An unexpected blessing...

Been a crazy ill day, much of it.  Lots of lying on the floor.  Lots of symptoms all at once instead just a few here and there ... my preferred, more manageable endurable existence.

I got to talk with Becky, twice, though, which is always cheering.  And I watched/listened to this:




This is absolutely worth an hour of your time.  Heck, you really should be paying to hear such a thought-provoking discussion.

Something that struck me in here is his story about looking at his then 14-year-old and seeing that she was on a road (or in a rut) of consumerism, so he shipped her off to a cattle farm to learn about work. He sees value in a life that has known some privation rather than to have experienced only wealth and ease. Not, mind you, that he and his wife are wealthy, but in the sense that all Americans, in comparison to much of the world, are fantastically wealthy.

When I twelve-years-old, I started cleaning houses for money.  At twelve-yeras-old, I knew how to clean so well that my mother's interior design clients and friends hired me. The why behind my needing to earn money is negative, but I was profoundly blessed with the gift of understanding the value of labor at such a young age. Later on, during the pursuit of all three college degrees, one of the ways I avoided having to take out student loans until the final year of my Ph.D. was to to clean houses. And that work ethic stands by me now, even when my body has failed me, still striving to do what I can do, because their is still a blessing in the labor of my hands.

As an ex-college professor, I absolutely wouldn't have become "ex" if I was part of an education system that he envisions, a multi-layered, multi-modal affair where the values of learning and of work feed off of each other.

There is oh, so much good stuff in here!  I plan on watching it again when I am less ill and better able to concentrate.  Still, this was an unexpected blessing in a rather trying day.