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April 28, 2008
a working hypothesis
Shelliz' entry 'The Golden Rule', took me back in time.
She tells of a boy facing the following command on the school wall: 'We must work hard at all times'. And suddenly I was struggling for the similar German phrase, 'Arbeit macht frei', which roughly translated means 'Work shall make you free'. It was the encouragement famously placed at the entrance of Nazi concentration camps like Aushwitz, Dachau, Gross-Rosen and Sachsenhausen.
It's not that work is bad. Indeed, the discipline of work is entirely good for us. But it only has meaning in as much as there is something beneath it; in as much as we pratice the work beneath the work.
What is that? The work beneath the work, is the work towards self-awareness, and our true selves. This is both our truest work and our hardest work - but if present, gives all other work wonderful meaning. If it is not present, then the work we do is neither good nor bad - just robotic; just unexamined compulsion.
And in the meantime, we will remember GK Chesterton's wise reminder that 'if something is worth doing, it is worth not doing.' No particular work should ever become a god. If a work consumes us, it is only because we don't know who we are.
Posted by Mr Bojangles at April 28, 2008 10:52 AM