Mason Gravseth
Professor Scott Olsen
Inquiry Written Communication
8 October 2021
Can You Love Your Job Too Much?
Lynsey Addario’s passion, love, and dedication to her job is one of the most incredible things I have ever read about. Lynsey is a photojournalist who is so dedicated to her job that she is willing to sacrifice anything, even her own life. Although she has been kidnapped multiple times, been in a deadly car crash, and been discriminated against because of her race and her gender, she still continues to do her job without any hesitation. To Lynsey Addario, photojournalists can create historical documents of truth that can bring out more emotion in the reader than words can. She believes that the impact that she has on the world makes it worth the possibility of losing her life to do her job. Throughout the book we see the many sacrifices that she makes to let people see some things that are important in the world. For me, the most interesting and important part of this book is how Lynsey Addario’s passion for her work affects her family, relationships, and her life in general.
Lynsey’s passion for her job is an extremely important part of this story. From the beginning to end she was always working. She barely ever stopped to take a break and she never let her fear stop her from covering a story. In the beginning of the story she discusses how much she was inspired by her father, even though his passion was much different than her own. Her dad loved to garden. She loved to watch and talk to him about gardening, but most of all she admired the huge passion he had for it. That soon transformed into her own passion which began to develop when her dad gave her a camera of her own when she was thirteen years old. She then began to photograph obsessively, taking pictures of anything, anytime she could throughout her teenage years. As she got older she continued to be passionate about photography and when she eventually spent a year abroad studying political science and economics, she would often go out between classes and lectures to take pictures. She stated in her book that “The more I traveled, the more I craved a life of travel” (Addario, 25). After college, she lived in New York City during the summer, but traveled whenever she could and took pictures whenever she traveled. She saved money while living in New York, and then moved to Buenos Aires, where she also took the opportunity to travel around South America. She eventually traveled to Europe, where she continued to take as many pictures as she could, thinking of it as a way to “travel with a purpose” (Addario, 25). She worked at a number of jobs, some of which were related to photography but others that were not, trying to gain experience and money.
She wanted more than anything to get a job working as a photojournalist for the Buenos Aires Herald. She tried to get a job there but she was turned away multiple times. Eventually they were very annoyed by her persistence and they gave her work. But she was disappointed that they did not feature any of her pictures in their articles. She began to think that they did not believe in her abilities as a photographer but continued to persist in trying to convince them that she had the right talents and skills. They eventually said that they would be willing to hire her if she got a picture of Madonna, who was starring in a movie. Although they obviously still did not really believe in her, she set out to prove them wrong. She went to the movie set and was very persuasive with the guard, begging to be let in. She said things like “I will be famous someday, if you just let me in” (Addario 28). To me that quote really demonstrates her dedication, persistence, and self-confidence. She convinced the guard and ended up getting in. The picture was featured on the front page of the newspaper. After that she got the job and started her official career in photography.
Even after meeting her goal of working as a photojournalist for a newspaper, she wanted bigger and better things. Early in career her sister got married and her dad gave her and her new husband a check for $15,000 for their wedding. After realizing that she was much more focused on her career than getting married in the future, she asked her dad to give her an advance on her future wedding gift and he agreed to do that. She used that money to invest in her future as a photographer and in her career. This scenario foreshadows Lynsey’s willingness to do almost anything for her career and her true passion for photography. Even as a young photographer, Lynsey was completely devoted to her career and showed a great deal of perseverance and determination. This would also lead to her finding herself in many difficult situations early on and throughout her career.
Lynsey’s love and passion for her career was a good thing for her in many ways as it allowed her to meet her career goals and for others to learn about what was going on in the world. Her love, passion and relentlessness for her job also had a more negative side. It sometimes could be too much and she seemed to realize that at times, but she wasn’t willing to give up her passion. She seemed to be willing to sacrifice her family, relationships, and her own safety and future in order to feed her passion. This also, however, resulted in being involved in some very bad situations. She acknowledges this, writing “I was now a photojournalist willing to die for stories that had the potential to educate people” (Addario 134). She was so passionate and dedicated that she photographed many dangerous areas, including wars and humanitarian situations, such as the very violent ones in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Darfur. She also went to photograph the war and danger zone in Libya, which ended up being one of the most dangerous and frightening jobs she ever took. She was so dedicated that she often failed to recognize that she was often putting the people she loved in difficult and sometimes unsafe situations. Even recognizing these facts, Lynsey often seemed to ignore what the people in her life needed, focusing on her own career and career goals instead.
