What should we be telling our kids about the world of work?

My oldest child, Elissa, is becoming an adult, and she doesn't always like it.

Something with which you adults can identify, right? Grownup-hood has its privileges, but man, it's a lot harder than you imagined when you were little and wanted to be an adult.

One source of her frustration, I think, is trying to imagine how she's going to earn a living when she gets out of school (in less than eight months) and actually has to, you know, work. Not that she doesn't work now, but school work is different from "work work."

Elissa is majoring in marketing – a fine choice, by my reckoning, and one that allows her to combine her natural creativity with an expanding set of business skills.

Marketing is a white-collar profession that generally happens in an office setting (unless you're marketing a brothel or a meth lab or something, in which case it happens in something other than an office setting).

Office work happens to suit me. I generally like it. But not everybody does.

For some people, working in an office is akin to being water boarded. They just can't do it. Which is fine. There are plenty of other work environments from which to choose.

But if you enter a profession in which you're bound to spend some portion of your career in a cubicle, you're inevitably going to have days when you want to run screaming from the office. It happens to everyone. It's not natural to be cooped up under glaring white track lights for 10 hours a day.

Which leads us to the essential dichotomy facing every young person about to enter the world of work: On one hand, they're told that they should choose a profession they love, and that no one can live a satisfying life unless they're doing something about which they're really passionate. And on the other hand, there's the undeniable reality that work is not always pleasant.

It just isn't. Neither you nor I jump out of bed every single morning thinking, "YES, it's Wednesday! I get to go into work! Again!"

But hopefully the reverse isn't true, either. Ideally, you're not waking up in a state of depression every day dreading the fact that you have to go and toil at a job you absolutely hate. Maybe (very) occasionally, but certainly not regularly.

The reality is that the vast majority of us are shooting for something in the middle. You'll be working for a long, long time, and you have to look at it as a truly big picture. On balance, you should feel fairly satisfied with what you're doing with your career. And by "satisfied" I don't mean you're doing cartwheels out of sheer joy every day, but rather you're engaged, relatively happy and can go home in the evening feeling pretty good about yourself and what you accomplished.

That's not at all a bad way to approach your work life, but it does seem to pale in comparison to the unrealistic "love what you do" mandate, doesn't it? I happen to be someone who is blessed to do something they like. Not everyone is. But overall, you should aim to be somewhere on the upper half of the Work Attitude Scale.

Does that make sense? I hope it does, because I've never quite figured out how to describe this to my children in a way that's inspiring yet realistic. Maybe I'll just tell them to read this post and let me know if they have any questions.