The meaning of Labor Day, insofar as it means anything these days, is about kicking back, eating hotdogs, drinking beer, in general giving ourselves a “well- earned rest” from our labors. Something like that. Labor is the hard stuff and pleasure is its reward.
But there is a school of thought that argues that that’s backwards: labor is its own reward. Or should be. That in fact we are born for, our bodies and minds shaped for, work. For production rather than consumption. That work is more fun than fun.
In theory, anyway.
This is a controversial subject. Epicurus, an ancient Greek who is making a comeback, was more into the school of kicking back . We’re supposed to work to live, not live to work, according to the saying. For some time now we have called ourselves a “consumer society,” and no less an authority than George W. Bush himself said the most important thing we can do as citizens is go out and shop.
Being a Type -A workaholic is supposed to be bad for your health. And we know what all work and no play makes Jack.
But on the other hand. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi—don’t even try to pronounce that– a psychology professor says, and has research to back it up, that we are never happier than when in the “flow” (the name of his big book) of working at the right sort of work. You are so oblivious of the passage of time you don’t even remember to eat. Involved in such labor you would stop for a Labor Day cookout only when dragged by family, out of a sense of duty.
Of course, it depends on the sort of work. As Hamlet rhetorically asked, “who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life,” when he might give himself eternal rest through suicide? I know, right? Who wants to spend their days bearing fardels? (What’s fardel? I’m sure you’ve googled it by now. In Shakespeare, something so burdensome you’d rather be dead than have to tote them around all day.)
The key to work of the other kind is that it be creative. Creative work? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Creativity has come to sound almost the opposite of work, more like a hobby or play than work. But I mean “creative” not just in the sense of artistic, but in the more basic sense of coming up with something new under the sun, finding a needed solution to a problem. The better mousetrap. A cure for cancer.
Wellfleet’s L.D. Baker bringing bananas to a hitherto banana-less Cape Cod. Relieving suffering. Plotting the overthrow or reform of unjust government. Mixing the right shade of blue. Thinking a thought never thought before, the thinking of which might change the world.
Yes, the arts, but not all art. And not only the arts.
Even bearing fardels can be creative if the grunting and sweating is part of building a house you really want to build, preferably of your own design or at least one that will enhance the neighborhood, for yourself, your family or others you care about.
”Carrying coals to Newcastle” is the old saying for what creative labor is not.
And the great tragedy of life—one of them, anyway– is that such a large percentage of labor in so-called advanced civilization is such that it needs a Labor Day and as many holidays and as early retirement as possible. The sort that Marx called alienated. There’s probably less grunting and sweating these days of a service economy—we outsource a lot of the fardel-bearing these days. But the contemporary equivalent.
There’s a book– “Your Money or Your Life” by Joe Rodriquez–that provides thinking and strategies to help you get out from under one sort of work and maybe get in a position to find the other kind.
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