I was walking through our neighborhood this morning, trekking back home after dropping the car at the shop to have the alternator checked out, and as I passed in front of a large home the front door opened and a yellow Labrador retriever came bounding onto the circle drive.
He zeroed in on the plastic-wrapped newspaper laying on the concrete, but in his enthusiasm he skidded past it, all four legs extended in classic cartoon braking mode, tongue flapping out of his grinning jaws. He made a quick u-turn and pounced on the paper, fumbling it a few times while trying to get a grip on the plastic, then triumphantly headed back to the doorway, where I could see the shadow of his owner, waiting. This was obviously a regular ritual at that house, and the dog obviously loved his job.
It made me wonder about that phrase, “work like a dog.” It’s always used in a negative sense, implying that the task at hand is hard, menial and is to be performed utterly without joy. But, try telling that to a dog. Dogs love to work; they love to be responsible for something… anything… and they take great pleasure in doing the job, just for the joy of doing it.
I’m sure that yellow lab would have been even happier to be retrieving a bird from a pond, but he didn’t dwell on what might be but isn’t. He simply did the best job he knew how for the task he’d been given, and you could tell by watching him that at that moment in time, he was king of all he surveyed.
The lesson is pretty clear. It doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t aspire to better things in our careers, but it does remind us that we can find dignity and even joy in any job, for that comes from who we are, not what we do.
So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. [Ecclesiastes 3:22a – NIV]