Picking up the Shovel

     I have been in a major rut.  This is one of the worst ruts I have been in for a long time.  I just can't seem to get myself out of it.  I have been hating my duties lately.  As I gathered the laundry from each of the bedrooms in the house I could feel the anger well up inside of my chest!  It just feels like I will never reach the summit!!  I keep climbing and climbing and every day I get knocked back down several hundred feet.  I have been getting discouraged and have lost all of my motivation.  As I was vacuuming the small hallway between my entry way and my bedroom today I remembered a story that I had read. 
  
  During the depression, a man had lost his job.  He had been searching for work to no avail.  Finally, he came to a job sight and just picked up a shovel and started digging.  The foreman came to him and said, "Sir, I can't afford to pay you for your work."  The man looked at him and said, "I don't care if I get payed, you see, I have to work."  Day after day the man came to work for no wages.  After a period of time the employer appreciated this mans work ethic and hired him. 
 
  The thing that really speaks to me in this story is that the man recognized that he needed to work.  There are many reasons why we work and only one of those is to get payed.  Good. honest, hard, work makes you feel good inside.  We were made to work.  I think that our society has become so conditioned to desire only ease and entertainment that we have forgotten the true value of hard work. 
     I have been looking at my life from the wrong perspective.  I am never going to reach any certain destination in my line of "work."  No matter what, I am going to wake up to a full workload each new day.  It is not so much in the completing of the work but in the work itself that I need to take pride.  I just need to pick up my shovel and dig in.  I may not "earn a wage" for my work that day, or complete the task at hand, but I have worked long and hard and for that I can be satisfied.   

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