A price is paid for doing labor from the aches and pains of one's own backbone. This has been something I have thought for the length of my life. I didn't work in a office, I spent the majority of my working career doing hard labor at tearing old things down and building new things in their place. I was a worker who had to use brute strength, along with my clever mind, in order to accomplish my tasks. Over time and through the effects time has had on my body, I have been diminished to the point of not being a third the man I was at 20. It is to be expected that those of us who labor at hard work will suffer the indignity of being physically compromised when we reach our 50's and 60's. I chose this type of life work because it was "mans" work and I could do it. I also was rewarded by having the time in the sun since most of this work required me to be outdoors. I am proud of what I have accomplished throughout my career and as such I am well satisfied in my soul as to my contributions to our ever-increasing progressive society. Yet as age and time have taken it's toll on me I also hear the disparaging remarks about how my life choice of occupation somehow made me less that those who made more money in life. That somehow someone who sits in an air-conditioned office and moves money around for huge profit is more a "man" and a better human being for it. I can only shake my head at their logic for the truth of the measure of a man is not how much money he makes but in how his character is received by those people whose lives he has affected. In this I am satisfied as well.
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