Working Hard?

When we say we work hard, where does the "hard" come from? Work is neither hard nor soft. The mind is hard or soft. For one person, making an apple pie is a grueling exercise in perfectionism. For another, it's a meditation. As a teenager, I worked all summer on a farm. When storm clouds threatened, we worked 12 hours straight to bring in the hay before it rained. Throwing 75 lb. hay bales into a moving wagon hour after hour is as "hard" as any work you'll find. But we loved it. Our bodies sweated off fat, our muscles were toned, and it was the perfect workout to prepare us for football camp in the fall. Laboring in those rolling fields under the blue sky and mountainous clouds of Pennsylvania summer, we were ecstatic. My friend Scott Hague is a professional artist. Here's his experience of "work": "I sit and mix some colored oils together with a hair-tipped stick, then I touch that brush to canvas, leaving a thin film of paint....