Now a horse frisking in the pasture on a fine spring day is a delight to the eye but until that horse is harnessed and hitched to a load, the value of his strength and energy is not fully realized. Our work and responsibilities, far from being the bottomless pit of drudgery and futility that they often seem, are in fact the harness by which our energies and abilities are applied to pulling a load and accomplishing something – something which may seem small, even incidental, but which is, nevertheless, of real meaning and importance to those who depend upon us. And there is also the “small” matter of the truth behind the old saying that “idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.”
Being carefree and accomplishing something significant are usually mutually exclusive.
Those of us with modest means delude ourselves if we look at those with great material resources and think they live a carefree life because, unlike us, after a day on the job they are not burdened with the mundane matters of fixing meals, washing clothes, scrubbing floors, raking leaves, and desparately trying to find a way to balance the checkbook.
When real burdens are not forced on us by necessity, people invent artificial, imaginary ones. Witness the enormous energy human beings pour into competitions of every imaginable type, into our hobbies, into the demands related to planning, holding, and attending social gatherings. The list goes on and on. It has been said that nothing is certain but death and taxes and this may be true. But for most of us, it is also true that work and worry expand to fill whatever time is available.
If our national celebrities are any indication, when people don’t have work and worry, they manufacture all sorts of mischief as a substitute. This is just as true, if not more so, of those special people with star quality and riches as it is with the most ordinary of us.
Someone has rightly said, “The poor are better off than the rich. The poor have the illusion that they would be happier if they had more money. The rich know better.”