Dishes

     Hard work has been an admirable character trait through time and culture. Pushing past opposition, complications, obstacles, annoyances, shortages, enemies, failures, and weather are all parts of physical experiences. Sometimes things do not function as necessary and the expectations of a quickly completed job detonate a midst equipment failure, rain, or an honest mistake that requires fixing.
     Manual labor and physical accomplishment brings a joy to the doers life. Skeptical? The occupational satisfaction of farmers, miners, steel workers, construction workers is much higher than office workers. Why? Certainly not benefits, safety, or work conditions. However, watching effort create an object before you with your own time and hands is satisfying. Clicking repeatedly on an excel sheet brings no sense of completion unless the mind can attach that process to something physical to demonstrate its efforts.
     A simple example of this readily demonstrates the benefits to working with your hands.

     Dirty dishes are the inevitable result of eating. Whether cooking with rocks on a fire, eating at a restaurant, or preparing a meal at home, dishes are used and need cleaning. The basic point of "doing the dishes" is to get off the gooey gunk and ready the dishes for use in the future.
     Initially, the dishes are a mess. However, grinding steadily away at the task gradually shortens the stack, eventually removing the filth to the recesses of memory as a brilliant, glistening array of glassware and plastic reflects the light in the now unburdened atmosphere. Take something dirty, clean it, and you have the results of your work before you - with evidence to prove and satisfy.
     Compare dishes to writing a letter by hand. A real letter has personal touch and care since it heightens the acuteness and humanness of communication. Letters show the time and commitment to do the task with style in a legible manner for others to appreciate. Yet another advantage of letter writing is that busy hands keep the mind occupied while providing it some freedom to explore its imagination.
     Yes, disadvantages to hard work do exist just like they exist for dish washing and letter writing. Hand-washing dishes aren't sterilized as well as dishwasher-washed dishes; similarly, emails are faster and more easily read than hand written letters. Doing things by hand usually take longer to do and are, thus, more inefficient. Inefficiency cannot only be measured by time though. While emails are faster to read and write, letters are kept for years and cherished.
     Physical labor gives an understanding of how complex objects function. Ever take something apart to figure out how it worked? This knowledge boosts confidence since the knowledge aids in experience to solve problems in the future. Without a broader understanding, inventions remain only dreams. Looking outside of an individual's self, working together builds comradeship with other workers performing similar tasks. This has led to medieval guilds, colonial rebellions, and drawn-out sieges.
     Creations by human hands evoke wonder in all people. Petra, the city carved from stone in the desert of Jordan, is beautiful, and people risked their lives to find it against the will of its Bedouin protectors. The gates of Babylon, carved by emperors such as Nebuchadnezzar, remain glorified artwork even today. This is not to forget the pyramids and temples of Egypt which have elicited awe and envy for five thousand years.
     No, scrubbing dishes might not be the most enjoyable way to spend time. However the net gain involved in the work, the habit-forming condition of necessity, and the character earned from the task all redeem the work's worth.
     The next time a simple task interjects unpleasantness in your schedule, roll up your sleeves, and do it. If a masterpiece worthy of thousands of years of praise isn't the goal, maybe you'll craft an unexpected gem within your own life.

  __    
Agatha Tyche

Little Things of Llife

     To break from the impersonalality of history, science, and social agnst (though they are most satisfying and fulfilling topics!), here is a small poem to celebrate the diversity of the every day life. Not one of my best attempts, but I like it for its simplicity.

The Little Things of Life

These are the things that make me mad.
They are not good at all,
Most of them are bad.
A fast turned winter that skips fall,
Rusty nails stuck in your shoe,
Unrhymed poems, a soggy ball,
A toddler in a pink tutu.

Instead, if I had a chance
I would ask for some of these:
A book so good it makes me prance,
The cedars of the Lebanese,
A quiet place to hide and sleep,
To dive deep down and find a clam,
Soft and gooey mud, knee-deep,
All of this, and plus a yam.

Life, unbalanced, is nonplussed.
Windy storms with lightning strikes,
Your mother yelling in a fuss,
Fishing bass and catching pikes,
Your teacher when you hear her cuss,
A doughnut with some extra glaze,
Getting free rides on a bus,
These surprises do amaze.

Yet my life's mundane.
Rarely have I seen it hail.
No umbrella, and it rains,
Even sometimes, beat by snail,
Oh, Life! You're full of pains!

Yet all these spices do add up.
Bad, good, shock, dull,
Now, let me drink of life, cup.
All this "suffering," has been called.
Cyclic, Fate, or Dualism,
Prepare the food! I will sup.
This is it; I live for Him.
So that's my life, nothing much.

