by Bohdan Rewko (Bo of T.O.)

Created on: January 13, 2010   Last Updated: February 23, 2010

If you want to know where you're going, you need to understand from where you came. This applies to the concept of what it means to work for a living as much as it does to any other significant aspect of life. The Bible says that God said to Adam, "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground". This indicates how far back negative connotations have been associated with work.

But work need not be drudgery. In fact, work is a contributing factor to what defines every one of us. In times past names were assigned to people on the basis of their contrubution to society. The bearers of the names Smith, Farmer, and Baker leave no doubt about the services their ancestors once provided. Our perception of work however, has changed dramatically over the course of time as technology and circumstance have overtaken man in his efforts to give meaning to himself and the world around.

It has been said that the past century is the only time in which individuals have been born not knowing what they will do during the course of their life. Though this may be an exaggeration, the sentiment is clear. Of course talent knows no class or cultural bounds. However the exclusionary practises of guilds of the past often determined who could practise certain trades. Similar walls protect various professions today, but greater freedom and opportunities in education exist for the truly gifted to be able to scale them.

In the beginning, work could be defined as the labor associated with providing for the survival of oneself and one's family. Traditionally, the family structure consisted of a man, his wife, and their children. It often included extended family for the simple reason that many hands made for lighter work.

Anthropologists maintain that human beings were originally hunters and gatherers, but there is evidence to suggest that farming took on a prominent role very early in man's history. From the beginning, man has been a social being, and there is also archaeological evidence to suggest that villages and cities arose very quickly. An agrarian lifestyle was never truly the principle lifestyle of man at any stage of history.

Many ancient societies practised a form of urban agriculture where gardening played a significant part in feeding members of urban communities. This was true of the American Aztecs and Incas, as well as of middle eastern societies. The Bible prescribed the layout of cities in which large tracts of land adjacent

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