Working for What’s Yours

I was at the coffee shop the other morning, and there’s this young guy sitting there with his phone… staring at it the way you do when the numbers don’t add up right. Direct deposit had just hit. You could see it in his face… doing the math, realizing half of what he worked for all week is already gone.

I never had that problem myself, not really. Grew up on a farm where what you grew was yours, what you built was yours. Later on I worked for myself, so the work and what came from it… well, that stayed with me. But I’ve been watching it happen to people my whole life. That look when they open the envelope or check their phone and see what’s left.

Someone else decided. Someone who wasn’t there with them in the cold at six in the morning, wasn’t sweating through their shirt on a late shift. Just… took it. They call it taxes, say it keeps the roads fixed and the hospitals running. Maybe it does. But the work was theirs, the hours were theirs, and somehow half the pay isn’t.

On the farm, it was different. You planted corn, you got corn. Built a fence, you had a fence. Simple as that. Nobody stood there saying, “Well, we’ll take half those fence posts before you can use them.” The work matched what you kept.

I’ve been noticing something lately with the younger people… the ones still working those jobs, still getting paychecks with half of it missing. They’re starting to figure something out.

Up here in the small towns where you can still see the northern lights on a clear night, people are doing things different. Not loud about it, just… quiet. Mrs. Henderson grows tomatoes now, trades them with the Johnsons for eggs. Old Pete fixed his barn last summer with help from half the neighborhood, and nobody sent an invoice. That young guy from the hardware store… he’s learning to can vegetables from his grandmother.

It’s not about breaking rules. It’s about remembering something that used to be common sense. When you grow something, build something, fix something with your own hands… it’s yours. All of it. The work and what comes from it. Nobody’s standing there taking half before you can even see what you made.

I don’t know what’s fair, what’s right. Those are bigger questions. But I understand why people who work hard want to hold onto something that feels like theirs. Why they want the effort to match what they get to keep.

So they’re building things again, growing things, fixing things themselves. Holding onto whatever they can.

Makes you wonder what work is really supposed to mean.

Until the next time: Keep Your Minds Open & Your Stories Alive.