after a particularly stressful day at work, i was left questioning the very nature and value of work, as seems to be a common preoccupation of mine these days.
the good book tells us that work, or toil, began as punishment after adam and eve fell from their unblemished state and position in the garden. adam was forced to eat his food by the sweat of his brow (correct me if i am misquoting) and to work the newly resistant earth for his and eve’s living.
what, then, was the nature of work in the garden, or was the concept painfully and terribly birthed after the fall, as eve’s firstborn would be? it seems we are left guessing, or probing the imagination, although one of our greatest literary figures, one john milton has clearly given some thought (or been given to some inspiration from his proclaimed ‘muse’) to the subject.
in my last year at university, i took a literature class devoted to the study of milton and in particular, or the landmark paradise lost epic. from what i gleaned from the professor during classes i actually attended, not to mention the periods of intense (‘er’?) concentration in between caffeine breaks, it seems that work was merely an extension of nature; that is, work came naturally in a perfect state; one needed only to do what one was meant to do, and the nature of work was the perfection of perfection. one should remember that in the miltonic universe, and in a pre-lapsarian conception of things, that there were varying degrees of perfection. for example, a fruit-bearing tree is an example of a perfect thing; plucking and eating said fruit (or opening one’s mouth under said tree?) would be a perfection of a perfect thing, and considered work. now, i don’t know if i am confusing anyone, or perhaps most of all myself (it’s been a while since i stashed those notes someplace dusty and mildewed, and i have no intention of digging them up for this paltry entry), but that’s how i remember it
how then, does this translate to 2008 (and actually, everything we’ve done post-fall)? it seems to me that this notion is still in our human make-up, perhaps this is the reason we feel the iron-clad drudgery of work we are not suited to; it bears the mark of punishment, of the lashings of gabriel’s fiery sword, perhaps. maybe i’m just psychotic and stressed, i don’t know. some writers say that writing comes from an inner-place; it is a perpetual itch or birthing; when they cannot write they feel incomplete and restless, though the work is tedious and at times, impossible. is this then living with one foot in the garden? i really don’t know, and right now, am too tired to write more.
