My work is Important!!

   

Remember Napoleon? Once, during his travels, he came to a river with a small bridge. It was so narrow, that only one way traffic was possible. Just then, a man with a huge sack on his back started crossing the bridge from the other side. Napoleon’s soldiers obviously shouted at him to stop, so as to let the emperor pass first. But Napoleon stopped them. He believed in dignity of labor and let the man cross the bridge first! No wonder, this simple boy from an average background went on to become the emperor of France!

  This happened in France, about 200 years ago. But why go so far! We have our own father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, who was an avid proponent of dignity of labor. He would clean toilets, cut vegetables and wash his own clothes. Nobel peace prize winner Martin Luther King followed this philosophy and practiced it.

  All these great men had this one thing in common, they respected work! No work was too lowly for them.

  It’s not that we do not appreciate all this! We really do! But we still crave for white collared jobs. We judge a person as superior or inferior according to the type of work he or she does. We prefer unemployment to menial work. Just because someone has decided that these jobs are below someone’s dignity, we shun them. Don’t you think, we need to change this mindset?  Imagine the chaos that would ensue if the traffic police went on a mass leave, or if nobody picked up the garbage for a week! Isn’t it time we started appreciating every job? Are we to understand the importance of things only when the concerned workers go on a strike?

   Unless we take pride in whatever we do, we can’t do a good job and we cannot get work satisfaction either. The one thing that struck me about the western world was the way a sweeper or a waiter goes about his or her work. They do not hesitate to haul up even their superiors if they are spoiling their work! The confidence and the smile on their faces says it all!

   So my young friends, why don’t we start right at home and wash our dinner plates, clean the toilets once in a while or clean that cat litter!