"I
work for someone else," he said, "I have no chance to get ahead. At night I leave
the job behind, at morn I face the same old grind And
everything I do by day just brings to me the same old pay.
I asked another how he
viewed the occupation he pursued. "It's
dull and dreary toil," said he, “And brings but small reward to me. My boss gets
all the profits that are rightly mine.
My lives monotonously grim, I'm forced to work for him.”
I stopped to ask a third young elf about his task.
A cheerful smile lit up his face, “I shan't be always in this place, Because some distant day, a
better job will come my way. My boss, I’m
going to make him notice me.
“He pays me wages and in turn I am here to learn, I don't work for him alone, allegiance to
myself I own. I
do not do my best for favors or applause, Working here seems like good business to me.
“The best clerk
on the staff is me, if customers approve my Style manners
and my smile, and I help the firm to get quality help, But what is more I help myself.
From one big thought I'm never free, That every day I work for me.
Oh,
youth thought I, you're bound to climb the ladder of success in time. Too many self-impose
the daily cross of working for a boss, Forgetting that in failing him,
it is their own stars that they fail there in. They demand
when real service they refuse, they are the ones who really lose.
“So
long as men shall be on earth there will be tasks for them to do, Some way for
them to show their worth, each day rings problems new. And men shall
dream of mighty deeds never done before, There will always
be glorious needs to work and struggle for,
I saw them tear a
building down, sang a gang of elves in a busy town, With a ho-heave-ho and a
lusty yell, they swung a beam and a sidewall fell In a fire of hell. I
asked the foreman,
"Are these elves skilled as
the men you would hire if you had to build?"
He
laughed and said, "No indeed! Just common labor is all I need I can
easily wreck in a day or two what builders have taken a year to do.” I asked myself as I
went away, which of these roles have I tried to play? Am I a builder who works with care?
Measuring life with rules and being square?
Or am I a wrecker, who walks the town, Content with the labor of tearing down?
Elf or man did you pass the test. ASK YOURSELF”
DR. KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
