Many years ago, I wrote a novel on personal value. The title, “Worth Ethic”, was a nifty word play, an obvious replacement of the word work with worth. Because I haven’t looked at the book since I finished it, I can’t recall very much about the plot or the characters. It doesn’t matter though. There is a reason first novels are meant to be hidden.
Besides, they are tricky, those things we call ethics. The word’s origin is from the Greeks, for whom it literally referred to the science of morals. Think about that a minute: the “science of morals”. In 2018, that combination of terms seems odd, doesn’t it? Morals don’t seem at all like something that can be observed, described, and tested in a scientific fashion.
And yet science is fundamentally about knowledge gained through study. Why then shouldn’t we be able to gain knowledge about the effect of a person’s morals on the outcomes of their lives – from an observation of their actions?
Ok, I know that sounds pretty heady. It also feels, uh, more than a little … dense. Morals, observation, and a study of worth through scientific analysis? Really? That’s not where I intended this essay to go. I meant to explore something entirely different. Time for a course correction before I decide to throw this blog post onto the same pile of misplaced writings that (perhaps deservedly) holds my first novel and who knows what else.
New direction: how do we decide what work is worth our effort? How should I?
I was born into an ethic of work. My father came home from the hospital in a wheelchair after a bout of polio at the same time that my mother brought me home following my neonatal weigh-in at just under ten pounds. There wasn’t much time in our lives for self-pity or analysis of what-might-have-been. My parents had children to raise. I had weight to stretch into length.
If there were lectures in our house about the importance of work, I don’t remember them. I do remember just understanding that I was supposed to do things. I was supposed to try when I did those things. I watched my parents do things. I watched them try things. Sometimes they failed. But they kept on trying. So trying was my job. I learned to work at it.
Please don’t get the wrong impression: I had the same inclinations to laziness and self-doubt as any boy of the time. I just didn’t feel permitted to wallow in those inclinations for too long. All it took was for me to see my father getting and out of a car equipped with hand controls, each and every day, and notice my mother pretend she wasn’t sometimes exhausted from helping him do that and keep my siblings and me on track with school and other activities, and, well, I tended to get over my laziness and self-doubt sufficiently to keep trying.
There were other ethics in our house, to be sure. We had a strong exposure to a full complement of core values required for polite, respectable social living. And I’m very thankful for that. I just didn’t necessarily spend much time considering the relative value of what I was doing. If there was a reasonable target set up for me to achieve, especially an academic one, I took aim and worked to achieve it. Not unexpectedly, I missed on many things. I did hit a few targets though. That felt good. It reinforced the rhythm of see target, set an aim, and work.
I’m incredibly lucky. Not everyone receives either the motivation, the intermittent ability, or the confidence to formulate and achieve goals. My portion of each has been sufficient to help me along in many things. A strong work ethic, however, has not readied me for the reality that exertion, toil, and pure striving is not always what every situation needs. So-called ‘elbow grease’ cannot fix any sort of issue or situation. Many things can’t just be “worked out”. Different types of interactions, for example, need different skills, including timing. Illnesses, especially the chronic kind, require a combination of finesse, patience and the right treatments. There are a host of situations and circumstances for which work is insufficient. Sometimes it isn’t even relevant. Should you have to work on relaxation, or enjoying a sunrise, or feeling loved?
Worth must be part of life’s recipe. Not dollars and cents worth. I’m referring to principles and beliefs worth. Priorities and perspectives. Acceptance. And healthy doses of kindness, generosity, understanding, and a sense of common purpose.
Is what I’m doing – today, tomorrow, or in my life as a whole – “worthy”? Is it worth the effort? Is it worth more effort?
Some day I may try to find that first novel from the 1990s. But I probably won’t go looking for a while. Because there is still this thing happening with my own narrative. And the darn story is shifting and unfolding all the time, right before my eyes and ears. I had better pay more attention to its plot and all the characters in it. There are key parts I don’t want to miss.