Work is Worship
Very often work means hard work. But work light or hard need not be considered a penalty.Work is a condition of joy. For serious crimes, the punishment is given to person where no work is allowed & to stay alone. Enforced idleness becomes so boring and tedious as to become in itself a very severe punishment.
Man is the only animal which by personal or collective work is capable of changing its environment this he does by his work. The discovery of fire, the art of cooking, weaving fibres for clothing, making huts and houses, the art of agriculture and horticulture, taming, the invention of the wheel the invention of language, of mining and matallurgy were some of the earliest work which enabled man to change his environment for the better.
But men in advantageous positions exploited the labour of others and took away the fruits of other peoples hardwork. All the same civilization made great progress. Work as it progress enables man to have a maximum of gain with the minimum of pain.
Today man has succeeded in transferring the burden of painful, slow and unrewarding labour to power-driven machinery. This has brought mankind, or promises to bring mankind, on the threshold of the age of plenty and prosperity. All this enables us to understand the truth of the saying that work I worship. Work enables society to emerge from painful and cruel conditions of existence .Can there be a good act of worship than feeling humanity from want, hunger and other calamities? In a modern society work cannot be had for the asking. This is proved by the army of the unemployed in backward societies. Work for all is possible only in a planned society.
Child labour is a cruel institution. Even for able-bod-ied men there should be , along with universal employment, progressive reduction in the hours of work. The wages should be such or old age pensions should be so arranged as to abolish the fear of want and hunger in old age. When as a result of mechanical and technological progress per capita production is considerably increased and the distribution of wealth is just and equitable, a new era will dawn on the earth. Leisure is a vital need of life apart from work. Leisure should not be taken as idleness. It means healthy mental work like reading etc and releasing human energy for the culture of the inner man.
Too much of everything is bad. All work and no play makes jack, dull boy. Where work is congenial and creative it is worship and a blessing to mankind. But wicked work like waging war, enslaving people loot and plunder smuggling black-marketing food and medicine adulteration is not worship and include only such work as contributes to human welfare and progress. Otherwise the devil, who is the busiest being in creation, will carry off all the prizes.
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