This is Volume 3 of Poems and Meditations by Peter Norman Levesque. It follows The Wisdom of Shepherds and Tossing Pebbles along the Shoreline.

Respect is Not Hard Work

I respect people who work hard to feed their families. Often their own dreams have been put aside. Not because their dreams are not important to them but because their families are more so.

Much of the work I have done after I turned 30 has been high profile, clean, and well paid but not always. Some of the mind-numbing and soul-stealing work I have done includes include what we used to call Joe-jobs. Working in sales at a failing company. Picking weeds around hospital grounds. Digging out the cracked foundations of houses built on clay that shifted, to be patched and sealed. Digging trenches in the Army and marching for hours in the hot July sun, in anticipation that someone attacks Canada. Calling people at dinner time to ask them stupid questions for some client's poll. Trying to get Family Doctors to see me to answer questions about ads for pharmaceutical companies.

I see hard-working people every day, everywhere, in all sorts of jobs. When I was young, I thought that I would never do that. Then I grew up. Recessions happen. I had a family. I worked 50-80 hours a week for the better part of a decade to keep my family fed, housed, and clothed. It made me both humbler and more appreciative of those around me.

When someone serves me coffee, I say thank you for your help. When I drive through a construction zone, I slow down because those people working in high-viz vests deserve to be safe. Cashiers get eye contact, a smile, and thank you. Let the buses merge into the lane. Thank the flight attendants and tell them they did a good job. We are all in this together and no one gets out alive.

There are millions of people just getting by. They are rarely celebrated. We celebrate business dudes with big bank accounts and bigger mouths who think that someone paying their taxes is a sucker. How did we get here?

The flashy lights and clean windows of the big boxes are a draw, I get it. Lots of selections and great prices but at what cost? Who is making that product that seems too good to be true?

There is something deeply beautiful in a little corner store owned by a family. Often two or three generations work together to keep it going. My favourite Pho restaurant is family owned by "boat people" who came over from Vietnam after the war. They made it. Not rich but comfortable. My favourite produce is from a local farm. I get my suits and shirts from a store named after the owner's grandfather. He is proud to keep it going.

Not everyone is so lucky. Some people don't make it home. I remember working in a mall and someone was killed by the trash compacter because the failsafe switch did not work. On Highway 401, during a winter storm, a transport truck rolled over on black ice and the driver was killed. The owner of a shoe store in a small town couldn't make payroll two months in a row because sales were bad, he took his own life hoping insurance would help his family. It didn't.

Hard work is not some romantic idea. It is a practical effort to make it to the next day, week, month, and year. I believe in collective programs to help people make it. Employment insurance, workplace compensation, health and safety regulations, and workplace standards, but mostly, I believe we need to be kind to each other. We are not commodities and we are not gadgets.

Hard work sometimes kills people. It shouldn't but it does. This volume was not hard work in that sense. It was small acts of love and attention paid to moments of my life. It is my third volume in what I hope is a lifetime to come of loving and observing the world around me. Thank you for the time you devote to reading it. I hope it makes you smile or think of how you live your own life. Be safe.