Family Dental Care Park Ridge

It’s Labor Day weekend.  For many, it’s a longer weekend than usual.  We tend to think of Labor Day weekend as the last weekend of summer…a last hurrah, if you will.  Labor Day weekend is marked by a sort of reluctant good-bye to those dog days of summer.  As a child, it meant the last weekend before school began.  A time of mixed feelings.  New notebooks, pencils, pens and shiny stiff shoes.  Time to get back to a more regimented schedule…earlier bed times, homework obligations and shorter days.  The vacation to the lake became a sunburned memory etched in sand.  The actual meaning of Labor Day was often overlooked.

Today, Labor Day seems a little different to me.  Perhaps it is the struggling economy that paints an all too  clear picture of people hanging on by a financial thread as they look for a job or take pay cuts and shorter hours in their current job just to stay employed.  Labor Day seems to have recovered some of its original intent…a day to honor the hard working laborers of our country.  Our country may have less of an industrial focus but we are no less industrious.  We are a people who know how to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, dust ourselves off and make the best of a difficult situation.  We are proud and yet not too prideful to take on a job for less money so that we  can try to make ends meet.  We rally around our family and neighbors and friends in support of one another.  The bounty from our gardens is shared.  Our homes become gathering places for fun and food and laughter.  We keep our ears to the ground in hopes of hearing of an opportunity for our friends, our families, our selves.  Labor has taken on a new image but  it is no less a significant part of what makes our country strong and unified.  We are seekers of knowledge, toilers and creators.  We wake each morning eager to greet the new adventure that is our day.  We help, we seek, we encourage, we build, we nurture, we discover, we repair.  We are all part of a labor of love.  We are not alone in our struggles.  We are not alone in our desire to be strong.  We are not alone.

And on this Labor Day weekend, there is a feeling of unity.  It’s no longer just about being the last weekend in summer.  It’s no longer just about the picnics.  It’s about knowing what it means to make your work ethic a part of who you are.  It is indeed, a labor of love. I want to take this Labor Day and thank all of the  hard working, driven, focused and sometimes struggling people who labor for love.  Love of family, love of community, love of country, love of self….thank you.