#17 Reclaiming Labor
The shovel digs into the pile. After 27 pushes and lifts, abs and arm muscles working, the big wheelbarrow is full. It's enough to mulch five or six feet of path. Each trip, from the pile of wood chips in the parking lot, through the gate of the community garden, down the narrow path that separates the front flower bed from the vegetable plots, gets a few feet shorter. The November day is warm, the red of the setting sun shines in the windows of the houses along the street, each trip from a slightly different angle. The wood chips are fragrant. It takes about twenty loads in all (I wonder how many lifts of the shovel). By the end my muscles are protesting-but what a satisfying job!
The next week I read in the paper that, along with $48 for cell phones and $40 for cable TV, average monthly expenses for Americans now include $59 for gym membership. We work long hours to afford labor-saving devices on the one hand and gym memberships on the other, when real work is out there, waiting to be done.
I can imagine how wasteful my labor must have looked. Certainly some device, a fork lift-type automatic mulch spreader could have been invented (or maybe already has) to save my muscles all that hard work, so I could be privileged to use them at expensive specially-designed muscle work-out machines at the gym. (I remember a friend wondering how much better off we all would be if everybody got out every morning and swept the sidewalk in front of their house. We'd get the exercise, the fresh air, the experience of community, and free cleaning, all at the same time.)
A good carpet sweeper works as well as a vacuum cleaner but you have to put a little weight into it. A push lawn mower requires the push. Stirring a cake by hand does work that arm. An errand on foot or bicycle can get the heart pumping. Why have we decided that this is bad? How is it that our lives will go better if we exert less energy?
Somehow labor has gotten a bad rep-as something people do if they're not smart enough to work with their brains, or rich enough to avoid work at all. Throughout the ages greedy rulers, slave owners and industrialists have been-and still are-happy to use people up and throw them away. Long hours of hard physical work have worn people down, worn them out. Perhaps the experience of generations has worked its way into our psyches; our desire to be saved from labor has assumed mythical proportions.
Yet what are we being saved for? Theoretically we could conserve that energy and turn it to something that we care more deeply about. Some of us have chosen for exercise. So long as there is no smell of work, so long as it doesn't accomplish anything, we will exert to the utmost-run, lift weights, climb rock walls or mountains. Probably more of us are seduced by the societal message that relaxation is the ultimate goal, and end up squandering our saved energy in front of the TV or restlessly searching the malls and the internet for well-being.
Exertion and relaxation are two halves of one whole-and somehow we are being short-changed at both ends. Our culture is our enemy here; our labor-saving economy is enslaving us anew. It offers too few ways to exert our bodies that produce results that matter, too few forms of relaxation that provide true rest. I would choose to do more shoveling, pulling, lifting, sweeping and stirring-and more just sitting on the stoop watching the lighting bugs and welcoming the night.
Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 1/04
Others' thoughts on play:
Re making your own fun. Just walking down the street with my Deaf friend Mark is fun because he keeps looking around and commenting (with his hands) on the beautiful or interesting things he sees. He has had to stay indoors a lot of his life because of having a twisted leg, so he gets great joy out of walking down the street. Young children do that too, I guess.
For me, "connection" is the key concept. The way I think about it (and this is not new) is that what we perceive as the separateness of external reality is an illusion. Underlying this illusion is the deeper reality of Oneness. The more we mirror the underlying spiritual reality by finding authentic ways to connect with each other, we find more love, joy and peace because we are getting in touch with your real natures as spiritual beings. Now that's exciting.
My book of garden poems, "Garden Encounters" is available for $5 at 919 S. Farragut St., Philadelphia, PA 19143
The next week I read in the paper that, along with $48 for cell phones and $40 for cable TV, average monthly expenses for Americans now include $59 for gym membership. We work long hours to afford labor-saving devices on the one hand and gym memberships on the other, when real work is out there, waiting to be done.
I can imagine how wasteful my labor must have looked. Certainly some device, a fork lift-type automatic mulch spreader could have been invented (or maybe already has) to save my muscles all that hard work, so I could be privileged to use them at expensive specially-designed muscle work-out machines at the gym. (I remember a friend wondering how much better off we all would be if everybody got out every morning and swept the sidewalk in front of their house. We'd get the exercise, the fresh air, the experience of community, and free cleaning, all at the same time.)
A good carpet sweeper works as well as a vacuum cleaner but you have to put a little weight into it. A push lawn mower requires the push. Stirring a cake by hand does work that arm. An errand on foot or bicycle can get the heart pumping. Why have we decided that this is bad? How is it that our lives will go better if we exert less energy?
Somehow labor has gotten a bad rep-as something people do if they're not smart enough to work with their brains, or rich enough to avoid work at all. Throughout the ages greedy rulers, slave owners and industrialists have been-and still are-happy to use people up and throw them away. Long hours of hard physical work have worn people down, worn them out. Perhaps the experience of generations has worked its way into our psyches; our desire to be saved from labor has assumed mythical proportions.
Yet what are we being saved for? Theoretically we could conserve that energy and turn it to something that we care more deeply about. Some of us have chosen for exercise. So long as there is no smell of work, so long as it doesn't accomplish anything, we will exert to the utmost-run, lift weights, climb rock walls or mountains. Probably more of us are seduced by the societal message that relaxation is the ultimate goal, and end up squandering our saved energy in front of the TV or restlessly searching the malls and the internet for well-being.
Exertion and relaxation are two halves of one whole-and somehow we are being short-changed at both ends. Our culture is our enemy here; our labor-saving economy is enslaving us anew. It offers too few ways to exert our bodies that produce results that matter, too few forms of relaxation that provide true rest. I would choose to do more shoveling, pulling, lifting, sweeping and stirring-and more just sitting on the stoop watching the lighting bugs and welcoming the night.
Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 1/04
Others' thoughts on play:
Re making your own fun. Just walking down the street with my Deaf friend Mark is fun because he keeps looking around and commenting (with his hands) on the beautiful or interesting things he sees. He has had to stay indoors a lot of his life because of having a twisted leg, so he gets great joy out of walking down the street. Young children do that too, I guess.
For me, "connection" is the key concept. The way I think about it (and this is not new) is that what we perceive as the separateness of external reality is an illusion. Underlying this illusion is the deeper reality of Oneness. The more we mirror the underlying spiritual reality by finding authentic ways to connect with each other, we find more love, joy and peace because we are getting in touch with your real natures as spiritual beings. Now that's exciting.
My book of garden poems, "Garden Encounters" is available for $5 at 919 S. Farragut St., Philadelphia, PA 19143
posted by Pamela Haines | 6:05 PM
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