In English, we flatten so much into that one word: work.
A task to be done. Hours to be logged. Labor in exchange for a paycheck. But as I’ve traveled through the world’s oldest companies, I keep realizing how inadequate that word feels for the things that truly endure.
At Eirakuya [cloth company] in Kyoto, employees don’t talk about “work.” They talk about shokunin — a lifelong devotion to practice and craft. At Beretta, shaping steel into a firearm meant to last generations is not “work” in the corporate sense; it’s a lineage of skill, passed hand to hand. At the Hōshi Ryokan, the daily rituals of preparing baths or meals resemble a kind of stewardship — something that has kept the inn alive for more than 1,300 years.
And I think of investing, too. Some of the best investors I’ve known never describe what they do as work — they speak of it as curiosity, discovery, or simply playing a game they can’t stop playing. And I’m lucky to feel this too about my own pursuits, too.
Seen this way, what lasts is never just work. It is practice, craft, ritual. It is tending something so that it can outlive you. Our language betrays us here: when we say “I’m going to work,” we imply drudgery, productivity, efficiency. But when we speak of practice or craft, we are already speaking a different language.
Maybe the first step in learning how to outlast is changing our vocabulary — finding better words for the things we hope will endure. Words that call us not to manage time or extract value, but to cultivate and to care. The oldest companies show us: they have never simply been working. They have been carrying on a conversation with time itself.
