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I don't want my kids to have to work as hard as I did
In the late ’30s and ’40s, I had two sets of grandparents finding their way in life, in marriage, and beginning to have kids. 70 to 80 years ago they were in the same spot in their life my wife and I are in today. I often think back to them and my parents to compare where we are and what we are doing at similar points in time of our journey’s. I think back now, to when my parents would have been 12 years old, for my dad would have been 1957 and my mom 1958. Both sets of grandparents were farming their tales off, still in cables tractors weathering the heat, the dust, the chaff, the itchiest stuff on the planet we know as milo dust, etc. And at the time, my grandfather was pioneering water wells in far western KS given his skill learned basically as a boy as a roughneck.
You see for him, my grandfather, he was the oldest child in the family and his dad died when he was 13, and my grandpa was forced to go to work and provide for the family. So at a ripe old age of under 18, he became a roughneck in the oil field. He had no choice but to go earn a living for his family to survive. On my mom’s side of the family, were these tough old german souls that farmed God’s earth, worked with extreme grit every day, lived frugally beyond belief, and paid cash for all they ever accumulated.
These people were mightily tough, had raw grit, persevered through the worst ever depression, could withstand nature’s elements of extreme cause they had no cabs or air conditioners and heat was usually wood and not enough. It is as I compare where my wife and I are at today, to 1957, that I gain a real perspective of just how easy I have it. I didn’t have to go to work in high school to provide for my mom and sister. My worst cables dusting came from raking some alfalfa hay periodically but was sure no milo dust. I didn’t have to figure out how to drill for water to irrigate a field. I can take some weekends off to enjoy time with family, vs working 6 days a week for 50 years. We go to the store to buy clothes and my wife or I don’t have to sew them up a pair of jeans to wear. Credit is available around every corner to dive in as deep as anyone would like, but the wisdom of Fred Georg pushed him to never be a slave to a lender while going the some of the most extremely tough economic and crop production times ever. He had no agronomist, minimal chemicals, and most years were a test of faith as seeds were sewn.
As I think back to their times in life and my journey of ages in life, I am always reminded of just how easy we’ve got it. Life is much easier, and some may classify it as much better. For my parents and grandparents, they all wanted better for us. But, we must define “better”, because it is my opinion, 80% of American’s define better as, “I don’t want my kids to have to work as hard as I did.” That general thought is played out in many parents' minds, year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation. And it is in that thought, that I believe where 90 plus % of our worldly problems today evolve from….ALMOST ALL OF THEM!!
There is value in work. There is extreme mental, physical, and emotional value in “leaving the cave, going out and killing something, and draggin it home.” There need to be the same extreme values taught to our kids. Work creates fulfillment for the soul. Work allows one to be independent of dependency on others. Work pushes people to have better time management. Work is good. Work equals money. Kids working through college make better grades than those not working through college. No work makes people lazy. No work makes people dependent on others. No work equals no money for my kids.
Getting up out of bed, getting our bodies moving and breathing, and getting to work doesn’t just equal money, but more importantly, it equals a thriving, passionate, purposeful human spirit with a locomotive to often do more and be better. Without work, that locomotive gets rusty, frozen up, and unable to move.
There are over 36,000,000 people of the over 300,000,000 people in America unemployed right now. That means there are over 36,000, 000 people physically capable of working, but given the current economy and factors are becoming a frozen up locomotive. And simply put, we have got to get those 36,000,000 people back to work! Safety is a priority, but the mental, emotional, and physical health of those 36,000,000 people is more important than any current factors you can give me! Get America safely back to work!
