The worst thing anyone said to me: ‘Roll up your sleeves and get to work.’
The best thing anyone said to me: ‘Roll up your sleeves and get to work.’
The same words, different meanings. It’s easy to get confused in this beautiful, complicated life. Sometimes someone tries to encourage us, but ends up having the opposite effect, upsetting us. Other times, we need a push—someone who finds the right words at the right moment.
People can offer this encouragement, or discouragement, indirectly, through their art. How many times has music made our day better? How many times has an article made us angry? How many times has a book changed our lives?
The worst thing anyone said to me: ‘Roll up your sleeves and get to work.’
Someone is struggling. A partner, a friend, a relative, a colleague, a neighbour, a stranger. We don’t understand the struggle, and we just try to push them: ‘Roll up your sleeves and get to work.’
After school, finding a decent job in Italy was difficult. I didn’t have any experience or money, so I took whatever was available. Some jobs were without formal contracts, others with fixed-term contracts; all of them paid peanuts, none of them offering a minimum wage—a concept Italy still doesn’t have.
My generation tried to rebel in every possible way: peaceful demonstrations, riots, left-wing parties, right-wing parties, new movements. Everybody tried to change Italy, and the response from the previous generation in power was always the same: ‘Roll up your sleeves and get to work.’
That wasn’t the real issue, though. The real problems were structural: lack of control over unregulated jobs, the absence of a minimum wage, the abuse of fixed-term contracts.
How did it end? I don’t know—I moved to London. I can see that people of all ages still have the same problem. We should listen to them, instead of simplifying everything with: ‘Roll up your sleeves and get to work.’
The best thing anyone said to me: ‘Roll up your sleeves and get to work.’
When I was thirty, I was deeply unhappy with my life. I didn’t like my job, I didn’t have money, and I had no direction. I had a lot of dreams, but an excuse for every one of them: ‘I’m too old to be a journalist, computer science is too complicated for me, I’m not educated enough to write a book.’
I was lost in London, trapped in my own complaints and excuses.
I started looking for answers in books. During those years, I read constantly, picking up whatever seemed to hold an answer: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, Illusions by Richard Bach, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, and many more.
I read dozens upon dozens of books like that. Some I loved; some I hated. None gave me a simple solution to my problems, but all of them told me something very important: ‘Roll up your sleeves and get to work.’
The difference wasn’t the words—it was the intention. One was meant to silence us; the other was meant to wake me up.
