How much do you love summer? A lot? Or even more? Yeah, me too. It doesn’t get much better than sitting on your butt, drinking coffee in the morning, wearing shorts or less, and watching about 10,000 different species of woodpeckers devour a block of suet hanging from the deck.
Oh, these lazy Labor Day weekends. But have you ever stopped to think about how odd it is that those of us with day jobs, and that includes me, celebrate this holiday by not going to work? Ironic, and I’m fairly sure I’m using the term here in a way that is faithful to its definition. I like it, both the day off and the irony.
Why, though, do we value work beyond its remunerative potential? Why does it carry a moral currency? I blame the ists.
Yes, the ists. First the feudalists, and then the capitalists, have given us and then reinforced stories threatening you, Mx. Everyday Jane, with eternal damnation if you shirked your duty to make them money. That the mores extended to the self-employed was systemically unavoidable and accidental.
So enjoy sitting and watching the birds today, while they’re still here, for tomorrow you will once again plug into the machine lurching toward global devastation rather than merely slouching toward Bethlehem (thanks, Yeats). And on this cheerful note I will bid you adieu for now because I have birds to watch.
Image credit: DaPuglet (Tina) under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0 license.
