Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 5, 1994 TAG: 9409070048
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: SANDY BAUERS KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
What are we, nuts? You'd think that most of us actually liked work.
We certainly go to enough trouble to do it. Up at dawn, fighting traffic snarls, inhaling doses of carbon monoxide - and that's just for starters.
We wear clothes we'd never dream of otherwise, stuff like neckties and pantyhose and hardhats. We almost always do what we're told and, despite our fantasies, we never tell off the boss.
What better time than Labor Day to note that we are spending longer at work than ever? Roughly 39 hours per week - second only to Japan.
Spurred on by yesterday's credit-card bills and tomorrow's college tuitions, we put nose to grindstone, take another swig of coffee and grind on.
And then we gripe. We hate our jobs, we say. We can't wait to quit. Retire. Leave the hassles behind. Work gets in the way of what's really important in life, what we truly want to do: See the world, discover a few cosmic truths, spend time with family and friends.
But without our noticing, work takes over and defines us. When we meet people, we tell them our names and what we do - sometimes not in that order.
We do all this work to make our lives better, but we forget that we're spending this precious life in the process.
These days, with jobs so scarce, it seems churlish to complain. Shouldn't we be happy? Relieved? Grateful?
One comforting thought is that at least we have the luxury to raise the question: Isn't work what we were meant to do? Or has something run amok in our nature? Somewhere along the evolutionary path, the great hallway of life, did we take a wrong turn and enter the door marked ``Suckers''?
Nobody's sure whether the desire - OK, the compulsion - to work is innate or whether it is simply ingrained, part of our culture. It almost doesn't matter.
``The first thing that hit my mind was my middle son, David. He has an innate desire to party,'' said Leonard Greenfield an anthropology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Greenfield likes his work, though. Or rather, his job.
He makes money. He feels stroked. His intellectual curiosity is satisfied. Plus, he says, it gets him out of the house after the weekend. With three boys, he needs the relative calm of a teeming college campus.
So, in a way, for him, his work is ... not work.
Which doesn't help much with a definition. There are many. To an engineer, work is measurable, like something a motor does. But to a gardener, is weeding work or pleasure? Or both?
Technically, Greenfield says, work is the stuff an organism has to do to maintain itself. Migrating buffalo are, in fact, at work.
For humans, it is mostly a matter of getting food, clothing and shelter - although, in our society, there's a less direct connection between work and food. That's what makes us ``civilized,'' says Greenfield. We spend less time on the basics than other groups of organisms.
Still, anthropologists point out that so-called primitive hunter-gatherer societies worked fewer hours than we do.
We want more free time, too. In fact, everybody says they want to be independently wealthy. Just ask anyone standing in a lottery line.
But, oddly, when they win, what's the first thing they say?
If the key to happiness is hard work, then what's the point of all those stories we've heard about folks who shackle themselves to their jobs so they'll have a good retirement - and then two weeks after the going-away bash, they drop dead?
There's no end to the insults.
Ask someone which comes first: the job or the family. The answer is obvious: It's the family. But in real life, when the job calls, it's more likely that family matters will fall by the wayside. Society considers this not only acceptable, but also somehow laudable. Where are our priorities?
Mary Des Chene, a cultural anthropologist at Swarthmore (Pa.) College, still has a yellowed clipping that she taped to her refrigerator door during her first year of full-time teaching.
It reads, ``Be Happy, Don't Move,'' and advises that in today's ``workaholic'' world, we should consider, say, the secret life of the hummingbird. We think of them as frenzied, but that's just while they're in flight. They actually spend about 80 percent of their days perched on branches.
Humans, on the other hand, seem to be spinning out of control. Even when we get home, we never head for the hammock. We tackle a list of chores - sometimes two at once, if possible.
The rest of the world ``thinks this is bizarre,'' said Des Chene.
by CNB