IN ACTIVITY WE FIND MEANING
“We’ll work like crazy ’til we get the word done. Then we’ll mess around,” Rich said as I sweated in that feed plant that summer. This I believe: it is in activity rather than in rest that we find meaning in our lives.
Rich was only 5 years older than I was, but to me he had the carriage of a wise adult. I had recognized him as a scrappy leader on a neighboring town’s baseball team. Now, I was a summer employee in a feed plant, throwing 50 pound bags of cattle feed, unloading 80 pound salt bags from boxcars, hefting hundred pound gunny sacks of wheat middlings. Rich ran the warehouse. He was free to use his over-boiling invective, ridicule and satire to embarrass me to move smartly as a bottom rung laborer.
But after some weeks of Rich’s scalding, I could tell that he grudgingly approved of some of my bag handling, that his invective was shared with me rather than directed at me. He announced discretionary but practical extra work objectives for us. If the boxcar was empty, and no trucks waited for bags, we’d sweep the warehouse. If the production line was dead, and broken bags cleaned up, we’d go outside the mill and pull weeds from between the railroad’s ties. If ever I glimpsed a rest, it was eclipsed by Rich: “No, we’ll work like crazy ’til the work is done; then we’ll mess around.”
Amazingly, at times we did goof off. We visited Brice in the shop. Brice could fix anything, including Hyster hydraulics: his shop was always interesting. Or we would step on the vertical conveyer belt, pull the rope, and ascend to the top of the silo, with the town, Highway 30, and cornfields stretched for miles below. We might enjoy a few air conditioned minutes visiting the boss in the office.
But, of course, with Rich, breaks were brief: one never messed around until the work was done. And Rich was a master at knowing what was left to accomplish.
Now, 40 years later, I have retired from a teaching career but keep my skills active by continuing to work with young people. I could mess around, but I sense a strong purpose in continuing to contribute while there is still work to do. I hope my students benefit, but I know I am stronger for it. I’m reminded of Mr. Malter in Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, who, while his health fails and he works hard to achieve a homeland for the Jews, is begged to rest by son Reuven. Mr. Malter replies that when he dies he wants to be worthy of rest. His work will make him worthy of rest.
Rich knew that our work would never be done, that there is always something more to do, that in our activity rather than in our rest we find our meaning, our purpose. Rich knew that messing around could wait.
Gene Conrad
