Labor of Love

Today in the United States we celebrate Labor Day and the many men and women who worked hard, sacrificed, and fought to create manageable and fair work weeks and raise wages for working people in our country. It’s a day when we honor the balance of work and ‘life’. I have always been fascinated by the concept of work and labor. People brag about their ‘work ethic’ or how ‘hard’ they work for something. Labor in its Latin root is a struggle, a toil. When women are in labor with their children, they are in pain, struggling to release the child from the womb. We’ve conditioned ourselves on so many levels to believe that what we do with our lives, our work, is labor. But is it a labor of love?

Most people work 40-50 hours per week. They spend more time with their colleagues than their families. If this scenario describes you, I want you to ask yourself whether you love what you do for those 40-50 hours each week. Do you love it? If not, is there another way for you to labor? I believe that if we set an intention to bring more of what we love into the world, the Universe conspires to support that intention. I dream of a world where people labor in love. Where they spend those 40-50 hours a week bringing light and peace to the world in whatever capacity they choose. In every ‘job’ there is an opportunity to radiate joy. If you haven’t found this yet, then just for today I’d like you to consider how to make your labor into a labor of love.

When you love your job, you make everyone you come into contact with feel loved too. When you love your job, it doesn’t feel like labor, toil, struggle; it feels like a natural extension of your being. I believe we can fall back in love with a job we’ve learned to dislike. I also believe we can set an intention and make a living doing what we naturally love to do.

May your Labor Day be blessed and may you find new ways to radiate joy and love in your labors. So it is.