It is what millions of Americans are searching for and can't find. It fuels their pocketbooks and sense of purpose.
What is work? It is what people do to earn a living and also make a life. It is making objects move to achieve an end -- such as a pen to write a check or keep a set of books or fill out an order blank. A lawnmower to cut a lawn, a paintbrush to paint a house. Work is energy harnessed and by it, a small portion of the world is shaped or reshaped. It is why the vast majority of people feel such a great sense of satisfaction when they do it.
The workplace has changed. People in my grandfather's time were largely rural and serviced their farms and in the small towns people serviced people they knew. Today, people service a host of people they never know and quite often will never see again.
It is why the average worker stays at one job for no more than three to five years. There is a lack of loyalty on both sides of the fence. It is why job security has become a myth. It is why when I hear the politicians on both sides of the political fence pontificate about easy solutions to employment problems, I shake my head.
Do I have any solutions? Yes. My father managed a drug store all his life and I remember something he told me early on and more than once, " A happy worker is a good worker so I work hard at making my employees feel important. I need them and I tell them so." Elementary my dear Watson, but not so for many bosses.
The happiness factor is harder to find in some jobs and indeed close to impossible in some instances. Nevertheless it is good to be reminded that whatever a man or woman does for a living: "The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
And then there is the shaping of the child when it comes to labor, for yes, things have changed since I in my growing up years was given chores to do and expected nothing less. It was the same with my boyhood friends. Maybe we'd have more good workers these days if as youngsters they had learned how to do jobs around the house and do them right.
There is an amusing little tale that comes to my mind that has both morality and wisdom in it.
There was a little sparrow lying in the middle of a road with his feet sticking straight up. A man came by and asked him, "Are you dead?"
“No" replied the sparrow, "It is just that I have heard the sky is going to fall in and I am just getting ready to do my part in holding it up."
In short, whatever labor we do at whatever stage of life we find ourselves in, we need to do it well and to the best of our ability. To hold up our part.
Sometimes being laborless because we need the rest and sometimes working hard at whatever our task is because the world needs us at our best; therein is what Labor Day should be all about.