Sometimes, even Hollywood actors can produce words of wisdom.
Speaking on Today earlier this year, actor Ben Affleck said it is important to teach children the value of work.
As Us magazine reported, Affleck recounted how his 13-year-old son asked him for a pair of $6,000 sneakers. “He was like, ‘We have the money,’” the magazine reported the actor saying. “I was like, ‘I have the money! You’re broke.’” He told the show’s host that parents do a disservice if they don’t make kids work for things.
Affleck said he told his son, “If you want that, you can work 1,000 hours. You know what I mean? Minimum wage. And once you work 1,000 hours, you may not want to spend that on a pair of sneakers.”
Labor Day may have lost its original meaning for a lot of people. It has come to symbolize the end of summer, the last moment of fun before school, work schedules and the cool air of fall interfere with life.
Dignity of work
The barbecues and parties of the day are appropriate and fun. But, at its best, the day should symbolize the value and dignity of work — a key to any nation’s greatness.
Originally, in the late 19th century, the day had more to do with workers fighting for humane conditions. That was a time when people toiled 12 or more hours every day of the week to subsist. Even children were forced to work under unsafe conditions. The United States, like many other nations of the world, was experiencing a rapid transformation from agrarian to industrial labor. Often, that adjustment was brutal.
Teaching the value of hard work was not a problem back then. Teaching shop owners the value of human dignity was the issue.
Today, by contrast, the United States is blessed with a low, 4.2% unemployment rate. Generally speaking, jobs are plentiful. Americans need to show more gratitude for that, and for the memory of ancestors who labored hard to usher in better times.
Quiet quitting
A few years ago, the term “quiet quitting” became popular in some circles. This describes an attitude of doing the bare minimum to complete a job or task, and of mentally disengaging from work. This tends to follow the perception that one’s ideas are devalued or ignored, and that one’s contributions are unimportant. Perhaps, some workers wish they were promoted to a more important position.
But contrast this attitude with these words from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’”
Work has value in that it allows people to live independently and to provide for their needs and those of loved ones. But dignity is acquired by the way we work and by the value we provide, even if working conditions are less than ideal or if a job title doesn’t meet expectations.
Few people would look at someone “quietly quitting” and think, “That person must have an awful boss.” The quality of work rendered reflects solely upon the person giving it. People serving in less-than-ideal jobs should quietly search for something else while outwardly demonstrating the qualities of a person with self-respect.
Mental health and self-esteem
Studies have shown that unemployment leads to mental health and self-esteem problems. By the same token, obtaining money without having earned it leads to trouble, as well.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Russian dissident and author who was highly critical of the Soviet Union, said, “Easy money had no weight: you didn’t feel you’d earned it. What you get for a song you won’t have for long, the old folks used to say, and they were right.”
Or, as Ben Affleck told his son, if you work hard for something, you may end up valuing it differently.