Is hard work really that incredible?
A soft look at hard work
Once upon a time in a European town, a bald, stout potter, his wife and 2 kids sit slaving away in their pot shop. It’s a tough job. They have to procure clay, bring that over in their bullock cart, prepare it and finish up shaped clay. Endless drudgery.
The potter hates this. He has built up so much resistance to this whole process, that he pushes himself each day physically and mentally to make the same looking pots. He feels worse in the winters because keeping motivated is just that much harder.
But his wife, well she loves it. She dreams of making beautiful pieces of pots. She keeps sketching and experimenting whenever she can. She goes around and looks at other pot stores only to find the same dreary looking brown pots with similar patterns. “Why don’t these idiots do anything new?” is all she can think about. Unlike her husband who is completely tired and frustrated by the evening, she keeps slaving away for longer. She never has an off day. With grit and interest, she discovers paints, patterns, shapes to finish off her creations. There are multiple failures along the way - wasted clay, shapes that break easily, paint that comes off at first contact. But then she keeps at it. She gets better. Her incredible creations start fetching better prices.
Same family, same profession.
Husband and wife both work hard. But do they really?
I’m sure you’re getting the gist of what this story illustrates. “Hard work” exists because you don’t like what you do. The reason to not like it can be anything. Maybe you like the work but hate your boss, and so you don’t like what you do. Maybe what you do is repetitive and there is no scope for autonomy. But work is hard because of this simple reason — it doesn’t interest you.
No kid “hustles” playing video games. They only “hustle” while studying something they don’t like. They work hard and they push through. No person is “slaving away” eating delicious food everyday. Getting paid for the specific things you like may not be possible always. But maybe we can think about the “essence” of what we like in the things we like doing. Maybe we can find that essence in another thing that also pays us.
I hope more of us can liberate ourselves from hard work. It’s meaningless.
