"We all work hard": learning about yourself and the "onorata" in Australia (part two)

The relationship with what necessitates care can be a double edged sword. 

We all know that. 

When one depends on someone or something to function, there can start a strange relationship of need that goes both way. 

In Italian there's a word, assistenzialismo.

Not only a certain person or place or animal needs you. 

But you need that person, place or animal, to need you. 

Their neediness confirms you. 

Their neediness shapes you.

Their neediness identifies you as you.

This is what Sergio was thinking about 

while he was starting his day at the outskirts of Canberra, 

in his family house, 

while his father, quite old now, 

was napping in his bed. 

After all, that was his main concern, to lose purpose and lose himself in the process. That was perhaps why he had felt the need to speak to his old friends from the valley, and to reconnect with that part of the family he had not always liked. 

They understood his hard work, at home, taking care of his old parents and the family business they had started. Not to let it die. Not to let them die. 

They had offered to help, his cousins. They wanted to help because they knew he was a good Christian and because that's what you do for family and they respected his folks, even if there wasn't that much...affection, let's say that, among them. 

They praised his hard work, because they knew what it meant.

"Working hard is a pathway to paradise", his auntie told him.

His father worked hard, oh so hard, when he first arrived in Australia, long shifts, double shifts, at the market, night time moonlighting, until he opened his shop and then he and mum would just take turns, exhausting turns, but it paid off. They finally bought the house at the outskirts of Canberra, without any help from anyone they moved the family there, and after the house, they bought the land, so that one day he, Sergio, and his sister, Caterina, could build their own houses there too.

That was always some sort of a burden, 

really,

their hard work 

if Sergio had to be honest.

No matter what he did or wanted or argued, the response was "we worked so hard to give you this and that", and that closed any conversation about "change from the old ways". 

Working hard is the true nature of a Calabrian, his father said, and he used to start recounting what he had to endure, at the village, to what extent working hard then really meant not living, not breathing, just keeping your head down. The only difference was that back home, in Aspromonte, working hard was really just about surviving. Here in Australia, working hard was meant for something, something better, something more. 

Working hard is what you grew up to cherish, what you grew up to embrace. Even if you didn't really want to work hard, or rather, you wanted to work less - you know, life-work balance mantras that we all try to have today - working hard is in your DNA.

It's what makes you praise someone you don't know. 

It's what makes you judge someone else, if they do not work hard. 

It's what you consider virtuous.

It's what you consider honourable.

Yes, working hard is the virtue of Calabrians, and certainly of migrants from Calabria. 

We have all been taught that, 

Sergio thought, while he realised how tired he was 

from just another bad night sleep. 

We have all been given the same examples

the same justifications

the same teachings

when it comes to hard work.

Working hard is sacrifice 

Sacrifice is honour.

Honour is virtue. 

He knew that and he knew who else knew that, his family, his friends from the valley. 

So there it was, clear in his mind for the first time. 

He was working hard for them, next to them, sacrificing his life to take care of them. And that was supposed to be altruism and being a good son. And yet, there was something more. 

Being able to work hard, being recognised as a hard worker - he who had always struggled to do anything concrete in his life - to receive all the pats on the shoulder by uncles, and aunties and cousins, empathising with his sacrifice, that was really selfish. 

There was a clear gain he made from this assistenza or rather assistenzialismo: being seen and being confirmed as a good Calabrian, as a good son, as someone worth it. That doesn't mean he didn't want them to be better, or didn't care about the business, of course not. 

His cousins had just come out of a "situation", as people had called it last Sunday at lunch. They talked about trips to Italy, and then to Brazil, and they all conveyed the disgust they felt when the Australian government froze the money in their accounts; when Rocco's shop was confiscated; when Francesco's mum had her retirement fund emptied due to legal fees. 

That's not right. "We all work hard. They don't let us enjoy what is ours". 

And then everyone else commented, nodding, that indeed everyone was working hard to make a living and be left alone. Legally or illegally, these are constructions for others, Sergio guessed. 

The main message "We deserve this, we all work hard".

Working hard - a virtue - is the main reason to be deserving.

Hard work is honour.

And the honoured people stick together. 

The parents with the family business back in the seventies, "with the money that was ours from home but the police came knocking so many times until we learned how to hide it".

And the sons with "we won't let them take what our parents earned with hard work, enduring all they had to endure here". 

And Sergio lets himself think, for a moment, that when the news say that his cousin Pasquale is a member of the 'ndrangheta, like his father - u zi Ntoni - before him - they only see part of the story. He doesn't justify him, them, but he knows there is more.

The other part that very few people see is that "we all work hard", 

which can justify pretty much anything for us. 

A virtue that can have any value you assign to it, but that we, Calabrian migrants and people of Calabrian descent, we all recognise it as honourable, as virtuous. 

We all respect hard work, of whichever type. 

We all benefit from its ambiguity, when it comes to it, we all can. 

It's the ambiguity of honour really, and that's another story. 

It's just another story of twisting our culture into the honoured society's (sub)culture. 

 

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Copyright text and photos (Canberra) Anna Sergi

This text is not about anyone in particular, but is inspired by two different stories. 

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And you reader, what do you think? Feel free, as always, to comment, even anonymously (and politely, if so!) below!