“Work is love made visible.” Kahil Gibran: The Prophet
Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894 and was started to honor workers and their contribution to society. Today I don’t believe the holiday does either. There are no workers held up for admiration, no work that is honored for its unselfishness and service.
Labor Day is just another third-class holiday that is an excuse for blow-out sales at the area mall. It is a paid holiday from the job, the beginning of the school year, the end of summer and the last day to wear white shoes this season.
I see little pride in a job well done; no admiration for being of service to others. Jobs are not advertised by the amount of satisfaction they offer or the possibilities of self-discovery or self-expression.
What is admired today is the job with a six-figure salary, medical benefits and the perks of the position. What good is it to have full medical coverage when your heart breaks a little more every time you walk through the door?
Work has become an exchange of time for money – I’ll give you mine if you give me yours. At the end of life, how many people would exchange another day or another hour, for a million dollars? Time is not money; time is priceless and should not be spent unless there is devotion with it.
Labor Day honors all the working stiffs who work to support their family, who miss birthdays and Little League games to keep their jobs, who save a little every paycheck to take enjoy a retirement they might never see.
Labor Day not only honors the workers it also respects the work itself. To work is to serve others – no matter whether you are a CEO or waitress, a million-dollar athlete or computer technician, the work you do is worthy of respect.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “If you are called to be a street sweeper, you should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.” In doing so, you bring honor to the work and dignity to yourself.
There is the maxim that if you do what you love, the money will follow. And it will, but not always right away, and not always the way you expect it. If you cannot work with love, love what you are working at. That love will open doors for you that you didn’t know existed.
One of the tenets of Buddhism in living the good life is to have right livelihood- that the work you pursue does no harm to others and hopefully, gives something back to life.
Just as we want our contributions to be recognized and our jobs respected, we need to honor and respect all those anonymous people who go to work every day to make the world keep spinning around.
Christmas has Santa, Easter has the bunny, Halloween has t its pumpkins. If there was a symbol for Labor Day what would it be? A lunch bucket, a W-2 form, a broom …?
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