I work therefore I am
I'M not sure how it was that as three young girls we came to be marching around the living room chanting, "Lucky, lucky, lucky me! I'm a lucky son of a gun. I work eight hours, I sleep eight hours and have eight hours for fun." Looking back, it seems an odd choice for a children's song. With the singing came our questions, of course, about how one could really be "the son of a gun". And with the song also came discussion about the ideal balance of work, rest and play.
SIDRA KRANZ MOSHINSKY
I’M not sure how it was that as three young girls we came to be marching around the living room chanting, “Lucky, lucky, lucky me! I’m a lucky son of a gun. I work eight hours, I sleep eight hours and have eight hours for fun.” Looking back, it seems an odd choice for a children’s song. With the singing came our questions, of course, about how one could really be “the son of a gun”. And with the song also came discussion about the ideal balance of work, rest and play.These days I count myself lucky. I might not quite manage eight hours sleep, only notionally work eight hours a day, and would not necessarily consider the remains of the day — with the cooking, the driving, the many mundane chores — to be fun. Nevertheless, I have a sense of gratitude for the fullness of my life and that much of my energy is directed towards purposeful activity. Work is central to our lives. Whether paid or voluntary, undertaken in the workplace or in the home, the activity of work gives direction to life. Work involves directing physical or mental efforts towards the accomplishment of a goal.
In this sense, it is inherently different from being busy, which social commentator Hugh Mackay views as something of an epidemic afflicting 21st-century Australia wherein, people race around in “a desperate, dizzy dance” in an effort to distract themselves from the important things in life. Work has a focus that extends beyond the activity itself. Even if it is stressful or gruelling, work brings returns in terms of income (or non-monetary reward) and goals achieved, while also providing structure to days, weeks and years. For many, work serves as an important source of meaning.
To be of working age, with a desire to work, yet unable to obtain any or enough employment, gives rise to a myriad of financial, social and psychological problems. The Global Financial Crisis -— a quick and sanitised term for a devastating chain of events that is having an impact on lives everywhere — has already had a marked impact on Australia’s unemployment rates, with worse predicted. While the official rate released last week of 5.7 per cent was not as bad as anticipated, when combined with the numbers of under-employed (workers forced to work fewer hours), we get an under-utilisation rate of more than 13 per cent. In real numbers, 58,000 Australians have lost their jobs and 210,000 have had their hours and wages reduced.
Stories of hardship are emerging, as individuals and families adjust from a life of plenty to one of barely making do. With this transition can come difficult financial sacrifices, the selling of a beloved family home, social isolation, humiliation and despair. Of particular concern are young people. While official statistics put youth unemployment at 14 per cent, the real figure is believed to be closer to 22 per cent, even 40 per cent in some parts of the country. This means 300,000 young people have nothing to do, living in a grey zone between school and work. To be unemployed at this critical stage of life can have a long-term, even permanent, impact on a person’s future because youth is the key time for making career choices, gaining skills and experiencing independence.
Where I work, year 10 students are about to embark on a week of work experience, an opportunity to see firsthand what is involved in professional work and to picture an imagined future. The Torah’s creation story provides the model for the working week, with God bringing life into being on six days and providing a space for holy time on the seventh. The notion of Shabbat, a day of rest, is believed to be a Jewish innovation. Underpinning these laws is a firm work ethic in which providing through “the sweat of one’s brow” is central to the human condition. Pursuing the right kind of work has the potential to bring God into the world. Idleness is seen as a dangerous state and handouts potentially soul-destroying.
Centuries before discussion about welfare mentality, Maimonides wrote that providing a person with the means to be independent, through a loan or providing employment, is the highest form of charity. Let’s hope the Government’s various stimulus measures manage to cushion some of the impact.
Sidra Kranz Moshinsky is a teacher and freelance writer.
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