“Apply yourself..” Lee Iacocca
As fathers struggle to make ends meet and mothers struggle to bring up their families, you hear them longing for the day when they’ll have nothing to do.
“Ah Bob!” they say, “I long for the day when I can put my feet up…”
“And not put them down again!” completes the husband with a sigh.
Work does have a bad name in our world. But let me tell you there is something worse than work, and that’s boredom. At least that is what Drs. Kathryn Rost and G. Richard Smith of the University of Arkansas say: After analyzing the mental health of heart attack survivors, they concluded that one factor which greatly reduced the chances of depression was going back to work.
And why not? At work we are often around friends, and people with strong relationships will almost always fare better mentally. But we humans also need to be useful and productive!
Arthur Kroeger wrote in Quote magazine (August 1994) that his brother sometimes visited an Anabaptist colony in southern Alberta, Canada. During one visit he asked leaders how they dealt with the problem of misbehavior - when people rebelled against the colony's strict rules. He was told that these people were first asked to correct their behavior. If they did not respond, they would be given a stern "talking to."
"But what do you do when all else fails, when somebody stubbornly refuses to behave?" he pressed.
"Ah," came the reply, "if it comes to that, then we don't give him anything to do."
The ultimate punishment - don't give them any work! If that doesn't sound so bad, just ask those who are unemployed how they feel about not working....
It has been wisely said, "The Lord didn't burden us with work, but rather blessed us with it." We need to be busy and productive.
Whatever it is you do to make a living - be grateful. Those long hours and that feeling of exhaustion at the end of the day come from having something useful to do. Your work is a gift. You are blessed.
All of us like to say, one day
We’ll put our feet up and stay that way.
But have you ever thought my friend
That this way, you’ll bring your life to end
More quickly than it is meant to be
Without work keeping you happy?
So apply yourself, till your last day
That’s the best and only way..!
Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and author. He blogs at www.bobsbanter.com and can be reached at bobsbanter@gmail.com
