Work, Relevance, and Meaning
The paradox of grounded villagers and floating urbanites—and how to remain centered amidst AI disruption.
Recently, a lady friend of mine complained to me that her children were so lazy that, if she weren’t their mother, she would hate them. “They are just so very lazy,” she said, exhausted, “the scene disgusts me.”
I asked if she had told them how their behavior made her feel, to which she explained that it’s simply impossible for them to change. Perhaps it was a generational thing, she added; maybe the young just don’t care about being hardworking anymore.
This woman, like me, grew up somewhere rural. I understood her very well. I tried to explain to her that we were hardworking because we had to.
If I didn’t milk the cow, there would be no milk to cook tea. If we didn’t plant and cultivate, there would be no harvest, which meant no grain, which meant starvation. If I took a nap one afternoon and didn’t go to fetch water, that meant a household where you couldn’t bathe or wash anything.
In the village, everything ran lik…
