How to Leave a Job You Love

Sigmund Freud is often quoted saying, a century ago, that to live a good life we need to be able to love and work. These days, it seems, we must be able to love to work. We no longer want just respect, security, or money from our jobs. We want passion, fulfillment, and surprise too. We want, in a word, romance. But what do you do when the romance has cooled? If it’s time to leave a job you’ve loved, think about what you need to let go of, and what you cannot leave behind. Then make sure you mourn the former, and take the latter with you. And as you go, let your job teach you one last thing: to savor loss. You will need it again. In the mobile workplace of our day and age, being able to move on is as important as being able to commit. It’s not enough to be able to love our jobs, then. We must also learn to leave them. And if loving well is hard, leaving well is harder still.