The Obligation and Benefit of Work

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume II, Issue 4, 1 October 1909, Page 127

The Obligation and Benefit of Work

"Has service only one side? Is the angel of work a mere taskmaster ? Nay, in his hands he brings three gifts : two for the worker's own inward joy, the third, and greatest, for the world through the worker. The first gift, paradox as this sounds, is leisure. Work and leisure are the two complementary sides of life ; the one cannot be done, or the other enjoyed unless both are genuine ; for work, to be good, must have time limitations, which it is the height of unwisdom to neglect. Education should aim at fitting the boy and girl for both sides, that work may be honest thorough, and fruitful, and leisure, as it is honestly won, be wisely used. We are apt to confuse work and mere occupation. Idle people often contrive to fill their hours with the semblance of work, and the yet ghostlier semblance of leisure. It is the idle people — we often hear this said — who never have

time for anything. A woman's life may easily be brimful of occupation, her time frittered away in futile errands, and in what is appropriately called i fancy-work,' yer she may be essentially idle. True leisure, then, is the first gift which the Angel of Work bestows, and far more fruitful of real happiness will such leisure be than double the lumber of sleepy hours spent in any Castle of Indolence. " The second gift which the Angel brings, is the development of the worker's best self, the widening of thought and interest, and capacity for action, comfort in sorrow, strength in solitude. This is indeed to make life better worth living. Should we not then be : — '' Strenuous for the bright reward, And in the soul admit of no decay, Brook no continuence of weak-mindedness. "

The strengthening and purifying of character, the drawing out and developing of natural powers, the mastery over the lower self of mere impulse and selfish desire — in a word, the perfecting of personality, as far as in this mortal life is possible. These are the legitimate results of well-chosen work ; while the stunting of character, and the dwarfing of natural capacities, are the inevitable effects of shirking work. " The great Angel of Work cannot be put aside with impunity, and to lose his teaching is to lose almost the best thing which earthly life can offer. What we use grows with the using ; what we are afraid to use shrinks and dwindles, and perishes. If we tie up one arm for a week, will not the muscles be soft and flabby at the end ? And are not the minds, and sometimes too, the bodies, of many well-to-do women, soft, and flabby, and sick ? These women have not harkened to the voice of the Angel ; or else they are so buttressed up and buttressed in by social restrictions ; so entangled by social bonds, to put it as Tennyson does, with incomparable prettiness, so * compassed by sweet observances/ that they are helpless and crippled without artificial support. Those who are afraid, or perhaps only pretend to be afraid, lest women, by touching politics or business, should lose ajjy gift or grace of womanhood, merely show that they do not believe in the thing which they profess to praise. The real thing will stand wear and tear. That a certain selfish hardness, a roughness of moral texture, is apparent in the characters of women as well as of men in our time just as it has been obvious in all times, though the precise form it takes may differ, nobody can deny. But how can women, any more than men, escape the influence of environment ? Where is this hardness, this selfishness in the pursuit of material enjoyment, this disregard of social obligations, most evident ? Not, assuredly, among the women who work, but among idle women. And the antidote to it is, not to take away any element out of life, but to bring in more

and better elements ; not, therefore, to restrict the interests and activities of women in any department of life, public or private, but to develop in women the sense of serious responsibility, and how can this sense of responsibility be deepened unless opportunity for exercising it be widened ? What is truly unwomanly, indeed, infra-human, is the frivolous pursuit of selfish gratification, whether in social functions, or simply in amusement, in itself innocent. It is this which hardens, it is this which degrades ' Iyove, not pleasure/ says Carlyle ; again, ' I^ove God ; this is the everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved ; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him. Work, duty, responsibility, the awakening to claims and interests beyond our own small personal and family interests — for family selfishness may only be a doubled or trebled selfishness — these form the antidote to that desolating frivolity which springs from vanity of mind. " The third gift remains, the greatest of all, because more purged from self : the gift of service. The measure of our power to serve may indeed be small, but it is real. It may rest as much in being as in doing, but being and doing are inextricably bound up together, and we cannot be unless we also do. ' What else are we born for/ says Carlyle once more, ' save to expend every particle of strength that God has given us in doing the work for which we are fit ; to stand up to it to the last breath of life, and to do our best/ 1 The work for which we ark fit : What that is we have got to find out, obeying neither the lure of personal vanity, nor the dictates of popular prejudice. Nor need our individual smallness discourage us. For even if public work does not fall to our share— but, I repeat, this is an imperative duty for some— still, we, as individuals, cannot help touching and influencing one another by what we are. The less, perhaps, we think about such influence, the better' but we ought to realise what a tremendous

responsibility rests upon us, for we each unconsciously diffuse a moral atmosphere around us, which helps or hinders our brethren. Mere bulk of apparent achievement is a vulgar test of worth. Some successes are defeats ; some failures victories : — ' What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me ' may be the best that we can say, but if we aspire enough, we shall assuredly realise something of our aspirations. We cannot, it is true, ignore, for we cannot help hearing, the pessimistic note which sounds through much modern thinking. Well, the only deliverance from pessimistic doubts lies in

work. In the stress of battle we shall have only the inspiring trumpet calls of hope and duty. These summon us to work, helping each as we can. " As the great world spins for ever down the ringing groves of change/ to guide those changes. Thus, little by little, out of the chaos of human needs, and mistakes, and endeavours and achievements, must arise, purer and purer, as each generation does its strenuous work, a new creation a spiritual order, the Kingdom of God upon earth." — From report of the "Conference of Women Workers in Aberdeen, October. 1908."