   __    
Agatha Tyche

Rejected Age

     Wisdom is always said to come with age. "Respect your elders." "Age before beauty." Many phrases come down from times when the oldest members of society were highly respected. In modern Western cultures, this trend has ended with the "first come, first served" mentality of business. Since the elderly are no longer a "beneficial" part of the economy and are seen as living out their last days using their children's inheritance. No longer are old men seen as the best to give advice or to tell stories of days gone by. Now we have the internet to find out our options and have movies, television, and the internet, once again, to fulfill our desire for entertainment.
     This is the end result of the French Revolution's impact on the philosophy of the individual coupled with the changes to society brought on by the industrial revolution. How did this come about? As cultural views shifted away from the town, as in medieval periods, views focused much more on individual families. As industrial jobs absorbed workers into cities away from the farms, families were split with brothers or sisters ending up much farther apart than before. As these familial ties were cut, industrial jobs further separated those nuclear families for at least half of the day, six days a week. The weakened bonds of the nuclear family allowed peopled to focus on individual needs and cut themselves away from relational bonds. Thus, the philosophy of individuality reflected the effects of the industrial age.
     An individual's value depended on his contribution to society, usually economical. This led to an assertion of woman's right's beginning in the late nineteenth century and eventually to women's suffrage and jobs outside the home by the twentieth century. Since elderly individuals no longer contributed to the economy, they became burdensome, unnecessary leeches incapable of earning their keep. With this increasingly representing the culture's mood, it may be a small blessing that the life expectancy remained low. However, with the understanding of disease developing in the 1870s and 80s, the influence of unions at the turn of the century, and increasing opportunity for white collar jobs after the global depression of the 1930s, life expectancy rose as the physical requirements for labor dropped.

     How does this explain the West's disrespect for age? There are several reasons. One of the main contributors is the negative connotations age holds as being economically worthless. Coupled with that, as a larger portion of society becomes elderly than ever before, the novelty of wisdom with age is lost. In  agricultural societies threatened by insects, disease, drought, famine, and war, to achieve a great age demonstrates luck, resolve, or intelligence. Once these achievements are removed, age becomes a normal stage of life, almost expected. This is especially true when someone is killed in a car accident; the newspaper and family will mourn of "a life cut short." In the West age does not represent wealth, resourcefulness, intelligence, or skill. It is an expected "right" of life.This is due in large part to the vast number of people that live to ever-increasing old age.
     Another reason for the fall of the great age of life is that information is readily available everywhere. Historically, few people could read and all relied on the memories of the elderly to predict the weather with knowledge of previous disasters on how to handle current troubles. Now, we have the recorded knowledge of generations over the centuries easily at our disposal. In more recent years the advent of the television neatly removed a large portion of reading from the news. Furthermore, in the last decade or so, the internet, cell phones, and now smart phones, are allowing knowledge accessible at any time without need to consult the wise men that sit by the city gate. 
     These rapid changes also render the elderly obsolete from the current generations. Yes, my great grandfather had to walk to school, grew almost everything he ate, didn't have a radio for the first part of his life, and didn't have air conditioning until he was middle aged. I don't even think he ever used a computer, and he died years before cell phones were used by more than billionaires. The millennial generation, and to some extent their parents, see no need for the knowledge of the past that their ancestors offer. A little girl may adore the fact that her grandmother grew up with a horse just outside, but she will shriek and scream if told that the rabbits and chickens in the cages next to it would be that night's dinner. 
     The previous generations are tidily "removed" from the current age with the computer. Generally, the elderly are unable to adapt to the computer because of its recent existence while their eight year old grandson can use a smart phone to bring up an atlas of America that would have been 600 pages in your grandparent's trunk for their road trip even just twenty years ago.
     Living memory is no longer valued. Too much is changed to render their stories relevancy in life; they exist only for entertainment when the power goes out. Once again, documentation of the most significant events answers most of our questions. The largest novelties the elderly can explain are the radio, television, ice box, and other outdated inventions that modern culture hardly notices, much less cares about.

     But really, why should we respect them? As explained, their social significance has been rendered moot. What causation can explain the need to hold on to agricultural and historic tendencies in an industrial age of individualism?
     One compelling cause which I know to affect nearly every individual alive today is that with the near guarantee of reaching old age ourselves, we should care for the elderly to set an example of precedence for the generation that will care for us. While much of the knowledge of the older generation is, yes, now no longer applicable to our ever day needs, the stories they will tell can inspire, encourage, instruct us on how to avoid mistakes, love through hurt, sacrifice willingly, and many other timeless traits. My great uncles and grandfathers held years of farming and tinkering knowledge, and if they had to make a run on the store, it was the hardware store because they didn't have the right tool to do the job themselves, not to buy a whole new piece to replace the old.

     Respect the elderly. They have lived life and can aid in directing you through the rapids of youth.
Who knows? You might actually find a best friend and kindred spirit, separated only by time.


    __    
Agatha Tyche