Work is worship
Most people treat work as a necessary evil. They work because they have to because they cannot do without it and would be glad to get rid of it if it were possible. Most of us work because we would starve if we did not. Some of us work because we would be bored if we had nothing to do. Only a few treat work as a sacred duty. We should treat work not as a necessary evil, nor as a compulsion, nor as a recreation but as devotion. It should be treated not as a pastime but as prayer. It should not be performed perfunctorily as if it were something of which is hanging heavily on our heads. It should be treated as duty ‘the stern voice of the daughter of God’. It should be placed on the same footing as prayer and performed with all seriousness which we are capable of. This is the message preached by the Gita where it has been called ‘Karmyoga’. Carlyle preached this message of the sanctity of work in the Victorian period; ‘Work is noble, all work is noble and work alone is noble.’ Apart from the other-worldly considerations, work brings rewards in the world itself. Idleness is invariably followed by poverty and other evils. It weakens the individual and saps his physical and moral strength. Nations, that have become the pride of the world and the envy of the poverty-stricken nations, have been taken to the height of their material prosperity, prestige, and power by their hard-working masses. The prosperity of the USA, England, Japan, and Russia bears eloquent testimony to their hard-working people. Ease-loving and work-shirking nations, like individuals, are likely to remain poor and weak, and a burden to others.
