In our life, everybody is working. But the question is why we have to work? Work has worked it way into many parts of our language and live. Some do it for love, others do it for money. Yet most of us work for the living wage, the family or their interest, such as, the rich get their money to work for them, the bored come up with make-work project. No one is living without working because it has benefit to them. On the other hand, have you think about work in the different manner, for instance, the development of the self.
How does work guide the development of the self? Through out the written of these authors, Emerson, Henry Thoreau, and Douglass, work is very beneficial. Work gives us more self-reliance which is hardly found in some person. Also, in the purpose of work, people get experience as I have learned when reading “The Bean Field” from Henry Thoreau. Beside of that, work also gives us money as well, for that; you can spend it or save it, so you can be wealthy. Finally, I think that work is very important.
Working gives us more self-reliance. Everyone is ignorance; they know nothing because that is new in their nature. But that can be changing, until you have try to work, in Emerson, I recognized that “the power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried”, (p.259) that is new in the self. Also, people will be relieved and happy when they have done their work successfully. While to be success, you need to trust yourself, not to be coward, but guide, benefactor, and accept everything that you have to work on and face with it. You must do what you have to do and what you are concern about; don’t worry about how other people think. That is your truth self because I had found a quote in the text which can explain is clearly, “If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.” (p. 271). In addition, to be more self-reliance, you must work over and over in the office of men and dealing with their association, for example, “greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion, in their education; in their pursuits; their models of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.” (p. 275). At last, don’t believe in anything or anyone that can bring you goods, nothing can bring you peace, but yourself, working hard, you will have more reliance, and that is valuable than anything else.
Nonetheless, people will also get experience through the work, and become knowledgeable. For instance, by reading the “The Bean Field”, from Henry Thoreau, I acknowledge that he had gained his experience and knowledge by working in the fields. He knows how to raising beans, “he has making the earth say beans instead of grass;-this was my daily work.” (p.105). However, his strongest purpose is to talk about what we could do instead of continuing to plant our fields in the way that people always have. While his ideas are not fleshed out, he evidently saw farming as an opportunity to create a benefit for the future; that is, the farmer's intent would be to gradually improve the qualities of his fields and land, something that many farmers do and many do not.
And especially most of them work so they can be wealthy. He is too; but beside money, Thoreau feels more interested when he had experience something that he never did before, and he tries to practicing; that is self-reliance. Thoreau did hire someone to help plow the field before planting, but the rest of the work was by hand. Notice that he rejected other help, even if that meant no manure; he wanted to do the work with his own hands to demonstrate self-reliance.
And moreover, in his experience, he knows how to makes money and spend it in the right way. To illustrate, in the chapter “Baker Farm” of Walden written by Thoreau, he points out to John Field that