Dighton Rehoboth High School - Golden Log Yearbook (Dighton, MA)

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Va ledictor THE DIGNITY OF WORK Graduation marks a transition, a change from one stage of life to another. It is consequently a sub- dued group of students that you see before you today, forwe, the Seniors of Dighton High School, like thousands of other graduating classes, look askance into the future and await the opportunities of to- morrow in a spirit of awe and expectation. All of us dream of high accomplishment-be it in one field or another-that will at the same time increase our powers and broaden our capacity for understand- ing, for service, and for enjoyment. However, the future is built upon the past and at a time when we are ready to take a step forward, it is only logical that we cast a look backward. In taking stock of past achievement, we realize that nothing has been accomplished except through work. Work is a necessary factor, not merely for purposes of survival, but for the higher pur- pose of fulfillment. This realization, however, need not be distressing to us if we consider work in the true role it plays in our lives and if we prepare conscientiously to perform it as well as we can. For the quality of our work depends largely on our attitude toward it. Now work may be toil. Toil involves drudgery and is mechanical and perfunctoryg it is devoid of personality, beauty or power. Toil is submitted to, as an unescapable evil. Man's heart and mind turn away from it in aversion and disgust. He cannot use it as a medium for self-expression and consequently feels stunted and thwarted by a continued expenditure of effort from which he derives no power, no pleasure. It may be well to point out here that under the regime of a totalitarian state, where freedom of thought as well as freedom of enterprise is banned, no activity can be anything else but toil, toil that even degenerates into slavery since slavery is any activity carried out carelessly by compulsionof fear, tyranny, or starvation. Anyone who is always subject to the direction of another and who does not have the freedom to govern his own actions is a slave. A democracy on the other hand, offers freedom of enterprise, that is, the right to choose one's work and to perform it in the manner which to the worker seems most efficient, providing it does not jeopardize the common good. As contrasted to toil, work involves thoughtful planning, organized skill, and the sense of per- sonal growth through productive effort. True, no one is born with skillg it must be acquired through practice. Practice means directed purposeful effort. Now many of us do not like the word effort. That is because we look at its meaning too superficially. In deeper analysis, effort indeed is living. We all love life, the activities that life makes possible. Yet none of these activities can be performed Without effort, from learning to walk to learning to read. Effort is the testing of our physical and mental powers to overcome difficulties in the process of growth. The presence of a need, the birth of an am- bition, the desire to render service are all incentives to effort. Skill in a given field is developed through courageous persevering effort in that field. Those who are afraid of this effort will never gain the freedom of skill, nor achieve the real status of a worker. Work can and should be raised to a still higher level. lt can be made the source of deep personal happiness by the realization of service to society. Aworker conscious of the value of his work to his fel- lowmen is happy in his contribution to their welfare and happiness. Everyone strives for happiness, and to be able to derive it from one's work seems to be the highest achievement of active life. The worker, in fact, always thinks of better ways of doing his work, of enriching it with the gifts of his best endeavor, of stamping it with a truly personal seal. Thus art, the doing of useful work in a spe- cially beautiful and outstanding way, is born. Work then, far from being a task, becomes the mainstay and the zest'of life, the worker, no matter in what field he may be engaged, is an artist, one who works as though he were at play. In this respect man can take some hints from nature at her graceful work. Nature never rests and yet is always in repose, she never ceases to work and yet always seems to be at play. The amount of power involved in the change from winter to summer is incalculable, but the change is accom- plished so quietly and gradually that it is impossible to associate the name of toil with it. The com- plete ease of nature at her work is unbelievable. The secret of this silent, invisible, easy play of force lies perhaps in perfect adaptation of instrument to task, in complete harmony between power, meth- ods, and ultimate aims. It appears, then, that whatever we have envisioned for the future, our first concern must be to face work unafraid, to undertake it with unstinting energy, and to recognize the dignity of any en- deavor that not only develops character through self-discipline in the practice of a skill, but which also becomes a source of happiness in the value of the product to self and to society. --RUTH ROUNSEVELL Twenty-six