Productive...Sounds Great.

All day I have been thinking about the lady that works at the cleaners by my house. Every time I go in there she is so happy, so excited to see you and run around like a crazy lady working so hard. As I left there this morning I thought ‘why is this lady so happy? She works six days a week, 10 hours a day and probably makes 40k a year. I would be miserable.’ It finally hit me hours later when I heard someone on the news giving a eulogy saying…’lived a happy and productive life’. Productive? It doesn’t seem like great word to describe someone’s life. It sounds more like a description of an auto assembly plant. That word stuck in my mind for the next few hours.




I went and had lunch and saw a busboy and thought, ‘wow he looks really productive’. But that didn’t help because he looked really happy too. Needless to say I was very confused. These tasks seemed so meaningless to me (even though I had been a busboy boy and understood its importance within the restaurant). How can these people be so happy, so productive with something that seems so little? I mean I work in a clothing store for crying out loud, how is that important?


Then on the train it finally hit me, everyone has a different idea of what being productive means. To some folks productive is a big fancy job with international influence, having a house full of kids, or saving baby whales. But to some it is much simpler; productive is being a part of something no matter how large or small. For the lady at the cleaners it is working hard and putting food on the table for her family. The busboy wants to work hard to send money home to his family in Mexico so they can live a better life. So maybe at the end of the day productive is a great way to complement someone’s life, it means they accomplished what they wanted. They put a stamp on something that was important to them. Maybe that’s all we are really looking for in life, some way large or small to be a part of something. For me, right now, this blog was my way of being productive, and that feels good.