work comes from the Latin tripalium, which meant three sticks. It was an instrument of torture consisting of three stakes to which the prisoner was tied. Through a metonymic evolution, it acquired the sense of penalty and suffering. If suffering is linked to economic retribution, result is the current concept of work.

The Greeks and Romans of classical antiquity thought that work was for the plebeians (a lower social class , that of the plebs), while recreational leisure was reserved for the nobles.

Today, many professionals are affected by a contagious disease: the lack of love for their work. They strive only or mainly to earn the money necessary for their material subsistence. This can be seen, for example, in the picaresque to work less and, in addition, boasting of being "smart".

Love is the ingredient that turns a work into a lifestyle. A successful professional is inconceivable without a happy heart. Love for what one does explains the existence of historical professionals who turned their work into scientific or artistic jewels. One cannot imagine the work of Marie Curie or Michelangelo Buonarroti without passion for their work. On the other hand, the lack of love for work makes us mediocre. It is thus understandable why some authors conceive work as a worthy and joyful activity.

In 1936 Juan Ramón Jiménez, gave a famous lecture on "El work gustoso". He told the exemplary stories of a gardener from Seville, an irrigator from Granada, a coalman and a mechanic from Malaga. Juan Ramón thought that cultivating a love for work greatly influenced its quality. In the story of the mechanic we can see important human values:

"We were leaving Malaga, with difficulty. The car stopped at every moment, panting. Mechanics came from this workshop, from the other. They all gave it blows here and there without thinking about it beforehand, sudden jerks, rough words, vain sweat. And the car remained the same. With great difficulty we were able to reach a garage that we were told was very good. A man came out who came safely to the car, lifted the engine cover, looked inside with precise intelligence, caressed the machine as if it were a living being, gave it a little touch right in the secret found and closed it again.

- There is nothing in the car. They can go with it as far as they want.
-Nothing in it? -It's been left for impossible by three mechanics!
- Nothing. They treated it badly. Cars should be treated like animals. Cars want to be pampered too."

For Juan Ramón the work gustoso was not only proper of the artist, but of any human being capable of putting enough attention and desire into his official document . This attitude was shared by Eugenio D'Ors, in his essay "Learning and heroism":

"I am going to speak to you, my son, of heroism in any official document and heroism in any learning. That man with the hunter is not an honest man. He works as a caricaturist in an illustrated newspaper and always speaks with disgust of his official document. He is only in it for the profit. He has let his spirit go away from the work that occupies his hands, instead of bringing to the work that occupies his hands the spirit. When the spirit resides in it, there is no labor that does not become noble and holy. It reveals that in the activity has been put love, care of perfection and harmony, and a small spark of fire staff: that which artists call their own style, and that there is no work or human work in which it cannot flourish. This is the good way of working".

These two texts show that love for what you do predisposes you to work well done and favors performance. This is also confirmed by Steve Jobs' speech to students at Stanford University on June 12, 2005:

"You have to trust something, anything.
Being fired from Apple, the business I founded, was bitter medicine, but I think the patient needed it. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You have to find what you love. And that is as true for work as it is for love. (....) The only way to make a great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't stop.

This message reveals that, along with a specific professional training , a common training is needed for every profession, related to the human aspects of work, including working with high motives and an attitude of service.