I'm feeling emotional today so I can already tell you the tone this post will have: emotional, erratic, stressed...and other words that my brain is too foggy to try to think up.
I work hard and I've have been working hard for as long as I can remember. My first job was when I was 15. I worked at a farm/orchard in an area that had a large barn with a bakery inside. Pies and pastries and all kinds of things were made here and this was the section of the orchard that I worked in. I hated that job but I did it anyway.
It has been 15 years since I had my first job and I have had sooooo many different jobs and so many different experiences it's hard to remember them all. Some of these jobs I worked for a short period of time (my shortest being a month on 2 separate jobs...they were god-awful) and others I worked for several years. I have also had two separate times in my life when I worked 3 jobs, simultaneously. I'm not crazy, but one thing I can really thank my Dad for is work ethic (although he will stay at a job he hates until the day he dies, whereas I will at least quit and find other work that makes me happy, no matter how many jobs I need to take on until I find the right one).
The reason I mention all of this is because working hard seemed like the right thing to do growing up. I figured that everyone else felt this way too. I mean, what is there not to understand about this concept? I work hard and I feel a sense of self-respect in that. I make an income. It may not be much, but I worked for that and it gets me where I need to go and I don't have to rely on others. My hard work contributes to the betterment of society because I help the "business" that I am with, which has value to those that I serve by my contribution in that entity. I honestly view my place in the working world as an honored place where I work for the sake of humanity.
Here's what I don't understand:
Why is it that the people who don't have these values seem to have the things that I want? Moreover, why is it that these people get coddled and told that their uselessness is OK because society will take care of them?
Before you get steamed up, I'm not talking about the physically or mentally handicapped. I'm not talking about the elderly. I'm not talking about females on maternity leave. I'm talking about the average American who makes up excuses for why they can't get a job, can't pay the bills, and spends the evening buying things off of QVC. This isn't even an isolated incident, I know HANDFULS of people that are involved in this same situation. What's worse? They have jobs that they can go to in order to make minimum wage but those jobs are somehow "beneath them" therefore they choose to have no employment at all to wait for "the right job". While waiting for these"perfect jobs" they collect unemployment and write Facebook posts about sitting at home all day playing videos games or watching Lifetime movies.
I have known people, personally, who lived in shacks, worked at a low-wage job in a turkey plant slaughtering birds, who had less education but more dignity than those of the above-mentioned paragraph. There are single parents out in the world working to the bone to provide for their children without even so much as child support check, who honestly feel ashamed at having to ask for government assistance and pull themselves up out of the poverty line tooth and nail and who succeed. But for every one of those people there are several more who just sit and wait to get money from someone else.
"I deserve this."
Let me tell you something. You were born into the world just like everyone else. You are not more special than anyone else here. I don't owe you anything. Infact, I think it's just the opposite. You owe ME and everyone else like me the gratitude associated with what people like me do. I only have 15 years of continuous work underneath me, which pales in comparison to a lot of other people. I have also had the opportunity to work in great places because I worked hard to get my education (for which I worked DAMN hard to pay off) and a large number of people don't even get to say that much. But just like me, they get up EVERY DAY to whatever caliber of job they have and do their job. And if they lose their job, they immediately get another one. And if doesn't pay enough? Well, imagine that, they go get another 1...or 2...or however many it takes to do what they need to do. Why? Because it's the right damn thing to do. These people, no matter what they do, are the best humanity has to offer. Are YOU on that list?
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