Valuing all work

Valuing all work

"We honor life when we work. The type of work is not important: the fact of work is. All work feeds the soul if it is honest and done to the best of our abilities and if it brings joy to others."

-- Matthew Fox

What value do we unconsciously (or consciously) place on different kinds of work? How do we rank the status of different jobs? How much more do we value the big-paying jobs over others?

Just as we need to honour ourselves for doing what needs to be done, we can equally honour all others who look after life through their efforts, no matter what they may be. We can release judgment that assigns more importance to some occupations than others.

"Now in order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it -- not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of others for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it."

-- John Ruskin

Too much these days work and its worth are measured and judged by the pay packet received at the end of the week. Is rearing a child not work? How about tending a garden? Or singing to an elderly friend?

Work has come to mean something completely different. Before money, work was performed out of necessity (to fill the needs of ourselves and others) and/or pleasure. If a person is not paid to collect eggs does that mean that the necessity no longer exists, or the pleasure? No. If a person no longer collects eggs that their family relies on to feed them, then that has an impact. That is where the value of the work has always been.