November 25, 2015

Work like a horse


Once I heard that horses keep going until they cannot, i.e. they work until they collapse and die. If you’ve read Animal Farm you may remember Boxer, he was the horse who adopted the motto “I will work harder”. There are so many lessons in that book and so many warnings. But despite his hard work not ostensibly leading to any good I still found myself admiring the character of Boxer, maybe there is value in hard work itself? An athlete, on making his final attempt at climbing a mountain he’d fail to climb many times before, was given this advice by his wife “climb it like the horses”, he finally succeeded to reach the top. Horses don’t quit unless they no longer have the capacity -not fear, not anxiety, but the biological capacity, to keep going. As we go through life can we ask ourselves to keep going? To work for the sake of hard work? To not let our imagination and the limits we set for ourselves keep us from moving forward?

I remember being in grade school and it sometimes shocks me to recall how little we valued hard work, slacking off  always presented itself as the better choice. The cool kids did as little as they could get away with. I regret the attitude I and my fellow classmates had. Maybe if we bothered to work hard in Algebra despite seeing its unimportance maybe we would have at least felt pride in working hard and doing our best.

Boxer may not be the best example because his hard work in the end was betrayed by those who he dedicated his life to. Yet I don’t think hard work is always about the end goal sometimes there is joy in reaching your full potential. But one can only hope in the end we will have something to show for it.

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If you’re interested in picking up this classic: Animal Farm, 50th Anniversary Edition

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