Unto Others
Why do you work?
Maybe you just feel you have to: working is the only way to get the necessary means to pay the bills. Perhaps you work to get the things you want, the nice house, the better car, the dream holiday. Work is a way of achieving our dreams, our goals. It might not be much fun, but it gets what we want.
But are there any other reasons to work? Is work actually meaningful in its own right?
Work has been a much maligned aspect of human living for a very long time. Ancient Greeks believed work was a punishment from the gods because humans stole fire, and Pandora opened her jar and let out all the problems we have had ever since, including hard work. Later, the Greeks came up with another idea: people had to work to keep their bodies alive, but real living was an aspect of the mind, which was much superior to the mere body. So work was relegated to women and slaves, and real men found the time to debate politics and philosophy and other important aspects of the mind. The medieval church accepted these Greek ideas, and on the basis of reading the Genesis account of the first human disobedience decided work was a curse and punishment for sin: men had to work in the “sweat of their brows” and women had to “bear children in pain”.
So, we work of necessity, to get what we want.
But the truth is work is one of the three gifts God originally gave humans. Humans were given marriage, a day to celebrate with God each week, and yes, work. (See Genesis chapters one and two.) Work offers remarkable opportunities for connecting with other people. Instead of slaving away at boring occupations to achieve a few weeks’ worth of a dream holiday, let’s see what boring work itself really offers. We’ll check out a few examples: a bus driver, a supermarket checkout assistant, a builder, and a nurse.
There is no doubt that bus driving takes skill. Negotiating traffic in all conditions, coping with a large machine on crowded roads, and encountering people of all types and ages is no mean feat. But is it an exciting, well paid job? Probably not by most standards. But a bus driver has unparalleled opportunities for meeting people, and making lives more pleasant. He or she can let an elderly woman off closer to her home, can offer cheerful chat to teenagers that regularly travel home from school, and assist the young mother struggling with a toddler and a baby in a pram. Bus driving is an essential people-interacting activity.
The person at the supermarket checkout can mutter “have a nice day” platitudes to their endless stream of customers, or they can recognize their unparalleled opportunity to discover what other people eat, what they wear, what they look like, and how they behave! They can share experience (like the woman who told me where to buy vegetarian cheese), or notice needs (like the assistant who took time out to clean and make serviceable my non-functioning loyalty card). When their work becomes people focussed, it is a lot more fun.
Building is an essential function in any civilized community. It is creative and imaginative, but also physically hard work. Yes, there are builders who are just focussed on their dream holiday, who use the cheapest materials that are lucky to survive till their 5-year warranty expires, and who still charge the best prices. But what everyone wants is a builder who understand needs, who uses quality materials, and who listens to what the client wants. Those builders make people happy, and it is no surprise they are then happy themselves.
And the nurse? Well a nurse can simply fill in a good report, and hand out medications. Or they can care, see needs, and make sick people better. We all easily recognize the difference between a good and a bad nurse.
So, why do we work? Work, instead of being drudgery, a means to achieving our dreams, when approached from a people perspective becomes the fantastic opportunity we are all given to do unto others what we would like done to ourselves. We become one of the greatest treasures on earth: we become a blessing.
The choice is yours!
