Work Work Work

“For there is perennial nobleness, and even sacredness in Work,” (page 481), wrote Thomas Carlyle in, “Labor,”.  Yet, Carlyle is not referring to a mere job, a simple means of making money.  Rather, this is activity done for the sake of more valuable things.  This kind of work brings about self-knowledge, and gives life direction.  “Properly thou has no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working: the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds in endless logic-vortices, till we try and fix it,” (page 482)  It is through work that one comes to to truly understand the self and the world.  “I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand,” goes the Chinese proverb.  Through action, things go from abstract to concrete, from theory to reality, from uncertain to certain.  It’s why science classes have lab components.  It’s also how, through work, human beings can better know themselves.  “Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan,” (page 481).  The human self is too complex to simply “know”.  People that go off and try to “find themselves” are really just dissatisfied with what they are doing, and want to do something else more fulfilling.  It is a quest that revolves around activity and work because humans judge and are judged by their actions.  So identity has a direct connection with work.  Additionally, through work, one learns his or her individual strengths and talents.  One can perfect and enhance them.  Furthermore, work also reveals one’s weaknesses.  So the individual must confront and learn to overcome them.  “A man perfects himself by working.  Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seedfields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle and foul unwholesome desert nearby,” (page 481).  So it is through work that human beings improve themselves.  

          

“The man is now a man. The blessed glow of Labour in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed flame!” (page 481).  Work gives peace.  It takes the focus off of things that one cannot do anything about, and turns it to things that one can do something about.  In other words, it refocuses negative energy into positive energy.  It increases security in oneself.  Furthermore, it gives life direction, meaning, and purpose.  “Destiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us.  A formless Chaos, once set it revolving, grows round and ever rounder: ranges itself, by mere force of gravity, into strata, spherical courses; is no longer a Chaos, but a round compacted World,” (page 482).  This idea is further promoted by the metaphor of Destiny as a potter.  If the clay will not spin, there is only so much that the potter can do for it.  It is base and crude.  But if it does spin, then the potter can make it into something beautiful, give it greater purpose.  It can be a vase for flowers instead of a small pinch pot that isn’t really good for anything at all.  If human beings spin, if they work, than they are moving forward towards being something significant.