For the love of work

Two friends have not met each other for twenty years. Then one day, they crossed their path in one of the busy malls. After a bit of small talk, one asked, "How are your four sons? What are they doing now?"

"Well, the eldest," the father reported proudly, "has a brilliant legal mind. He is working in a judge’s office, getting experience. The pay is low, but the training will get him to the top some day.

"My second son is an engineer," the father continued. "You should see the buildings that he has designed. He’s working for the government now. But one day, he’ll strike it rich. As for my third son, he is going to be a famous doctor. He’s still training and we have to support him, but that will all change in the near future."

The father did not seem anxious to finish his story, so his friend reminded him. "What about your youngest son?" The embarrassed father said, "Oh, him. Well, after high school, he got a job as a security officer and he now makes twenty thousand a month. But what kind of profession is that for a son of mine?"

Then, the father admitted, "But if it were not for him, the rest of us would be starving to death."

"The world is full of willing people," Robert Frost once said, "some willing to work, the rest willing to let them." All of us are commanded to work; no one is spared from doing so. Henry Ward Beecher reminds, "When God wanted sponges and oysters, He made them and put one on a rock and the other in the mud. When He made man, He did not make him to be a sponge or an oyster; He made him with feet and hands, and head and heart, and vital blood, and a place to use them, and He said to him, ‘Go Work.’"

As such, all of us have to work. Although there are people who work hard, there are also those who are hardly working. But who among them is really working? Thomas A. Edison teaches, "Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing."

I admit that I love what I am doing. Imagine yourself talking and meeting some of the famous people here and abroad. Not only that, people read and react to what I write. Another plus factor: traveling around the world. In addition, I can do my hobby: photography.

What did former Hollywood heartthrob and successful actor, producer and director Warren Beatty say? "You’ve achieved success in your field," he said, "when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play."

Whatever you do, love it. Not because you get salary, bonus, or other incentives, but because you have done something not only for your family but the people whom you meet along the way.

I am reminded of the words of Hollywood actor Jim Carrey. He said, "There’s a time when you have to separate yourself from what other people expect of you, and do what you love. Because if you find yourself 50 years old and you aren’t doing what you love, then what’s the point?"

"Work is love made visible," said Kahlil Gibran. "And if you can’t work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of the people who work with joy."

Remember the words of Brutus Hamilton: "It is one of the strange ironies of this strange life (that) those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the strictest discipline, who give up certain pleasurable things in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest people."

John Ruskin suggested, "In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it."

Take time to relax also. Remember the saying, "All work and no play makes a person lazy"? Carisa Biachi wrote, "You can always find reasons to work. There will always be one more thing to do. But when people don’t take time out, they stop being productive. They stop being happy, and that affects the morale of everyone around them."

And so it came to pass that a grain of wheat came to the Lord God and said, "Lord of the world, since I have become the daily bread of mankind, why couldn’t you have me such that they could eat me the way I am? As it is, they must first plant me, harvest then grind me into flour which they must then make into dough, and finally bake me in an oven. Isn’t that all really a waste of time?"

"No," the Lord answered, "it is not a waste of time. On the contrary, I did it that way on purpose both for your own good and for the good of humanity."

The wheat wondered. "Let’s talk about you first," the Lord said. "It wouldn’t be good for you to go around boasting that you give men life and strength, all by yourself. As it is, human beings cannot just pick up grains of wheat and eat them unless they first turn them into bread. And to do that they need fire and water and their hands. And so bread does not depend on your alone; otherwise, you would go around proudly announcing that if it were not for you, no one would be fed."

The wheat nodded. "As far as people are concerned," the Lord explained, "it would not be good for them to find their bread all ready for them on the breakfast table. Instead, they have to be involved in producing it. They have to plow and sow and harvest and grind the wheat and then bake it into bread. That does them good: it makes them feel that they are dependent on Me."

"Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted," David Bly puts it plainly.