“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I come from a long line of common folk. My family simply lived life: they were good citizens, voted in elections, volunteered in the community, and raised their family—quite admirably. Gramps managed the local Farm Bureau feed store, worked for the County Assessor’s office, and appraised property. Dad owned a civil engineering firm and served on a number of city and state boards and commissions.
Mom ruled at home where we lived by her mantra, “A place for everything and everything in its place.” Our house was orderly— you got stuff out, you put it up when you were done. I recall more than once being ordered into the basement to clean up a mess properly, and you’d better not come back up the steps until the job was done. There was no such thing as half-ass—any job worth doing had to be done right. You made your bed in the morning and you put your neatly folded clothes into the dresser. The orderliness of the house was sacrosanct.
I began my work-life in 1975 at Dad’s company as the “Office Boy”. I filled the coke machine, put toilet paper and towels in all the restrooms, swept the front entryway, and made “Xerox” copies for the engineers. If I had downtime, I helped out in the printshop and built a lasting friendship with Horace, the printer.
It was working for Dad that I learned the meaning of hard work. I also learned that you could also have fun but you needed to get the job done and done right. I treated work as an opportunity to learn and that I alone had the ability to determine what meaning it had to me. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.” I am retired now but often miss the comradery and meaning of work. I am slowly coming to realize that retirement is not the meaning I have been looking for; but finding meaning feels like I’m chasing after a ghost.
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” – 17th Century Proverb
“Playing” at the Coors Brewery in Golden CO, circa 1983. The Author is sitting, right front.