St. Wendell has so many good things to say about physical work and I will write more about that another time, but listen to this. “If I could pick any rule of industrial economics to receive a thorough re-examination by our people, it would be the one that says that all hard physical work is “drudgery” and not worth doing… Ultimately, in the argument about work and how it should be done, one has only one’s pleasure to offer. It is possible, as I have learned again and again, to be in one’s place, in such company, wild or domestic, and with such pleasure, that one cannot think of another place that one would prefer to be—or of another place at all. One does not miss or regret the past, or fear or long for the future. Being there is simply all, and is enough. Such times give one the chief standard and the chief reason for one’s work. From Wendell Berry’s “Economy and Pleasure”
The essay is one in which he describes the hard work of the tobacco harvest in the community in which he lives. Reading it is wanting to be there among those hard working people. Given where things are at in our industrial economy and the increased mechanization and use of robots, one does wonder what losses we are sustaining. I fear they are many.