Not your usual "Happy Labor Day" post

September 05, 2022

Here's the thing about labor—it's hard. If executed without proper mentality, the laborer will quickly find it to be backbreaking, heartbreaking, and soul-crushing. He will quickly get burned out and will end up questioning why he does the things he previously professed he loves to do. He will then drop his working tools and walk away.

All of us, even the best of us, sometimes fall into this dark mental space where tired bodies and minds conspire to convince us that our effort is leading to nowhere. If you find yourself to be in this depressive bubble, I encourage you to read and absorb these three quotes from our Masonic Brothers who came before us.

“Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company.” - George Washington

We evolved to be social creatures and have the tendency to absorb and reflect the energy of those around us. If we have the misfortune of being surrounded by those miserable types, sooner or later we will find ourselves mirroring their miserable ways. If the noble pursuit of trying to influence them proves to be futile, it's better to save your energy for yourself and keep on doing the good work that you do and hope that one day they will wake up and 'see'.
"Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection" -Mark Twain
At some points in our lives, we find ourselves postponing many important and great things due to a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons are truly valid such as in cases of emergencies but a lot of times we delay because we want it to be "perfect". There's something to be learned from software developers who release their programs even if it's not perfect. The way programmers do it is like this- write a program and release it as Version 1.0, let the people give it a go, identify the bugs, gather feedback, go back to the drawing board, and release Version 1.1. This process gets repeated ad infinitum with the program getting better and better with each release. The focus is on progress, not perfection.
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes that feeling of being trapped in tiresome and monotonous labor is because we are blindly following whoever is in front of us. Like the proverbial sheep blindly following another sheep headed to someplace unsavory. One way to break out of that feeling of being contained is by doing something new keeping in mind that if we love the work that we do, work becomes play. When those around us see that we enjoy doing our labor, it will rub off on them and the natural tendency is they will follow suit.