Do You Know An Outstanding Worker?

Whatcom Works. Does it? Do you? Do you know a young person who works? Works for others? Works for free? Works for a wage?  Perhaps has started their own business?

Do you know an adult who has been a good worker, perhaps, but was laid off? Did that person wait for an employer to re-hire them? Or did they go out and do something new? Change work environments? Bridge between permanent jobs with temporary employment or a short term entrepreneurial jag? Even paid out of pocket for all or part of re-training?

Do you know a senior citizen that could take it easy, but still works? Perhaps runs a part time, home based sales outlet? Maybe consults with younger people still in a growth or maintenance mode? Perhaps provides charitable service for a need or opportunity that is non profit in nature?

There are many facets of life that have color and fragrance. Going to school is a fresh rose for a child. For the young adult, however, who has absorbed the ideal that business is rapacious and using earth resources is a crime, school can become a hangout, a dodge to avoid developing the character needed to create and give and receive. School may also become a gloomy edifice whose only purpose is to qualify living assistance from the public purse.

Going to the beach or woods can be a soothing analgesic for the soul. But when recreation or politicized zoology becomes a reason to destroy another’s livelihood (such as cycling viewsheds or slightly endangered species versus forestry or agriculture harvests), a conviction distills that a certain very aggressive collective who seeks social equity and equal outcomes is intentionally re-aligning communities into large feudal dependencies and away from honest self directed, self supporting work. 

Some community organizers work hard, I’ll grant. And, an ancient sage did say,

 “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.”

 

This is not enlarging “vertically integrated” “welfare businesses” that forcibly give away what belongs to others. The goal of charity should be to shorten the length and life of the benefits channel, not to elongate it, embedding permanently employed, fully salaried managers at many points along the way. 

What separates the work ethic of yesteryear from that of many youth and adults of today? 

Punctuality?  Respect for the unforgiving minute?

Faith in a good reward after a generous day of work?

Sacrifice of one’s comforts for another’s good? To a point of completion with excellence?

Humor that turns a black day into a golden, rollicking lark?

Penetrating, bone numbing, strategic risk?

Patience? Enduring strange blows and knocks to gain valuable skills and relationships?

Something else? You name it.

The list could go on. But rather than criticize potential workers lingering in the shadows, it is better to honor those that step out. Frankly, the substitution of grant or welfare application or loan writing skills for a work first, entrepreneurial ethic is crippling our society. We admire those who succeed in big numbers over the long haul, but who recounts the small initial steps where success blossomed, or was delayed in a cocoon for a later date, or was walled off by short sightedness and self will.

Work is about people. About character. About making others successful. In a related vein, if you really want to evaluate qualifications for Whatcom County Council candidates, don’t look for vaults of amassed wealth or long lists of degrees and consultancies, but for a vanguard of associates who have been elevated, equipped and established.

In this montage, we link to two young entrepreneurs whose stories have already been written. Do you know some person that fits one of the working profiles I mentioned above? Could you write a short blog post about them? Do you know a person that is training or equipping others to work? This is the stuff of life!

Whatcom Works looks forward to more stories about the beginnings of local success in WORK.