It is obvious that Lynsey’s passion and commitment to her career was both a blessing and a curse for her. One of Lynsey’s most problematic issues in her life and in this book is how her relationships are impacted by her job and how this then impacted her. Lynsey desperately wanted to have a great balance between her work and her relationships, but for a great majority of this book she is unable to find that balance. In every romantic relationship, when faced with the need to choose between her partners or her work, she eventually chooses work. This is frustrating for the men she dates. For example, her relationship with Uxval quickly becomes unhealthy because she is so dedicated to her job and always chooses it over him. Eventually Uxval made it very clear to Lynsey saying, “I want a girlfriend in flesh and blood, not an internet girlfriend” (Addario 75). In her relationship with Uxval this eventually led to him cheating on Lynsey on multiple occasions. Lynsey was so desperate for a relationship that even when she found out that he was cheating on her she just accepted the reality that he was seeing other women. Although she cared about him, she eventually had enough and broke up with Uxval. This was the first time in years that she felt free.
Problems like these were repeated in almost all of the relationships Lynsey discusses in the book; she was simply gone too much and working in too many dangerous areas for it to be possible for her to have a truly healthy relationship. She wrote, “Because of my string of failed relationships, along with the ever-increasing demands of my work, I was sure I would spend the rest of my life single. It was the one subject that filled me with a sense of failure” (Addario 154). It seemed that she had just accepted the fact that all of her relationships would fail because she would never pick a relationship over her job. Lynsey needed someone who understood her passion. Her patience eventually paid off when she found a man named Paul.
Paul was the first person that Lynsey dated who understood her love and passion for her work. Paul was the Reuters Bureau chief in Turkey. Lynsey stated that when she met him “I sensed that he, too, was obsessed with work” (Addario 153). As she got to know Paul she realized that she had finally found someone that could relate with her love for her job. This resulted in also realizing that Paul was the only man who she had had a relationship with whom she could possibly spend the rest of her life with, but even when Paul proposed to her she still could not believe that someone actually wanted to marry her. Before Paul, Lynsey was convinced that her love of her job meant that she would grow old alone with her cameras.
Although Lynsey spent many years desperately wanting a life partner, she was never willing to sacrifice what she wanted in her career in order to have that relationship. She would not settle down for someone like Uxval who did not understand or accept her passion for photography; if she was going to be in a relationship it would have to be with someone who accepted that this was what she did and that would not change even for love. Luckily, she found Paul who had a similar passion for his job and could understand and accept her love of photography and her willingness to do anything for her career. If she had not met him she may have been single forever because very few people could have accepted that she would always put that relationship second to her job and that her job was unpredictable, demanding, and often very dangerous. Her willingness to be without a life partner if having that partner would impact her job really demonstrates her dedication to her job; she was not willing to sacrifice her work for anything, so she waited until someone was willing to put up with her obsession with her career and photography to start a serious relationship.
Another very important part of this book was the things that Lynsey’s family went through while she was on these dangerous jobs. Although this had to have put them under a great deal of stress, Lynsey did not let that stop her. She believed that the danger was worth it and she didn’t seem to consider the impact this had on the people who loved her. While she was a photojournalist in dangerous areas or during wars, they would sometimes wake up to find out that her safety and life were at risk, likely sometimes even wondering if she was even alive. Over the years they were told that Lynsey had been kidnapped in Libya, that she was on the frontlines of wars, and that she was in countries and regions that hated her race. If her family is anything like most families, they must have lived in constant fear of getting those phone calls, and in constant fear that the next phone call would be to inform them that she was dead. At first this was probably happening to the adults in her family, like her parents, sisters, and Paul, but later this would have also involved her son, Lukas. Although this kind of passion for your job is seen as a good thing, at some point it can become a problem, especially for the family who has to constantly live with this anxiety and fear. It makes me wonder, at what point is it too much and does it become a problem when you continue putting yourself in danger when you have your own children to consider?
