What gain have the workers from their toil?

-
Mennonite Heritage Museum
“What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil (Ecclesiastes 3: 9-13).”

Ecclesiastes’ author (the preacher? philosopher? son of David? all three?) expends a lot of ink in the early chapters to make the point that work as hard as we might, death can make of it all a big disappointment. I’m reminded of the abandoned, collapsing fences and barns we see beside the roads and highways of Saskatchewan; people once toiled to build what were proudly erect edifices that are now nothing but nuisances to be left to decay or be ripped up and discarded. The philosopher characterizes all this labour as vanity, as a chasing of the wind.

This week we buried a friend who “took pleasure in all his toil.” Jim was the kind of guy who could build model airplanes using mainly found materials, find a way to attach a camera and take aerial photos of the community . . . long before drones. He could build a metal lathe, meticulously machining all the gears and chisels and slides and wheels to precise tolerances. He could fix virtually anything, could build a house including all the plumbing and wiring.

As museum curator, I’ve set myself the task of memorializing some of the inventive achievements of Jim’s life, a life which the preacher might have characterized as vanity if he had been there to witness his spent body being lowered into the cold ground. I doubt that Jim ever read and pondered Ecclesiastes at any depth; Jim was dyslexic, had a hard time wrestling meaning from the written word. But understanding the mechanical, including the mathematical calculations and calibrations necessary to do the mechanical or the electrical, these things he aced and from this “toil,” took a goodly measure of happiness.

Henry David Thoreau said, “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.” It’s an Ecclesiastes-like comment, and probably valid. But neither Thoreau nor the preacher end with “that’s just the way it is.” Thoreau found happiness in simplicity and a bonding with the natural world; the preacher who wrote Ecclesiastes found his contentment in the inevitable goodness of God. Neither conceded that quiet desperation and vanity are the governing principles of a short life lived. “. . . it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil,” says the preacher.

To toil at work that provides satisfaction is never vanity, even if in the end that toil goes unrecognized, its “product” abused or unappreciated. It’s a gift that blesses its recipient’s short life. To determine to change the world is one thing, but to denigrate the gift that gives pleasure may be just plain stupid. Isaiah 22:13: “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die.” It’s not license for self-indulgence, more a cry for balance, more of an antidote to the dieting maxim, “If it tastes good, spit it out!”

All who are obliged for survival to do mundane, mind-numbing work should probably take a page from Jim’s manual: take up art, grow a garden, build a model train landscape, felt an owl, buy a horse and learn to ride, swim the English channel, refinish a very old table, cook and bake food that schmecks. Then enjoy what you’ve accomplished.

Or build a metal lathe from found material. Goodbye, Jim . . . and thanks.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Democracy or bust

-
Image
  Politics . You can tell how people relate to this word by the way they use it. “I’m not much interested in politics,” for instance, equates it with the day-to-day news about our current government, elections, party dynamics, etc. A narrow definition.                By whatever word we use, it’s clear that the setting and enforcing of the principles under which we form community—and function as community—existed before the word was coined. In families, in schools, in workplaces, on the roads, in the economy, the making and respecting of agreed-to behavioural expectations in a community is the necessary defense against chaos.                How behavioural expectations come to be, how they are altered, how they are enforced … and most importantly by whose authority … is fundamental. The “benevolent dictator” model has a long history: give...
Read more

Do I dare eat a peach?

-
Image
  All the talk of Joe Biden’s unfitness for the position of president of the USA must have others of his age—80 plus—wondering about their own fitness. Most of us octogenarians are well aware of our physical limitations, I think, but mentally? How can I know, for instance, if the lines I’m writing are logically sound, or if they fall somewhere between inane and gibberish? How can I know if my diminished capacity can be trusted to make such a judgment? And what if my friends are too kind to tell me when to close my laptop? Hearing an aging loved one tell the same stories to the same people every day has the able-minded nodding knowingly and cluckingly (that’s a word, isn’t it?). We’re obviously too kind and too hip not to know that people experiencing obvious dementia deserve to be “handled with care,” and we’ve devised places and strategies to preserve for them whatever dignity is still possible. But it’s not dissimilar from the pain-relieving, ointment applying, chair-exercisin...
Read more

Stories We Live By

-
Image
  David Brooks, writer, philosopher and journalist, said in a recent speech to the Aspen Ideas gathering that the current divisive, belligerent mood among the people of earth can’t be attributed to our real-life situations. We have space, food, water, shelter, healthcare enough for everyone, and more. We don’t fight because we need to, he said, but because we carry stories in our heads to which we respond. It's clear that he doesn’t mean story in the same way I meant it when I published a collection of short stories , but there’s something to be gained in connecting the two, particularly when behaviour is guided by, for instance, The Holy Bible , or the Quran , each telling a story by which adherents understand life and by which their actions are governed. Scientists, as a rule, act according to a very different story of life, their exploration guided very much by the saga of evolving nature and the incontrovertible principles that govern all things. Our stories —I think Broo...
Read more