What is the Protestant Work Ethic or is it the Puritan Work Ethic (PWE)? Simply put, to me, PWE means that you have no value (in society, your family, and to yourself) unless you are productive every day and get all your work done before taking time out to play. The problem is that there is never time to play because there is always more work to do.

Right here, right now I am declaring war on PWE and the idea that a fully ticked off to-do list at the end of the day is a valid reason to feel virtuous and self-satisfied.

Raised in the country, everyday chores came first, then school, then homework, and then play, which was a book to read or an hour of TV before bed. Ah, but they were there on the weekends that you say. My childhood home had three acres of grass and trees, plus a barn with horses and chickens, all of which needed to be cleared one way or another, so Saturday mornings were spent working.

My father euphemistically called Saturday morning chores the “Saturday Olympics,” and the competition was who among the four kids could complete their work first. At the age of 10, he was seriously affected by my father’s PWE modus operandi. Until the tasks were finished, it was not played even on weekends.

Now in my 60s, after a lifetime of working and hardly playing, I retired and had to face what I needed to do to keep this PWE and the self esteem it gave me going. I’m an artist and a writer, but I can’t “create” 8 hours a day, so what was I going to do with the “free” time I now had? For true PWE types, there is no such thing as free time. If you’re not being “productive,” you’re wasting time—valuable time that could be spent doing something worthwhile for yourself and others. My solution: 9 months after retiring, I moved alone, across the country to a community where I didn’t know anyone, forcing me to “get down to business,” make friends, and get involved.

Now, after four years of uninterrupted volunteer work for my church, a Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, which is powered by the sweat of volunteers committed to good works, and for my community, namely the downtown revitalization effort, I am exhausted, and neither have I. learned to play what retirement is supposed to be all about.

Too much of a good thing eventually becomes a bad thing and that’s where I’m standing at the moment. Believing in the virtue of the Protestant work ethic has left me burned out, exhausted, and with a sore left shoulder. In fact, it’s my shoulder that I have to thank for this little essay, because when my body screams at me, I know it’s just a physical manifestation of a non-physical problem that I need to seriously think about. Having spent a lifetime with my “shoulder behind the wheel,” it’s time to stop, think, and think out loud on paper (i.e., e-paper) and figure this out. (Yes, I’m a big believer in the mind-body connection, a topic for future essays, I promise.)

The real culprit is, of course, my deeply held belief that “work” is good and the game is… well, if not exactly bad, then certainly frivolous and wasteful. Yes, of course I know all the research on the importance of the game to “recharge” one’s energy tanks to get back to his life’s work, but I never really bought into any of it. How could I? The PWE possessed me, inside and out, consciously and more importantly, unconsciously.

I believe it is one’s beliefs, those deep, mostly unconscious ones, that create our realities, so chanting affirmations of what one wants to have, as promoted in the best-seller “The Secret,” doesn’t work. if those claims go against one’s core beliefs. My core belief in the virtue of work is not unconscious, but the depth, breath, and scope of this belief was, until I really began to look at it, write about it, and question it.

“Why is work such a good thing? Who told you that? Who sold you that list of goods?”

The answer was, of course, my self-evident truth… BECAUSE IT IS. Everyone knows that work is good, that you need to work to get ahead, to earn your rightful place in society. Nobody likes a slacker or those freeloaders who live off the sweat of others. Where would we be if our early pioneers and founding fathers hadn’t worked hard?

Of course, I learned my PWE from my parents, namely my father, who was, among other things, a Boy Scout leader and tireless community volunteer. No wonder then that he turned me into a social worker.

But, too much of a good thing eventually turns into a bad thing. So how do I undo that belief or at least modify it to allow fun and play to creep in?

The first thing I had to ask myself was: “What is the opposite of being an industrious and efficient worker”, because while that was my goal all these years, I must also have been trying to avoid being the opposite… a slacker, free load slacker. I hate the lazy, free-charging slacker. I hate people who don’t carry their own weight. I hate doing other people’s work for them.

The next question is not for the faint of heart. What’s wrong with being a lazy, free-charging slacker? For those affected by the PWE, that’s like asking, what’s wrong with cannibalism?

What’s wrong with laziness and being a freeloader? Are you kidding? What’s not bad? Bravado, stutter, stutter, choke! Next question?

Once again, what’s so terrible about being a lazy, free-charging slacker? Peel the onion. Keep asking the impossible questions. Keep challenging those self-evident beliefs.

You (I) might as well ask things like, who was a free-charging, lazy slacker in his life, in his childhood? Whose job were you doing for them when everything was bad? Were you put in an adult role when you were still a child? Who have you spent your entire life trying to avoid being like?

Now here is the problem. What we hate most in others is what we also hate in ourselves. It is just the other side of the same coin in which our greatest virtue lives. The problem is that we hate to admit that the flip side exists, but it does. So if you have enough personal courage to face your dark side, those characteristics you hate the most in others, then you must accept that side of yourself, forgive yourself, and then forgive those you have been trying to be like. all your life. . Oh! Forgive lazy, worthless, and freeloading slackers? This is hard.

Now go one step further. Consider if you wouldn’t secretly like to be one of those lazy, free-charging slackers. Oh! This is hard.

Wait… give me a moment… would I sometimes like to be lazy, goof off and let others do my job? Oh Universe, forgive me but… err, ah, gee, I… I… would. Lord, have mercy, but it pains me to admit this.

Now we are getting somewhere.

Look again. What’s so good about being a hard worker? approval from others? Actually? Well, maybe, even probably, but is it worth it? Really worth it? You may have needed those “at-a-girls” and “at-a-boys” when you were little, but do you need them now? Really? Wouldn’t you rather have a little fun? Wouldn’t you rather be a little lazy? Wouldn’t you rather relax a bit? Ah come on, admit it. Isn’t the idea starting to feel a little good?

Now here’s the real trick. If you are going to change your modus operandi, you have to do it in small, sometimes small steps. Big steps, quick steps, like the proverbial “hare”, result in swings of the pendulum back to square one. When it comes to changing yourself, the turtle wins the day.

What’s wrong with the Protestant work ethic? Nothing, unless it’s all you know.