On Labor Day

Without work there is no call to play.  Yet the old proverb says, "All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy."  So balance.  Balance is the key.  Work, play each in equal measure.  You can pray for a job to be done, but "Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers", says Robert Green Ingersoll.  You can accept nature, but you must learn to work with it.  To create you must take the natural form and work with it until it is pleasing.  And that is not to say, abuse nature.  Nature must be respected.  Nature must be conserved.

Leonardo da Vinci said, "God sells us all things at the price of labor."  Even fun must be worked for, earned.  That is something I wonder about these days as I see so many folks who feel so entitled to things and as thought they should not have to work for them.  A holiday like Labor Day must have little meaning for them.

"Without labor, nothing prospers."  So says philospher Sophocles.  One could apply this to the current situation in Washington D.C.  You need to work.  You need to honor work.  Labor leads to prosperity for sure.  Getting stuck in working against something rather than toward something defeats the purpose.

On this Labor Day 2011 I think about my father and my grandfather,  my mother and my grandmother and the generations who came before me.  They worked hard.  And then they played hard.  The earned it.  They put something together that became a model for me.  The Puritan Ethic is harsh.  It does not need to be that difficult.  Whatever you do, though, do the best job you can.  That is the meaning of Labor Day.  

Happy Labor Day.