Men used to work hard. Your great-grandfather knew this with great certainty. He used to work up a sweat pounding steel in the mills. He hauled lumber, picked cotton, worked in machinery or shoveled coal. This was the reality of a manual-labor economy. It was hard work, and it left these men with mangled hands and ruptured spinal columns.
Looking back, we idolize those men. They were tough men. We respect them for their work ethic and their ability to endure. For those men, working hard meant producing more... and producing more was the best way to put food on the table.
Those days are over. Today, almost half of the United States workforce sits at a desk. Replacing the empty Arrowhead bottle on the cooler is now the only heavy-lifting required at most jobs.
So, are you still working hard?
What is the new definition for working hard?
It's not putting in more hours. Everybody puts in long hours and working weekends.
The answer is working harder mentally. Being innovative at work is the new hard work. Not accepting the status quo. In today's world, standing out and risking failure and rejection is the way to Be A Man Now.
I completely agree. I remember watching both my father and grandfather work hard in their lives. My father laying brick, construction, carpentry and factory work. My grandfather working hard in his garden (which he really used for food and not fun) and also construction and factory work. My grandfather was also a military man who fascinated me with his stories of war in Africa and Europe.
ReplyDeleteThose were men..Unfortunately, many of those kind of men are gone, replaced my a mental labor you mention.
Although not a man myself, I see this mental kind of labor in what I do everyday. These are long hours, without a defined time to start or end, but the work ethic I have comes from the men in my life, who taught me the value of hard work and pride in what I do.
Thanks for the post!