choose, the opportunity we didn’t take, would surely have made us happier. Yet we don’t know what that life would have been like, or what difficulties and disappointments it would have brought with it.

Still, the same question can also be the beginning of an awakening. It can lead us to take a fresh look at our present needs, values and expectations. Perhaps we don’t need to change our profession, but we can change the way we work. Or perhaps the place our work occupies in our lives needs rearranging.

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Now let’s look at the books that might bring us some healing. The first is Dave Eggers’s The Circle. The novel’s heroine, Mae Holland, is working an ordinary job when, with the help of her friend Annie, she starts work at the Circle, one of the most powerful technology companies in the world. The Circle is a vast company that aims to bring almost the whole of life under one roof, from social media to shopping, from communication to personal data. With the perks it offers its employees, its modern campus, its social events and its belief that it is changing the world, it looks like the perfect workplace.

• When Mae lands the job, she feels as if her life has finally begun. She is somewhere that matters now. She has a future, a purpose, a community she belongs to. And her work doesn’t just earn her money; it also gives her a new identity that makes her feel valued.

But over time we realise that the Circle expects more of its employees than simply doing their jobs well. The company wants them to be constantly in contact, to take part in events, to share, to be visible. It is no longer only Mae’s success at work that is assessed, but how she lives the rest of her life too. What matters is not only how much she works, but how much she shares, how many people she interacts with, how far she participates.

The novel shows very well the moment when that dangerous line between success and self-worth is crossed. It offers anyone who has built their life around their work, who feels they must always succeed, who feels guilty even while resting, who fears losing other people’s approval, the chance to look at their own life from the outside. Sometimes we are unhappy not because we chose the wrong profession, but because we gave the profession we believe is right more room in our lives than it deserves.

Not Working by Lisa Owens

Our second novel is Lisa Owens’s Not Working. Claire is a young woman in her thirties living in London. Unhappy in her job, she resigns. Her aim, really, is to give her life a new direction and find work that suits her better and means more. But quitting turns out to be far easier than working out what she wants to do.

Suddenly she finds herself in the uncertainty that comes with being out of work. She spends her days looking for jobs, putting things off, comparing herself with the people around her and wondering what she ought to do. After a while she begins to question not only what work she wants to do, but what kind of person she wants to be.

Owens tells all this with great humour, at times with a sardonic edge. It is impossible not to laugh at Claire’s conversations with herself, her little obsessions, her failed attempts and the unease that keeps growing amid everyday life. At the same time, seeing that what she is going through is not just unemployment but the feeling of having lost control of her life does break your heart a little.

I think the novel will do a great deal of good for those who feel they have lost their direction in life, and for those who are unhappy in their profession yet can’t tell what they want to do instead. Because it reminds us of this: we don’t have to know what we want at every age, in every period of our lives. Sometimes we first discover what we don’t want.

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü

Our third novel is Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü (The Time Regulation Institute). The novel’s narrator, Hayri İrdal, is a man who has never managed to bring order to his life, never fully fitted into the world around him. He is fascinated by clocks. He is caught between past and present, between tradition and modern life. His life is more often steered by the people and events he encounters than by his own decisions. At least, that is how it feels to us.

Then he meets Halit Ayarcı. Halit Ayarcı is almost Hayri’s exact opposite. He is enterprising, self-assured and highly persuasive. He believes in modernisation, progress, efficiency and big ideas. Building on Hayri’s knowledge of clocks, he founds the Time Regulation Institute.

At first glance this institution seems to answer an entirely serious social need, but it gradually grows into an enormous structure in its own right. Staff positions are created, duties assigned, titles handed out, people hired. Everyone believes they are doing something extremely important. But the reader keeps asking the same question: What do these people actually do?

• And that is exactly what Tanpınar does. He shows how absurd and pointless an order can be when nobody openly questions it and everyone keeps it going with the utmost seriousness.

Because all of us can, from time to time, find ourselves inside just such an order. Rushing from one meeting to the next, trying to get through our to-do lists, meeting an institution’s expectations, we may forget to ask what we are actually serving.

Besides, admitting that a job is meaningless isn’t always easy either. Especially if that job gives us an identity, a circle, a status and respect in other people’s eyes. Sometimes questioning the work we do feels like questioning ourselves. So we carry on working, producing, keeping busy.

The novel is valuable for the way it makes us consider that being part of an institution or a job, holding an important title or being admired by others is not, in itself, a purpose in life.

Perhaps the greatest consolation this novel can offer is its reminder that we don’t always have to be useful, and that the worth of our lives cannot be measured by our productivity alone.

I recommend all three novels wholeheartedly, dear Gaye, and I think they will often make you smile. I hope they bring you some healing.