Are you satisfied with your salary?

        Probably not, since complaints about low salaries which, as people say, are not enough for anything, are common.

        One can hear people say that the money they receive at the end of the month is barely enough to pay off previously acquired debts.

        The strange thing in all of this is that, if the complaints for better salaries come from all working classes, what we can verify regarding the quality of the work is almost chaos.

        Generally speaking, we cannot see people worried about performing their duties well.

        We hire a gardener to tidy up our garden and what we get is pruning poorly done, grass poorly mowed and dirt poorly scattered over the flower beds.

        We trust a child to the care of a babysitter and we see the unwillingness with which she follows the restless and vivacious toddler’s unsteady steps.

        We recommend a sick elderly person to an orderly and we are surprised by the way he or she is treated, in a hurry, without attention to details.

        Busy clerks, inattentive servants, impatient salespeople.

        Everywhere we come across people who only think about the clock, waiting for the end of the workday, performing their duties carelessly and even with negligence.

        Because of that, quality declines and jobs are concluded and delivered in a hurry.

        If the worker is worthy of his or her salary, as we are alerted by the Gospel, it is also fair that this worker execute his or her job with good disposition and care.

        What does it cost us, as gardeners, to attend to the pruning well, to revolve the dirt with care? After all, the plants depend on us.

        How many more minutes will we spend if we stand next to the elderly or the sick and carefully arrange the bed covers, taking an interest on his or her well-being?

        And can we realize the responsibility it is to watch over a baby’s first steps?

        Can we evaluate how thrilling it is to accompany such a small being’s development and watch it beat a new obstacle everyday?

        It does not matter what our profession or our task is.

        The important thing, and very much so, is to do it with love, improving ourselves in its execution.

        Even if is washing a simple piece of clothing or dealing with sophisticated electronic equipment, it is necessary that we realize that, if we want to receive the best from others, we should also give the best.

        Therefore, before we keep complaining about our paycheck, let us review the quality of our own services.

        Let us worry much more about becoming excellent professionals, meaning responsible, active and competent people.

*   *   *

        Whatever your social or economical possibilities may be, work!

        Working is, right next to praying, the most efficient antidote against evil, because it acquires unimaginable values with which the Spirit corrects its imperfections and disciplines its will.

Spiritist Moment Team, with the final thought from the entry Trabalho, from  the book Repositório de sabedoria, v. 2, by the Spirit of Joanna de Ângelis, psychographed by Divaldo Pereira Franco, Publishing House: Leal.
July 28 2008.