When I was about ten, I was tasked with the project of weeding the beds of my dad's office. It was hot, dirty and boring work. This was pre-Walkman, so I had nothing to keep me occupied other than the task at hand and the musings of my 10 year old brain. For about three weeks, I rode my bicycle 2 miles to his office and sweated in the beds under a hot Texas sun until I had removed every last weed. I got paid and went home.
My dad told me that hard work was good for me. My ten year old brain struggled mightily with this assertion. I was a good student and unchallenged but diligent in my schoolwork. I was also an avid skateboarder, bicyclist and model builder. All of these activities required focus, dedication and effort - ingredients I understood to be elements of "hard work." Somehow weeding beds seemed to have a different character.
The protestant work ethos under which I was raised preached that hard work was reward enough in itself. Sustained, difficult effort was believed to be a balm for the soul and a key to a successful life. Pain, whether physical or mental, would bless the activity with heightened spiritual benefit. At 46, this lesson appears more nuanced than first explained.
As a father, I wrestle both with the concept and how to teach it. I believe that I know that one element of success is the ability to focus and apply full faculties towards accomplishing a goal. In my mind, this concept is self-discipline coupled with presence because I want to see more than unfocused hard work, even if the work is well-done. The challenge comes when presence or self-awareness introduces into the dialog a strong sense of dislike of the underlying activity. At that point, we are forced, as decision makers for ourselves or our children, to scrutinize the underlying rationale for the activity.
As adults, we do things for a variety of reasons, although for many, the underlying drive is unexamined. Like soldiers after boot camp, we "take the hill" if instructed to do so by bosses, spouses, parents, politicians or a whole host of other influence peddlers. In our consumption patterns, marketers have developed a science around getting people to take unexamined action and as Americans, we consume wantonly.
We don't stop to ask the question because we have been taught not to. For most children, parents and teachers and other role models instill "inner drive" by repetition and control. Remember that father knows best. My children do not like to brush their teeth and would eat three solid meals of junk food a day if my wife and I so permitted. It is clearly in both of their interests to learn good physical hygiene and eating habits and so we remind them, several times a day, to brush their teeth and remove the junk food temptation by not having it around. Other choices, which involve less direct correlation between actor and benefit, are more difficult.
Once we have grown up and learned good study habits, self-discipline and control, we are free to set off into the world to makes choices and write the script of our life. Left to natural development with thoughtful guidance, cause and effect will teach a child these lessons and also develop a strong sense of personal goals and desires. If these lessons are over-taught, however, the process produces adults who make unexamined choices based on an imposed rather than developed belief system.
My dad, as owner of a commercial building, had a strong desire to present a well-coiffed environment. Whose lot are you weeding?
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