Hard Working
When I was young, my parents always told me how hard working they were in mainland China. Now, they can have a better living standard after moving to Hong Kong, so they would like to ask my sisters and I to work hard. Facing to this advice, I always cannot fully accept. If what they said was correct, why do we still need to carry so many old clothing to our relatives in mainland China? Is it because our relatives not hard working enough? Although I have a wonder about what my dad and mum said, I do still believe that there is a “mystery” staying behind.
I tried to remember the details the dialogues between my parents and I in order to find out the answer of the “mystery”. I remember that whenever father told me about his life in mainland China; the every single step from sowing to reaping, his eyes would always become very bright due to the happiness obtained from his job. Soren Kierkegaard has mentioned “laziness”, he believed that laziness is a kind of “soft hopelessness”. That means a person performs himself/ herself in a hopeless way. I think the reason that our parents were so hard working in the past, was because they were able to see all the little steps and changes in their jobs. When they finished a whole job, they were able to see the whole process; they found they were actually the “creator” of the crop. That’s why my parents could experience the existence and importance of themselves in the jobs.
In our new generation, we can hardly find that kind of happiness nowadays. Many statistics show that the overall total working hour of Hong Kong people is increasing. However, less people find satisfaction and happiness from their jobs. “Study” and “Work” are no longer meaningful stuffs; they are just a tool to ensure our status of “money” in the future. Besides, “hard working” now becomes a must to fulfill our employers’ needs and expectations. No matter if we are really busy with something; we still need to pretend to be very “busy” and “hard working” when the boss is standing just next to us. If you do not act in this way, you will be in a great trouble!
I remembered that I have also used this kind of pretending skill when I was studying in a secondary school. Every year, I always felt a “long distance” from those outstanding students standing in the prize stage. For those who are as lazy as me, only the “improvement prize” was a little bit more practical. As we guess know from the name, “improvement prize”, this was especially designed for those who had a large improvement in their academic results. At the same time, teachers would defiantly like this kind of students because they were hard working! One of my classmates has discovered the following phenomena from his “research”; those who obtained the “improvement prize” had these features:
1) Being given a bad merit before
2) Necessary to meet a social worker
3) 8.25 scores increased in the average academic mark
4) One grade increased in conduct
5) Good relationship with teachers
I have heard that there was really a classmate to do these 5 things and so he got the “improvement prize”. Teachers thought that he had a good attitude and so allowed him to continue study in school. Although my average academic mark was 2 scores higher than him, I was clicked out from school finally. In the filtration system of “hard working”, people are only dressed in a suit of “performing” and “pretending” clothes.
The hard working atmosphere in modern society lets me recall a myth from Greece, Sisyphus got a punishment form the God. He had to transfer a big stone to the top of the hill, and then let it fall down; he did it again and again endlessly. Modern people have to feel the helplessness from this incantation because of the environment that they are in. However, for the previous generation like my parents, every step they did was actually to flight with the God; it showed the endless energy of the life.