Hard Work and Dedication

As I ride the bus to and from Las Palmas to Lagunilla, I look out the window and take notice of my surroundings. As you enter Lagunilla, painted on the side of a small fence are the words (translated from Spanish of course): Hard work and Dedication. I think about what these words mean to the people who live there: people who are coming home after working twelve hours and have been riding the bus for four, people who have only known work their entire lives, becoming vendors as early as the age of four and families who fight to make ends meet so they can remain together under their small, tin, makeshift roof.

To me, in my absolutely humble, inexperienced opinion, these two words “hard work” and “dedication” seem a bit taunting. It’s just that, I have yet to meet a person from Lagunilla who needs to be reminded that their lives need “hard work” and “dedication”, because it’s obvious. So I wonder, who painted those words there and what did they really mean? What does “hard work” really even mean? I think about the vendors who board the bus and shout advertisements for the burned CDs or colorful key chains they carry. How can they really “work harder”. I doubt if they shout louder or with more enthusiasm, they’d sell more. And what about this dedication piece. Dedication to what? To their families, to their government, to their communities? I work with a teacher every Tuesday and Thursday who I have yet to see lose dedication to teaching, despite the fact she teaches over twelve different students any given day, attendance is always shifting and some of the kids are four years apart and at completely different levels. Yet, she is there everyday, she never loses her focus, and just when you think she’s being to stern, she flashes one of the warmest, most genuine smiles I’ve ever seen. I know that she does not need to be reminded of dedication. So what do these words really mean and why are they bannered in Lagunilla? Why do I not see these words in Las Palmas? Well, I guess they would clash with the golf course.