Lynsey’s feelings about parenthood seemed to be very mixed, at least when she first learned she was pregnant, probably because she was not ready to have to consider her child when she worked. She states that when she found out, “I felt a part of myself dying. My life was being taken over by a microscopic union of Paul and me growing inside my uterus” (Addario 252). Her job meant so much to her that she didn’t know if she wanted a family of her own. However, in my opinion her passion became too much when she started to put her baby in danger. Even after being advised not to travel she took jobs in Senegal, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. While she was about 5 months pregnant she even traveled to Somalia, which was a very dangerous area at the time. She took the risk of being kidnaped, killed, and most importantly, she even risked her baby’s safety by ignoring her doctor’s advice and going on these work assignments.
Fortunately, her baby, Lukas, was perfectly healthy when he was born, but was her job worth the risk? I personally could not imagine being Lynsey’s husband or parents watching her knowingly put her life and the life of her baby at risk for a job, even if she was passionate about it; her passion did not change the fact that she was putting them both in danger. Although dedication is usually a very good thing and I believe that if everyone were even close to as dedicated to their jobs as Lynsey Addario, the world would be a much better place. However, after reading this book, I believe that this can be taken too far, and that purposely involving a child in this lifestyle in any way is crossing the line. It makes her seem more obsessed than just passionate and dedicated; she was willing to risk the safety, life, and possibly the mental and physical health of her child and put her family under a great deal of stress and in my opinion, that is too much. I think at this point she was being selfish and she should have stepped back to look at the bigger picture which did not just involve her and her job.
Although it seems that some of her choices were questionable, there is no question that her career flourished during this time. Throughout her career she worked for huge newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Time, National Geographic and many more. She also had many other important honors. For example, her photographs were used in a story titled “Talibanistan” that won a Pulitzer Prize. She also was selected as a MacArthur Fellow. which awarded her half a million dollars over the course of 5 years. It is clear that all of the sacrifices that Lynsey Addario made helped make her career very successful. But was it really worth it?
She seems to think so, writing “After years of traveling from country to country with no home, of trying to bring attention to injustice, of witnessing war, funerals, and hunger- the MacArthur Foundation had recognized how devoted I was to this work. All that time, sacrifice, and commitment had been worth it” (Addario 215). But I am curious if her family agrees? They are likely very proud of her, but how would they have felt if she had died for those achievements? Or if her child had been harmed? I think this is probably a very complicated issue for them, and I would have mixed feelings about this, too, if this were my sister or child. I personally believe that family comes first but have never been in this situation so I don’t really know how I would feel. However, it does raise many complex and interesting questions about when passion becomes too much and when we need to sacrifice the things we love in order to meet our responsibilities to our families and other loved ones.
I think there are so many lessons that can be learned from this book. The main lesson for me was that there is such a thing as too much passion and dedication. It is great to love what you do and we often have to make sacrifices to be successful. However, I also learned that it is possible to get carried away with your passion to the point where you forget that anything or anyone else is important and also deserves your attention. I learned that I should love what I do, and I should be passionate about it, but that I have other obligations that I should not disregard to feed my own passion. I also need to remember that I have other responsibilities other than my job and we need balance. These are huge lessons that I will try to always remember as I grow older and have more responsibilities to my family and my future job.
It’s What I Do is a book with many deeply complicated but important topics and I believe that a lot of these topics need to be talked about more. We should talk not only about the great things that come with passion and drive, but also about the fact that there is a fine line between passion and dedication and an obsession that causes you to disregard the needs of your loved ones. Lynsey Addario’s story was an extremely good example of what might have been too much passion and the fact that there are good and bad things about this. It may result in success but there may be significant downsides that come with your achievements. Everyone likely has different opinions on this topic; however, for me Lynsey crossed a line with some of her choices, especially after she had a child to consider. I believe that passion is a great thing and it gives you a great chance to be successful in life, but I also believe that it is important to remember that your profession is not the only important thing in life. It is also important to remember how you are affecting other people, especially those who you love and who love you. Although Lysey did talk about her family’s feelings and seemed to recognize them, she didn’t let that stop her or even slow her down when she was pregnant.
Lynsey’s passion had a huge impact on her life. She never wanted to stop. It didn’t matter if she was kidnapped, almost killed, or was sacrificing her obligations at home. She never stopped. As Lynsey said ““The more I worked, the more I achieved, the more I wanted” (Addario 64). The number of awards she won, the amount of sacrifices she made, or even how her family felt didn’t matter because war photography is what she does. And I am sure she will be doing it for the rest of her life no matter the situation.
Works Cited
Addario, Lynsey. It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War, Penguin
Books, 2016.