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One of the essential factors in happiness is the habit -- tbe privilege and principle -- of willing work. Of this we may not be as fully aware as we once were. We like the good things, the necessities and something else besides. But with complex and mechanized processes, and with so much isolation from the source, we may sometimes not be clearly aware of the way by which so much is brought about.
In commenting on a somewhat unproductive person, one knowing observer said, "[She] has no sense of process.... She wants the result without doing any of the work that goes to make it." This is a compelling subject -- the "sense of process" -- the awareness of the thought, the skills, the talents, the work; the organizing and managing effort and energy that goes into producing anything. With Providence as first provider, plus what all others do -- some think, some plan, some invent, some save or risk capital, some add physical skill and effort -- by all of this together, so much is brought into being.
Now here, from several sources, are some statements of awareness of the meaning of work:
"Labor is the divine law of our existence," said Mazzini.
"Every man's task is his life-preserver," observed Emerson."
"Work is as much a necessity to man as eating and sleeping," remarked the philosopher Humboldt.
'Work is not a curse," said Calvin Coolidge, "it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization."
"There is no truer and more abiding happiness than the knowledge that one is free to go on doing, day by day, the best work one can do. . . ." commented the English philosopher and historian, R.G. Collingwood.
"None so little enjoy themselves, and are such burdens to themselves, as those who have nothing to do. -- Only the active have the true relish of life," said John Jay, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and an early justice of the Supreme Court.
"I have lived to know," said Adam Clarke, "that the great secret of human happiness is this: never suffer your energies to stagnate."
"The greatest asset of any nation," added George B. Cortelyou, "is the spirit of its people, and the greatest danger that can menace any nation is the breakdown of that spirit -- the will to win and the courage to work."
In all we have, and in the much doing it takes to bring so much about, let us never lose the sense of process, nor fail to be a fairly contributing part of that process. "All growth depends upon activity."
Page Modified November 4, 1999