America. Land of the free, home of the productive. If you’ve grown up on American soil - especially the rich agricultural kind that still serves to feed a hearty segment of the people and economy, you value hard work.
The idea of having a daily siesta, a 2-3 hour break in the middle of the day, as they do in Spain, sounds downright preposterous. How do those Spaniards get anything done?
And what about the Italians? Taking the entire month of August off for “holiday” each year? Who milks their cows while they’re gone? Feeds their chickens? Waters their gardens?
Surely, there must be some real salt-of-the-earth Italians that stay on the job to keep Italian society humming!
We Americans take great pride in our work ethic (something that may be dwindling a bit too quickly - but that’s a story for another week).
We get up with the sun, put in an “honest day’s work,” and shed our blood, sweat, tears, or whatever the job requires.
Day in and day out, driving the trucks, punching the clocks, filing the forms, washing, cooking, cleaning, and more. We work. That is, until we can’t.
It is a fact of life, that if you are blessed with longevity, you will find yourself facing physical limitations. And the trajectory of these limitations is as sure as that of taxes and housing prices - indubitably increasing over time.
When this change of reality smacks a hard-working country boy or gal in the face, it more than smarts a little.
It can rattle one right down to their red, white, and blue core, as they face the fact that their entire identity and self-worth was tied fast to their productivity.
When their productivity dips, that self-worth clings to it like a crusty barnacle, and both plummet.
The sad outcome for the resolute American workers is to spend their sunset years depressed and dispirited, believing the lie that their value correlates with their ability to produce.
These same self-condemning conclusions plague those who find themselves facing a disability long before their age would have brought it on.
While the equation productivity=value may be true for some species, like milk cows and laying hens, it is not the case for humans.
A few years ago, the most expensive painting in the world was auctioned off at Christie’s Auction House in NYC. It was not a new or young work of art, but quite an old one.
“Salvator Mundi,” a representation of Jesus painted by Leonardo DaVinci in approximately 1500, sold for $450 million, at the ripe old age of 517!
Each person is like a one-of-a-kind work of art. Actually, according to the Bible, humans are “God’s masterpieces.”
Those humans who have the gift of maturity in years are like a painting that has been lovingly and carefully developed over an artist’s lifetime, with layers of color and texture uniquely set in place, creating a true masterpiece.
Each individual having been created on purpose, for a purpose, with immeasurable intrinsic value that never diminishes.
Value those in your life and community who have well-weathered souls, worn-out hands, and layers of beauty and wisdom ready to be unveiled before your admiring eyes.
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