Dirty Jobs!

When I was a kid, I read in the newspapers about a terrible train accident. The bridge it was supposed to cross caved in and all the bogies fell in the raging river, killing many and injuring many more. That memory kept haunting me every time I would travel by train and every time the train would be on a bridge.

Few weeks back, I remember watching an episode of “Dirty jobs” on Discovery channel. The host of the program was talking to an industrial painter, whose job the host was trying to duplicate in the show. ”There is no glory in what you do”, he said. ”Not at all.” The painter agreed, “but it’s a job that needs to be done.”

You know, that man paints the inside of a famous bridge. His unnoticed job involves dangling on ropes hundreds of feet in the air, falling from where means sure death, and paint the steel structure, so that it won’t rust and become dangerous for the commuters.

Most of the thousands of people who cross that bridge everyday are not even aware that their lives depend so much on workers like that painter, who do their work well, faithfully, without expecting somebody to notice them or give credit.

I wonder how many times we say exactly what the painter said, but with a hint of pain we also add what most of us in India say “Neki kar dariya mein daal” , but we forget that even that dariya travels to the sagar and that sagar becomes barish and that barish restores the neki once again.

God sees our faithfulness in things we do. Though we may sometimes feel that our work has gone unnoticed but it is being observed by the One who matters the most.

Can we think of at least 5 things which we did in our lives without expecting a reward? Can we add many more to that list?

“Whatever task you find to do,
Regardless if it’s big or small,
Perform it well, with all your might,
Because there’s One who sees it all.” –Sper