Who doesn’t know the scene from the movie "The Adventures of Shurik", where the foreman, a talker, lying on a straw, exhorts the verzil, sentenced to 15 days, to work hard? In these frames, the pseudo-educator with enviable agility issued some of the most famous proverbs about industriousness and laziness.
Labor ennobles
In this all sciences are united - natural, humanitarian and social. Even if we discard the dubious theory of Darwin (the author himself doubted it) that the work supposedly turned a monkey into a person, there will remain an equally significant fact: the worker is further from stupidity than an idler. On this occasion, the people and the saying added: "Drones are much in the way."
It is not worth identifying work only with hard physical labor: after all, it can be expressed in intellectual efforts, and in the movements of the soul, and in inventions. Wherever you look, human labor is applied everywhere, be it transport, at home or baked bread, books or wells, beautiful dresses and painted dishes, medicines and strollers for babies. In the absence of labor, would such convenient and useful things appear?
Without human efforts, there would be no running water, electricity, telephones, computers, airplanes, and much more. Everything in the world, excluding mother nature, is the result of human labor.
Why is labor so revered by the people?
So the person is arranged that one of his basic needs is self-realization, creativity. This discovery was made by the famous American psychologist Abraham Maslow: his hierarchy of needs has been successfully used to this day.
Labor is always creation, creativity: it raises a person to the next level, reveals his resources, gives a feeling of his own need and significance. The common expression "to realize oneself" is to reveal one’s potential, to work hard.
Recently, due to growing workaholism, workload and stress in megacities, the word “work” is increasingly acquiring a negative connotation of “slavery”. There is also a version about the more ancient origin of this word, which, alas, the “grandfathers” deny from the science of linguistics: the people's memory perceives the work as RA - a particle of God (joy, joy, joy). Bright and pure words! Probably, the word “work” once had the same meaning, until it came under the millstones of a consumer society.
This original meaning of the word “work”, identical to creativity, was embodied in folk wisdom .
Proverbs and sayings about labor
Attitude to work is similar among all peoples of the Earth; there is hardly any ethnic group that would have a negative attitude towards work: even nomadic gypsies work, although they understand this obligation somewhat more specifically.
In different national traditions, there are various proverbs about work:
- You can’t catch a hare without labor.
- A lazy dog ​​is worse than a stuffed animal: it scares animals even.
- Quick work, but with flaws.
- Reapering sickle is always brilliant.
- Do someone else's business as your own.
- They recognize a bird in flight, and a person in work.
Obviously, the most diverse peoples have similar ideas about hard work, which resulted in proverbs about labor.
Russian proverbs about labor
A considerable layer of Slavic folk wisdom is made up of proverbs and sayings about work:
- To live without business is only to smoke the sky.
- If you want to eat kalachi, don’t sit on the stove.
- Finished business - walk boldly.
- Life is measured not by years, but by labor.
- The case of the master is afraid.
- Human labor feeds, and laziness spoils.
Proverbs about work and work do not raise doubts about how people relate to hardworking people. However, you can’t hide another layer of proverbs that shows the flip side of the coin.
"Work is not a wolf"
“This is not necessary,” the notorious foreman added embarrassedly. Indeed, the saying "Work is not a wolf - he will not run away into the forest" voices a completely different point of view on work. Most likely, proverbs about work reflected the real state of affairs, and in fact at all times there were workaholics who were too keen on work. They spoiled life both for themselves and others. There were loafers and parasites, over whom the popular rumor, through proverbs, laughed and mocked.
And in our history, the "happened" is by no means the most laudable period of feudalism, when serfs "plowed" someone else's cornfield, often contrary to their own talents. What pleasure is there from work? So such contradictory proverbs were born! However, if you use them wisely, then today they will benefit everyone. The main thing in the work is to observe the rule of the "golden mean."
Here are some folk sayings that moderate the ardor of the working man and, as it were, tell him that the time has come to relax, take care of yourself, silently think, take time for your loved ones.
- Take it with your mind, not a hump.
- The work of fools loves.
- Hinder business with idleness - you will live a century with fun.
- God sent work, but hell took the hunt.
- You can’t do all the work.
So the people were very observant, and in their sayings laid down the rules, without which a person simply loses his human appearance.