Proverbs about labor - folk wisdom

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Who is not familiar with the scene from the movie "Shurik's Adventures", where the chatterbox superintendent, lying on the straw, exhorts the big man, sentenced to 15 days, to work hard? In these frames, the pseudo-educator, with enviable agility, issued some of the most famous proverbs about hard work and laziness.

Work ennobles

All sciences are united in this - natural, humanitarian and social. Even if we discard the dubious theory of Darwin (the author himself doubted it) that supposedly labor turned a monkey into a man, then an equally significant fact remains: a worker is farther from stupidity than an idler. On this occasion, the people added up the proverb: "Drone is a lot of trickery."

Work should not be identified 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 - everywhere human labor is applied, whether it be transport, houses or baked bread, books or wells, beautiful dresses and painted dishes, medicines and strollers for babies. Without labor, would there be such convenient and useful things?

Without human efforts, there would be no running water, electricity, telephones, computers, airplanes, and much more. Everything in the world, except Mother Nature, is the result of human labor.

Why is labor so revered by the people?

This is how a person works, 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.

Work is always creation, creativity: it raises a person to the next level, reveals his resources, gives a sense of his own need and significance. The common expression "to realize oneself" means to reveal one's potential, to work hard.

Recently, due to the 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, is denied by the "grandfathers" from the science of linguistics: folk memory perceives work as RA - a particle of God (joy, ra-arc, ra-dawn). Light and pure words! Probably, the word "work" once had the same meaning, until it fell under the millstones of the consumer society.

Folk wisdom imprinted this original meaning of the word "work", identical to creativity.

Proverbs and sayings about work

Attitude towards work is similar for everyonethe peoples of the Earth; there is hardly an ethnic group that would have a negative attitude towards work: even nomadic gypsies work, although they understand this duty in a somewhat specific way.

In different national traditions, there are various proverbs about labor:

• Without labor, you can't catch a hare.
• A lazybones is worse than a scarecrow: at least it scares the animals.
• Fast work, but with flaws.
• The reaping sickle is always shiny.
• Do someone else's business as your own.
• A bird is recognized in flight, and a person is recognized at work.

Obviously, different peoples have similar ideas about industriousness, which resulted in proverbs about work.

Russian proverbs about labor

A considerable layer of Slavic folk wisdom is made up of proverbs and sayings about work:

• To live without work - only to smoke the sky.
• If you want to eat kalachi, don't sit on the stove.
• Finished business - walk boldly.
• Life is not measured by years, but by work.
• The case of the master is afraid.
• Work feeds a person, but laziness spoils.

Proverbs about labor and work do not raise doubts about how the people treated hardworking people. However, you can't hide another layer of proverbs that shows the other side of the coin.

Work is not a wolf

"This is not necessary," the notorious superintendent added embarrassedly. Indeed, the adage "Work is not a wolf - it will not run away into the forest" voices a completely different point of view on labor. Most likely proverbsabout work reflected the real state of affairs, but at all times there were workaholics who were too fond of work. They ruined the lives of themselves and those around them. There were idlers and parasites, over whom the popular rumor laughed and made fun of them through proverbs.

And also in our history there "happened" by no means the most laudable period of feudalism, when serfs "plowed" someone else's field, often contrary to their own talents. What is the joy of work? So such contradictory proverbs were born! However, if you use them wisely, then today they will benefit everyone. The main thing in labor is to observe the rule of the "golden mean".

Here are some folk sayings that moderate the ardor of the worker and, as it were, tell him that it's time to relax, take care of himself, think silently, devote time to your loved ones.

• Take the work of the mind, not the hump.
• The work of fools loves.
• Mix business with idleness - you will live a century with fun.
• God sent work, but the devil took away hunting.
• You can't do everything.

So the people were very observant, and in their sayings they laid down those rules, without which a person simply loses his human appearance.