WHY WORK?

WHY WORK?

People were dumb to spend their lives working. He knew the smart way to get along. Just do what you want, and people will help you.

He used to have a job. Oh, he had worked hard, but he never got rich. He had worked in an office, he had sold real estate. Then he had done landscape work with some friends. They were fun to be with, but the work was hard and dirty. So he had quit,

Or maybe he had been fired. He couldn’t remember. The other guys drank some, but they didn’t want to drink all day. He used to drink only at night when he was alone. But when he didn’t have anything useful to do, he drank all the time.

Where were those guys now? Still working on lawns, he guessed. They live in that other state where I used to live, he thought. That’s why I don’t have any friends.

Well, I don’t need friends. They are busy going to work. But I don’t want to work.

The truth was, he felt sad about his life. He had made mistakes when he was younger. He often didn’t feel able to cope with life and yet he couldn’t tell anyone. To admit his need was to become weak in the eyes of other people. He couldn’t even tell his parents about this.

His mother nagged at him all the time to clean up, and sober up. So he was angry with her and often put down the phone when she called. He knew what to do but he just couldn’t do it.

He tried to tell his dad how he felt. Lately he had started calling him often, sometimes talking for nearly an hour. He told him nearly everything, because his dad just listened and encouraged him to try to do better. He never said anything negative.

But he couldn’t admit to his dad that he was depressed. He had decided long ago that he would never ask for help. Sometimes he asked for cigarettes when he had none and was feeling nervous. But he never asked for help to stop drinking.

At first, drinking was fun. It made him feel superior. He knew how to get the advantage over other people. He wouldn’t allow them to cheat him. He had never stolen anything, and he never did drugs. Drinking beer all day just hurt himself. It didn’t hurt anyone else, did it?

Well, maybe it hurt his parents. It made them feel sad. But what could he do about that? Drinking alcohol was fun. Sometimes it made him laugh at the world. When he started feeling sad, he just drank more often. It was the solution to every problem!

If only he could get his courage up to become different. He liked that optimistic young man he used to be when he was in college. He was going to conquer the world and become rich.

He took his first drink on a dare. A classmate dared him to try it out, scoffing that he would never to it since he had grown up in church. So he had taken that first drink. It was bitter, and he didn’t like it much. But he had to show people that he was strong, that he didn’t believe all those things that people said at church.

Soon the beer tasted good and he couldn’t leave it alone. He drank every time he started feeling sad. It seemed to help a bit. He made some new friends and they drank together sometimes. But now he didn’t have any friends and he drank alone.

His wife had left because he drank too much. She thought he would never stop. She gave him many warnings, and he should have listened. Then she left. He heard she had now graduated from college and had a job as a teacher in an elementary school somewhere.

That was a lot of hard work, he figured. Who wanted to spend days in a classroom with little children? He didn’t like children. Some were naughty and mean, hard to control. Why spend your life trying to help children?