The End And Reward Of Toil

The first day of the month of May commemorates the “ International Workers Day.” In many countries it’s a public holiday. It is also celebrated as Labour Day. It has an interesting and revolutionary beginning in the US on May 1, 1886. On this day several labour unions across the US went on to protest, demanding a standard workday of eight hours. On May 4th there was bloodshed in Chicago’s Haymarket Square as a result of a bomb blast masterminded by a revolutionist leading to the death of a dozen people and the injury of over 100 people.

The protest brought about favourable results in obtaining the eight-hour work days in many countries including India. Church officially declared May Day as worker’s day in 1995 in order to uphold the rights of workers and the dignity of labour.

Though this day is marked with a lot of protests, rallies, demonstrations and speeches, there is still another reflection that is more central to the May Day as it also coincides with the summer holidays. That is the truth about hard labour and rest.

On the one hand many students are happy that they completed their exams, we also read from newspapers about the increasing death toll due to over enthusiasm about the forthcoming holidays. There is a hidden message that coincides with the May Day.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometime on the green grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means a waste of time. Moments of inactivity, relaxation, picnicking, watching good movies – all these can put us at ease with ourselves and with others and give us fresh energy to start our life of work.
All of us love to rest. Many of us look forward to spending long hours sleeping while others look forward to spending days relaxing in a resort far away from the place of work. Stress is also very much connected to the present day labour, particularly in white collar jobs. I used to wonder if there was so much stress those days when there was so much of human labour! I don’t even remember the word ‘stress’ being used so often. People having stress used to be a rare phenomenon those days.

What has happened to us in these last few years? Why is there so much of stress on ‘stress’ ?

I guess we got used to a cozy and comfortable life that demands more rest and less work.
What will enhance our work and our rest will be the way we proportionately spend time for both. When a lot of time spent on work and a little time for rest, it will create the right balance in our life and energy.
There is a nice little verse from Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene,’:
“Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas,
Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please.”
It is true that it is rest that helps us to form virtuous deeds. It gives us time and forms our mind to fashion our brain to move towards good deeds; but, if rest exceeds the hours spent on work, it becomes a vice. Rest is sweet after strife and not all through your life.
Rudyard Kipling tells us about signs of the appropriate time for rest this way:
When earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it—lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.
This should be guiding principle for us particularly these days of rest and vacation. At the same time, “Absence of occupation is not rest; a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed,” said Cowper in his book retirement. For Don Bosco change of occupation was rest. He never needed rest. When he needed little rest, all that he did was to switch over his activity to another that needed attention.
Too much of rest will become a pain. That is why we believe that only the end and reward of toil is rest. All other kind of rest will only add pain.