When practicality isn’t practical anymore

I THINK it’s good that we are trained to be practical always. I remember that as a child, we were taught that we have to move and act always, work and produce results. And so even with our little hands, we were already sweeping the floor, fixing our beds, cleaning the toilets, etc.

I was assigned to scrub the stair clean and shiny. I didn’t quite like it, but I could not complain because my elder brothers had heavier tasks. If they could do theirs, why could I not do mine, was the reasoning I pacified myself with.

What I enjoyed most was feeding the pigs, because I got the chance to shower them and play with them. Pigs are naturally friendly and affectionate, even if they never get satisfied with any amount of food. They may not be as charming and cute as dogs and cats, but they are the simplest and most transparent. What you see is what you get.

No, I didn’t develop sentimental attachments to any of them. When fiesta time came, I was happy that they were butchered and everyone was happy with the meat. Besides, I earned some money by the side, because my mother would ask me to sell some of them from time to time. I looked forward to caring for the next batch of piglets.

But I was barred from the kitchen. For some reason, my mother decided I was no good at all at cooking. I tried it once, and the result was a disaster. The pigs even would not eat it. I was not given a second chance. My mother told me to go to my books instead.

Wherever I went, I was always made to feel that idleness and laziness were a no no. And so, even if by temperament I was prone to daydream and imagine, I had to keep myself busy and wait till my rest time to indulge in my favorite fantasies.

Yes, to be practical is a great value, responsible for the flowering of many cultures and civilizations. Unless one is practical, the best ideas and the brilliant theories would just come to nothing.

Practicality teaches one how to be resourceful and it occasions the blooming of many other virtues and competencies. Work is a great school for learning many things. Opus Dei founder St. Josemaria Escriva went further by saying that work can and should be the ordinary way one achieves holiness.

I agree with that, only if one does it well, and if he does it with the right reasons. For the other side of the coin is that people can work for the wrong reasons. And that’s when work can become a curse, when practicality isn’t practical anymore.

One can work and be practical out of sinful reasons—pride, vanity, greed, lust, intemperance, and even out of sloth, as in, when one works to avoid a religious duty. Sloth is not simply laziness. It is also dislike for anything religious or virtuous. So, one can mimic working if only to escape a more important thing.

This sad reality has been the subject of one of Christ’s parable—the sower and the seed. According to him, the seed that fell among thorns “is he that hears the word, but the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches chokes it up and he becomes fruitless.” (Mt 13,22)

When work and practicality are made to compete with prayer, charity, our family duties, honesty, disorder, temperance, etc., then they stop being good to us. They turn traitors, a most dangerous one since they deceive a lot of people.

For from the outside they will always look good and admirable. Let’s just see to it that they are done with the proper internal dispositions. This is the tricky part of our human condition. We need to work not only on our outside appearance, but more so on our internal motives. There has to be consistency to attain the proper integrity.

Alas, this is the hemorrhaging problem we are having at present. It’s a massive one and is threatening to be the dominant, mainstream way of doing things. We need to go through the slow process of educating everyone about the true nature and purpose of work and practicality, and also about their limits and dangers.

As we plunge deeper into our technology-driven world of work and practicality, let’s see to it that we are properly prepared, clear about our reasons for working and for being practical, and skilful enough to avoid the dangers.