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Guest column

Labor days or work days? The decision is yours

By DOUGLAS SPANGLER
Published September 5, 2005

As many comedians have observed, Labor Day is something we celebrate by doing as little labor as we can. But it is also a day in which we can reflect on what laboring really is.

I think, perhaps, that there is a difference between labor and work. Those who don't like their jobs and struggle each day with the effort to even show up at work seem to be doing labor. Even the justice system uses the word "labor" when it imposes a jail sentence on someone. And many people who feel they labor every day instead of working must often feel they are sentenced to drudgery in their lives.

When those who hate their jobs have to serve the public, most of us can tell they detest what they are doing right away. Like those bumper stickers that say, "I'd rather be" fishing, golfing, flying, etc., we know the person whom we are coming in contact with would rather be doing anything other than being at work.

They wear a figurative sign around their necks that says to customers and clients, "I'm only doing this because I have to and you are interrupting my day."

These sad sacks can make our day miserable when we come in contact with them. It is a shame that the will and courage to break away and find work that they are happy in just doesn't seem to be in them, so we must suffer along with them through poor service, rudeness and general ineptitude.

Those who work, rather than labor, however, transfer their attitude to us. When I see someone in a retail store, a bank or other setting who obviously enjoys his or her job and acts accordingly, I often will tell the manager how impressed I am with the individual.

When given a choice between a robotlike clerk and a clerk who seems to really enjoy what he or she is doing, there is never any problem in choosing with whom I want to do business.

When I graduated from high school, our class motto was, "Nothing is impossible to a willing heart." I think that motto could well apply to how we look at work.

If we go to work every day looking forward to what we can do, the possibilities in our working world seem almost limitless. If we go to work every day in despair, hating nearly every minute, but not having any will or courage to change our situation, we are doing nothing but sentencing ourselves to a life of hard labor, just as surely as if a court decreed it.

My parents worked impossibly hard sometimes. In addition to their regular jobs, they helped run restaurants for other people. But I never heard my mother or father complain about how hard all of that work was. My mother, especially, reveled in the opportunity to come in contact with people and truly enjoyed serving them.

It seems to me they had willing hearts. Not too many things were really labor to them. It was all heartfelt work, and it was done for their family, for other people and for themselves.

Work is work. Labor is labor. It's up to us as to how to figure out which we want to do, all of our lives.

--Douglas Spangler, a writer and former university administrator, lives in Palm Harbor. Guest columnists write their own views on subjects they choose, which do no necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.

[Last modified September 5, 2005, 01:15:10]