I love some of my work so much that I'll likely do it until I die, and continue to get paid to do it.
What if they didn't pay you anymore? Hypothetically speaking, what if there were some unforeseen major paradigm shift in your industry, and suddenly your job could be profitably automated or outsourced, reducing your effective paycheck to zero? Would you still do the same work, for free, because you love it so much? Would you still do it even if you had to pay for the privilege of doing it?
Because if you would, then that's awesome! That's exactly where I'm at. I love the work, and it doesn't pay, and I enthusiastically do it anyway. I briefly tried doing work that DID pay, but that I was less in love with, and I couldn't sustain it. The money just doesn't matter to me anymore, so I now I get to choose what work I do based solely on what I find most meaningful. I've removed dollars from the decision matrix, and started to get surprisingly different answers than I was getting before.
I did not see this outcome ahead of time. I liked my paying job, and thought that I would continue to stay involved in the industry after I retired because it mattered to people. But then I started saying no to some of the more bullshitty parts of the job that I didn't want to do anymore, because I didn't need the money and didn't want to be forced to sacrifice the fun and important parts in order to do the stupid BS parts. From that first little step it was a slippery slope all the way down to actively rejecting all paid work precisely because the money corrupts your purpose. In tiny and invisible ways, the promise of payment influence how you do the work and keeps you subservient to some other master besides your own inner purpose.
As I stated above, this was just my personal experience. I thought that part-time side hustles would be a regular part of my post-career retired life, and instead I have discovered that the very idea of paid work actively repulses me. I was much happier making a little money from side projects when I was still making a regular paycheck from 9-5 five days a week, and it didn't bother me at all to seek out little inefficiencies or unmet needs where I could use my talents to reap a little profit. Then I retired, and suddenly the entire idea of doing anything for the money turned out to be fundamentally opposed to my new lifestyle. I still see the same little inefficiencies and unmet needs all around me, but now I get to choose which ones to fix based solely on which ones most need fixing, not which ones I can make money from.
YMMV, of course. Some people are genuinely fulfilled by the profit-seeking portion of their jobs, like a rewarding sort of scoring system. That's not my jam, though.
The people who pay me don't need charity.
Maybe that's part of our different personal experiences. The people who would most reasonably be expected to pay me DO need charity, because I have chosen to spend my retirement life helping people in need. If I was volunteering down at the yacht club, I would probably be less motivated to give so much.
I've read enough of your posts to know that our careers are quite different.
They're similar in that we're both doctoral level educated professionals, who are both highly regarded and highly remunerated in our fields, but our work is fundamentally different.
I work 3 different paid part time jobs as well as 2 unpaid jobs.
My main job is in healthcare where my work significantly improves the lives of people and their children. It's pretty goddamn satisfying every single day that I do it. Some days absolutely suck, but all days are intensely challenging and rewarding. NO DAYS are boring.
My second job is in a specialized area of healthcare treating patients with severe and difficult to treat conditions, which is an area that most providers avoid because it's relatively lower paying and comes with much higher liability and much more challenging patients. This work gives me fucking LIFE. I regularly have people sob in office from finally finding some relief to their suffering. I deal with people who are seriously at risk for suicide due to their level of suffering. This shit is fucking REAL. It's hard, it's scary, it's unpredictable, it can be thankless at times, but it's what I was meant to do.
My third job, I won't get too much into, but it's intimately related to my volunteer work. Essentially, I get paid a retainer to just use my good reputation to represent a high end firm, who also donate to my non profit work. The more volunteer work I do, the more valuable I am to this firm, the more exposure they get. All high end volunteer work involves partnership with industry, it's what keeps the wheels turning. I essentially get paid to do what I was already doing, except with access to a much better network and an expense account.
My first two jobs are paid largely by insurance companies, and they definitely don't need my charity. I do plan on doing some work up in the underserved areas of the far north where they are absolutely desperate for healthcare workers, but I'll still be very well paid by the government, who also don't need my charity. This doesn't make any of this work less meaningful than your unpaid work.
Also, my main work cannot be done for free. It requires a team of highly skilled staff as well as an enormous amount of high tech supplies and equipment. I can do my part for free, and I sometimes do, but it's not a sustainable model. There are plenty of trips I could go on where healthcare professionals are recruited to do a few weeks of free work here and there, which is popular, but because it's popular, I feel no obligation to do it. Plenty of others will. I'll stick to the work that no one wants to do for my version of giving back.
My third job DEFINITELY does not need my charity, but my work with them facilitates my non profit work tremendously, so no point in giving it up. Besides, it's a great company that I deeply respect and am proud to represent. Also, I can generate a solid amount of value with my own work, but the wealth that I can mobilize through my network makes my personal professional value look like peanuts. 80% of the numbers on my phone are people that give me thousands on a regular basis. I have a lunch on Friday to start strategizing finding 10M for a medical technology for a colleague.
In terms of the impact that I can have in my volunteer work, I'm 100-1000X more useful if I stay employed than if I just provide my direct skills for free.
Overall, all of my work is deeply and profoundly satisfying and not only would I do it for free if that made any fiscal sense, but if you offered me millions to retire today and never do my work again, I would turn you down.
I get that that experience with your recent contract has really illuminated something in you and helped you learn A LOT about yourself, your wants, needs, and plans in life. However, I maintain that you cannot generalize it to everyone. That is your particular experience with your particular career.
You simply cannot generalize that just because work is paid that is somehow has less value and that the reason that those of us love our paid jobs is solely because of the remuneration. It's not a matter of a scoring system, and it's not a matter of frivolous volunteering at yacht clubs either. It's a simple matter that some paid work is damn amazing and really really worth doing.