Labor Day 2009: Reflecting on the loss of labor

The American work ethic was always simple: Work hard, get ahead.

Turns out, prosperity is extraordinarily more complex than that.

It was Thomas Edison who observed, "Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends, there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence and honest purpose as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing."

In today's era, "work hard" has meant "work harder," perhaps to shoulder the burden inflicted by "right sizing," perhaps to stay ahead of the challenges of explosive technology and ever-changing lifestyles, perhaps for the tough task of job searching when the old job has gone. And "get ahead" has often meant "survive."

Most of us today, more so than at any time this generation can recall, know someone who is out of work.

More poignantly, most of us today know many. Relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues. Or in the cases of thousands of those reading these words, me. In the vast majority of cases, we suspect, they are talented and motivated people who never expected and only shortly worried that they would ever lose their jobs.

Labor Day became a holiday more than 100 years ago. Originally a day of union picnics and demonstrations, it has evolved over the years to become a tribute to the American worker and to observe the contributions working men and women have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of the country.

Unfortunately, it's also become a holiday with a significance that fades more than any other. We take the day off and enjoy a picnic or a cookout, but we think of this Monday more as summer's last escape than as an homage to the beauty and the worth of labor.

"We work," writer and philosopher Elbert Hubbard once said, "to become, not to acquire."

The poetry in that observation is both profound but inexact. It emphasizes wonderfully the predominant way in which we define ourselves but ignores that food must be put on the table. The reality is, we work for a little bit of both. Thus summarizes the complexity of our working lives.

But what then, when we're no longer working? What then? The latest figures show 9.7 percent of the work force on the unemployment lists, more than at any time in the past two decades. We can't think of Labor Day this year without thinking of those who no longer labor.

Hubbard's observation applies to them as well. What do they become when they no longer work? How do they acquire?

As we assembled this essay, we asked many of them for their thoughts, and they generously responded.

Most acknowledged the assault to their sense of who they are, the sudden lack of purpose and structure that can afflict their day.

A message we heard, often and again, was the need to focus on the becoming rather than on where you want to be. Become the better parent or partner you always wished you had time to be. If you can't work, volunteer. If you can't land a full-time job, make a part-time position do. If you don't have a network, build one. If you don't have the skills, go back to school. If you do have the skills, teach them to others. But mainly, pick yourself off the sofa and do.

This was their inspiring message, and on this Labor Day, we forward it to all others who suffer from lack of work.

They had one other message. It was almost universal. In these difficult days of their lives, it was the loss of workplace friendships, the loss of day-to-day interaction, that haunted them most.

And in these difficult days of their lives, it is the friendships that endured that sustained them.

And that is the Labor Day message we forward to those who still work: Pick up the phone.