In the early 1990s, I had the opportunity to work two summers with a family in a small town outside of New Orleans. I had to be taught quite a bit and even though I could get through the mental instruction I had no clue what the travails of actual toiling would have on me and the physical exertion that would go along with it. I didn't think I could do it.
The word toil comes from an Anglo-Norman conflation, "toilen" which meant "to agitate, stir up, entangle." Connotatively, we still mostly associate toil with work employed on a farm; the tending, the cultivating, and the production. It requires hard work...one must toil.
There are times when we have to remember that when attempting a task that takes strength and fortitude, especially something we find difficult, we have to exert and even 'plough' through until the job gets done.
I had three laborious jobs.
One .. I started my day by waking up at 4:30 am, had coffee and went out to the barn and began milking cows. I had to learn how to line them up through the shoots, and hook up the milking machines to the cows ready with full utters. There were many lines to the machines and you had to be aware and wary of the cows who were usually not in good moods and would kick for good measure. The most physical part of toiling in the early morning hours with the bovines was the clean up. I had to carry and hold a heavy hose and wash down the cement holding area of the morning manure left behind by dozens of cows waiting their turn.
By 8-9am, I was beat. The drudgery, even though interesting, took it's toll. The toil was not in vain, because it produced something worthwhile: some relieved cows and milk on someone's breakfast table.
Two. So... picking green peppers was going to entail a lesser degree of labor. Not! The picking was just the beginning. While the day was increasingly getting stickier with humidity, we took a truck piled with bushel baskets out to the fields and rows of green.The Australian shepherd came with us to warn us of snakes crouching beneath the cooling of the pepper plants' leaves. The toiling in the field took about two hours. Then it was back to the house to clean and sort the peppers and package them into cardboard boxes to take to market. Again, I absorbed and learned a lot. For instance, there are four "grades" of peppers: large, medium, small, and cull (a small and slightly misconfigured pepper that could still be used for sauces and such). Also, if a pepper has four parts at it's bottom end it is considered a male, three, female.
The labor and toil was agitating my back and legs at this point. We would break for a late lunch and then load the dozen of boxes to take to a market where the truck would be weighed. Cash would be exchanged --not just for the product, but for the labor in getting it out of the field.
Three. After market, we then had to go to a rented field where cattle were kept and check on any calves scheduled to be born. We walked the fence line (usually in mud) to make sure no mending was necessary. We would look for the bull of the herd--then brought them buckets of corn and took a head count of the cattle. If the bull was happy the herd was happy. I didn't toil so much with this but by 6pm or so, physically, I put my labor in and my body had been moiled (look it up) by an intensive immersion of a job well done...until... the next day when we'd do it all over again.
It was such a positive experience. There will be times in your life, study, vocation, career, when you'll doubt yourself. However, there is something to be said for the satisfying fruit of one's labor.
Get up! Gird yourself with strength of mind and even body, you might be surprised that with all the toils and travails that are yoked with seemingly impossible tasks...that you CAN...that you can do it!