Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. Maya Angelou
All happiness depends on courage and work. Honoré de Balzac
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you. Leo Tolstoy
Work without love is slavery. Mother Teresa
The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity. George Carlin
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done. Alan Turing
People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. Frederick Douglass
I’ve written on many Labor Days about our growing labor pains, the consolidation of economic power and the alienation of too many people from labor itself but also from the laborers who, in some real sense, both define and sustain their lives.
In reviewing quotations for this piece, I found many more sentimental than relevant – quotes rightly extolling the dignity of work while attempting to convince the reader to find and pursue passions, or locate better work-life balances, whatever that might mean. A bit of that sentiment is reflected in this post.
I have no particular axe to grind regarding these aforementioned bits of labor advice, except to remind ourselves of a few things – that we often don’t honor labor or even seek to understand the connections between those who sweat and grind out a living and the lifestyles those people make possible. Nor are we entirely mindful of the degree to which “following passions” is literally not on the radar of so many of our fellow citizens, domestically and globally. Many people simply need jobs. They have mouths to feed. And the jobs they find are too often conveyor belts to uncertainty and on-the-edge living. Passion is an indulgence, important for those who are privileged enough to pursue it let alone attain it, but it is also a pursuit which does not always lend itself to more general solidarity with those who preserve the social and physical infrastructure which makes our individual pursuits possible.
And then there is this matter of balance. We are all familiar with the “live to work, work to live” dichotomy, but perhaps are less conscious of the social and economic requirements of whatever balance is to be achieved.
One key ingredient would seem to be time. Time to do something special with your family. Time to give your aching back some relief. Time to cultivate a hobby that doesn’t involve television or twitter. Time to plant a tree, or paint a fence, or share a bit of neighborliness. Time to be what most people’s jobs do not allow them to be, a human in a broader and more satisfying sense, with time to look around and behold all the things people have missed while they’re serving up Happy Meals or cleaning out other people’s gutters.
I am overly blessed with the wherewithal and even more the time to “cease my work and look around me.” I am sitting in a Manhattan apartment (such as it is), eating an apple, drinking my sorry excuse for coffee, and contemplating labor-related issues on a federal holiday. But my privilege is shared by relatively few others. Today, the shopping malls and most local stores are open. Police and First Responders are on call. Public transportation is operating and will shortly gear up even more as fortunate folks return to their homes from mountains and beaches. Teachers are frantically finalizing lesson plans as school is set to resume tomorrow, if it hasn’t already. Immigrants remain on the harvest while dodging the masked bounty hunters seeking to further decimate agricultural workers and their families.
Labor Day weekend is a chance for some to “withdraw from the cares of the world.” For others, it’s merely another day of living on the edge.
Our US president, on whom skeptical eyes are and will remain locked, sent out a Labor Day message which says so much – about him of course, but also about our diminishing responsibilities to each other’s well-being. “Too many non-working holidays in America,” he rants. “Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. It must change if we are going to make America great again.”
What “must change” in my humble view is our relationship to labor and to those who perform the tasks that the rest of us cannot – and apparently don’t wish to – live without. How can we ignore that people need a livable return from their labor which would allow their families at least a modicum of economic security. People need dependable, accessible health care. People need protection from ICE and other government entities which have swapped out “the worst of the worst” with indiscriminate and cruel quotas. On this Labor Day, too many workers have none of this. Yet again.
All people need a break in their routine, a break to take their children on an outing, restore their eyes and muscles, throw a fishing line into a lake, fix their leaky faucet, see a doctor. In this country and others, there is so much work to be done if we are to spread prosperity and honor our creeds. There is so much work to be done if we are to take care of our soldiers, farmers and teachers, or care for those elderly and disabled cast aside by self-satisfied, compromised politicians. Especially now. Especially in these conditions.
But people also need more unencumbered time and likely more respect as well. The problem here is not our number of holidays of which, if anything, we probably have too few. The problem is more that we have willfully segregated ourselves and especially our consumption patterns from many of the people whose labor makes those patterns possible, people particularly in need of healing and rest with their loved ones but for whom Labor Day is just another day.
This is a problem which it is within our competence to fix and today would be an appropriate time to head in that direction.
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