My grandfather also worked hard but held a different view of work and success. He had a sixth-grade education and was a clerk and handyman in a small town shoe store for many years. Six evenings a week, he would come home at sunset at the end of his work day, sit down in his easy chair, and, to my grandmother's inquiries about how work had gone, he would shake his head and reply, "Well, Dora, I worked pretty hard. That's all a mule can do.”

I asked members of my family about the origin of^- this saying "That's all a mule can do." According to my family, there is a biological explanation. Horses and mules work differently. You have to watch a horse because it does not know how or when to stop and will work itself^-to death if given the opportunity. It literally will never let it rest. A mule, on the other hand, will work hard until it is tired and then will work no more. It knows when it has had enough. It knows when to let it rest.

I do not know if this bit of animal husbandry/folk wisdom is true or not. My Internet search turned up nothing. And I have to admit that certain members of my family, when asked a question whose answer they do not know, prefer making up an answer to having no answer. But fact or fiction, this saying recently has become as important a phrase for me as my grandmother's "Never let it rest." When I have had enough, I shake my head and echo the words and weariness of my grandfather, "That's all a mule can do."

And thinking about how mules and horses work (or are alleged to work) makes me wonder how humans work. What are the natural patterns of^- human work? What are the moral obligations for work in human life? And under what conditions do we shake our heads and say. "That's all a human can do." What would it look like if^- we worked not like horses or even like mules, but like humans?