Work hard and you can have the American Dream. Don't you believe it.

Hard work! Work hard! It doesn't matter whether we say hard before work or hard after work, the message is clear: work hard or hard work is the key that unlocks the door to the American Dream. This is somewhat reminiscence of another misleading declaration: "In America anybody can be president."
Horatio story - from rags to riches - after Horatio story are told by folk, real and imaginary, who testify that hard work brought them success, wealth, in particular, which has become synonymous with success in the American lexicon...being or toward being a millionaire. People are not told by these hard work advocators that most wealthy people are hardly working and that their acquisition of wealth cannot be attributed to hard work. Those who do work hard very often pay a high price for doing so, most notably in their unhealth. Who are the chief beneficiaries of hard work? Usually, it is not the people who do the hard work. Most hard working peope do not enjoy the American dream.
Hard work or work hard is not a virtue, in and of itself, and the mandate to work hard should not, although it is, insofar as the rhetoric goes, be the norm in such a time as ours when science and technology can be use to make lifting a heavy load easy. I remember how hard my father had to work, sometimes strain, to lift and automobile with a jack but today a petite woman can take a modern day hand jack and gently lift an automobile to change a tire. What is all this rhetoric about hard work, work hard? Jesus said, "My yoke is easy." And so can work be easy. As a matter of fact, work can be so easy that it becomes difficult to distinuguish between work and play. Why not?
Do not heed the prompting of politicians and other masquerading soothsayers to work hard. A relevant question: Work hard for what? Oftentimes to produce, to overproduce, so people can over-consume, waste, be extravagant and buy things that promote obesity, stress and many other debilitating conditions and diseases that account for the present-day unhappiness epidemic that, like HIV, is a modern-day plague, especially, in America. It seem that the Germans and Japanese who lost World War II have learned a lesson that Americans have not learned. They work less than 40 hours a week and many of them take two vacations a year while many Americans who won the war, thanks to the Great Generation, work more than 40 hours a week but can scarcely take one vacation a year.
Tell me, what animal do you know, other than man, that is engaged in hard work? It is only when man nonsense is imposed upon horse sense do we observe a horse engaged in hard work. However, I have seen horses, even when subjected to man nonsense, behave stubbornly enough to yield not to man nonsense, even when it was sheer chicanery.

Addendum
Work is honroable and it is good for peope to work. But let's say NO to hard work and to over or too much work. Take time to play.

Copyright 2004 by Uriah J. Fields