Manual Labor.

Hesiod, the other famous eighth century Greek orating philosopher most students rarely read about because of all the fuss with Odysseus, Achilles, and that other guy who liked to fight, Hector, the author of Works and Days and Theogony, suggested that idleness, not work or manual labor is shameful; and, more definitively, he believed that the idler is a parasite. Four hundred years later, Plato, that wide-shouldered wrestler and ancient Greek contemporary of Hesiod, in The Republic, compared an idle person to a honeybee drone: “And God has made the flying drones … all without stings, whereas of the walking drones he has made some without stings but others have dreadful stings; of the stingless class are those who in their old age end as paupers; of the stingers come all the criminal class, as they are termed.” Contrary to earlier beliefs about the Greeks, they did, generally speaking, respected certain members of society whom practiced “mean employment and manual arts” when, and only when, those professions were willfully chosen and not thrust upon them (i.e. slaves, paupers, or criminals). Over the last couple of days I’ve had some interesting conversations with two manual laborers whom were hired to complete work around the property we live on. One of the workers I’ve come to ideologically admire. The other became the impetus for this blog entry.

The first gentleman is the elder of two loggers hired to cut down a one hundred plus year-old Maple tree, rotting and partially leaning over our home. In his late fifties, he’s been a logger off and on for the last 40 years. He has tried his hand at other employments over the years, but those jobs rarely satiated his tastes for the hands-on, rugged, and intensely gratifying manual craft needed to successfully cut down trees of all sizes, shapes, and leaning in precarious positions. Basically, he loves doing what others fear to do. About five years ago he learned how to “boon” cut treetops dangling near or over 50,000 volts power lines. Standing in a boon, a cherry-picker type of device, like the ones phone companies use to hoist workers up to fix phone lines, he learned how to trim trees utilizing a long pole with a string and a hook in one hand and a light, extremely powerful chainsaw in his other hand. After the first few days on his new post, he told his boss that the work was taking too long and costing his boss’s company too much money and, if the boss wanted him to, he would return to his old job of cutting trees down at ground level. The boss thanked him for his honesty and told him that it’ll take at least 1,000 trees of practice before the elder was going to feel comfortable cutting in a boon. Thousands of trees later, the elder mastered the job. He is now learning how to be a tree-climbing cutter– the act of climbing up a tree and cutting it from the top down. He expects it will take him 10,000 trees to master this new skill and he cannot wait to begin training from guys even older than he is.

His partner, on the other hand, also a nice person and pleasant to speak with, does not have the elder’s enthusiasm for logging. He, through a short lifetime of choices and circumstances, much of which I admit I am not privy to, works as a manual laborer in the tree cutting business because he does not possess other marketable skills or intelligences in other fields of expertise. He is not allowed to cut trees from boons nor is he allowed to work alone or even choose which trees to cut. In other words, he does a lot of hauling, lifting, and dragging. He has not tried his hands in other businesses or professions, like his partner, nor does he intend to– accumulated debt and a nasty divorce has put him so far in the financial hole that he is trapped working in one of the few jobs in the area that still pays well and does not require a liberal education and specialized training to obtain. The primary difference between the two men, though, is that the elder wants to be a logger. He wants to improve himself, not for more money, but because he has pride in his craft. The younger logger, however, logs because he has to. He’s trapped.

So where am I going with this? My kids, of course.

I, like most parents, want the best for my children. I love performing manual labor about as much as the next guy: cutting the grass, stacking wood or changing the oil in my car, but I wouldn’t want to do it to pay the bills; or find myself in a position where I was repetitively lifting heavy loads with a bad back or fused spine in order to put dinner on the table. I have options. I can choose to dig ditches or choose to teach in a classroom. I can choose to drive truck or I can choose to drive a patrol car. I want my kids to have the same option, the same power to choose how they make their livelihoods. I want them to be happy in their work, sure; and take pride in physical labor, not becoming stingless drones through lack of want, dire, or pride, but also to have the option to choose to whittle their bodies to the bone lifting heavy loads or choose to sit behind a desk, stand in front of a classroom, or work in an office building.

Choices.