I’m Fixin’ To Take The Day Off

I’m fixin’ to take the day off.

I like Labor Day because it’s different from all the other holidays in the year. All the others are more or less connected with religion, conflict, battles, people’s triumph over other people, glories achieved by one nation over another, or strife and discord for power and greed. Labor day is devoted to no one person, dead or alive, no religious sect, nation or race, but rather just to working folks taking a break from it all.

Traditionally, Labor Day is celebrated by most Americans as the symbolic end of the summer. And it’s a time when everybody attempts to finish their work on Friday so they can enjoy the long weekend, but as everybody knows, the only person to ever get his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.

However, it was politics which gave birth to the holiday. Labor Day became a national holiday in 1894 after it was rushed through Congress and signed into law a mere six days after the end of a labor strike.
I suppose back then you could buy votes by giving away holidays. Things are more like they are today than they ever were before.

My personal history as a laborer is less than sterling. My first job was in an orange juice factory but I couldn’t concentrate. I tried my hand as a lumberjack but I couldn’t hack it, then I got on at a shoe factory but I didn’t fit in.

But I finally found steady work and labored at it for many years. I knew the end was nigh when things began to show up on my review like, “He brings a lot of joy when he leaves the room; It takes him two hours to watch 60 minutes; The men would follow him anywhere out of morbid curiosity, When he opens his mouth it is to change feet.”

But I also found a lot of stress in the work place. I learned that no amount of advance planning will ever replace dumb luck, and by the time you make ends meet they move the ends.

According to Dr. Steven Sultanoff, humor is good for labor. He says work is often associated with stress, and humor is a great reliever of stress because it makes us feel good, and we can’t feel good and feel stress at the same time. At the moment we experience humor, feelings like depression, anger and anxiety dissolve.

I agree totally with Dr. Steve, because I know if you smile when things go wrong you already have someone in mind to blame. And always remember, the whole world isn’t against you—there are billions of people who don’t care one way or the other.

Hope you enjoyed Labor Day. I may be fixing to take every Monday off.