Hard Work and Honesty

bydrjec

8.3K followers

4 years ago

I learned a great deal from my Dad. Because he grew up without a father, he began to help put food on the table for his siblings when he was really young. He wasn't good at doing "fun stuff" because he never did fun stuff as a kid. So, we were always working together. We patched the roof, trimmed trees or fixed the plumbing. It was always fun and I learned to do a lot of things Plus, I felt great when he would tell a neighbor that he and I fixed the driveway or something.

Dad always had some kind of a saying to teach about life. Several times when I was growing up, after he offered his usual introductory sentence, "Let me tell you something...", he put two pieces of advice into one saying. "You can work hard for what you want, but if you don't have integrity, you'll never have anything." When I was a boy, I thought he meant that I shouldn't lie about why I didn't cut the grass.

To Dad, hard work and honesty were the foundation of life. Credit cards didn't exist then. You could "run a tab" in an emergency or "buy something on time," but generally, if you wanted it, you worked for it so you could pay for it. That's pretty simplistic, but that's the way he thought about life. He trusted everyone until they showed him that they weren't trustworthy. Then he didn't completely trust them.... ever again. I know this sounds severe. It wasn't. It was just straightforward.

I still think its important to work for what I want, but now realize that the term "hard work" is subjective. For Dad, there was work to earn a living and work for fun and relaxation. He didn't mind me fishing in the summer, but the real fun was putting a new window in the garage.

Integrity is not subjective. I never quite know if I have worked hard enough. But, I do know about integrity no matter what happens. We need both to keep on fishin'.