About working hard

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My four year old grandson was one day being very difficult. He wanted his mother to give him a hundred rupee note, which she naturally refused. He started sulking, and as a grandparent, I felt it was my duty to explain things to him in a manner he could understand. I talked to him about how hard his father worked to earn money. Being an officer in the navy, he was often called upon duty to sail for long periods, had to go on the ship every day, and so on. He listened very patiently and seriously. After pondering over my words for some time in all earnestness, he told me, 'you know Ammamma, I work very hard, really very very hard', with all the emphasis he could muster. He genuinely believed he worked hard enough to deserve the hundred rupees, which he was being denied so unjustl. That got me thinking about how we define work, and that perhaps he was right from his perspective. Right from the time you are born, you have to work hard and keep at it, often when you don't want to. A baby has to work hard to make itself understood, whether it is milk that it wants or the diaper changed. A child has to go to school when all he may want to do is play at home. So also at every stage in life, you have to really struggle and work hard, whether you like it or not. With maturity you learn to like what you do, or at least pretend to yourself and to others that you do