Why - once we have met our basic needs for food, warmth, and safety - do we work?
There are the usual, default answers.
For Status. Power. In response to a "fight or flight" instinct, hardwired deep in us.
Because when we were young, we saw our parents do it and when we grew up, we wanted to be like them.
Phew.
What a bunch of hamster on a wheel mumbo-jumbo that makes folks at the end of their life look back and say why did I waste so much of my precious life on that?
Instead, how about this?
Let’s be heroes.
Wikipedia defines a hero as one “who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, displays courage and the will for self-sacrifice…for some greater good of all humanity.”
Now that’s good.
It touches the various dimensions of our being.
Heroism in action is a strong, hard effort - a pushing to the limits of one’s physical endurance.
Heroes are intellectually wise. They are fair, sober, and big, and rarely let anger and fear get the best of them.
And when we are in the presence of a hero, we are spiritually risen up, are we not?
And you know what goes hand-in-hand with heroism?
Work.
Hard, honest work - taking great, exquisite care to do things right– is at heroism’s heart.
As is teamwork. And creative work, toward an idealistic end.
As is work on the behalf of the powerless, for and with the young and the old.
As is winning the right way - with grace and with recognition of those that aided in your journey.
And as is trying your absolute hardest and most honest best, and sometimes coming up just a bit short.
Heroic work, in all its forms, is work worth doing.
You know it when you see it. And unfortunately, also when you don’t.
Let’s look for the heroes in our lives - those right around us and those in their blessed multitude in this wide and inter-connected world of ours.
Let’s celebrate them and let’s strive to be like them.