Perhaps nothing is more draining than a job which requires the most minute bit of concentration. Simple manual labor often has a joy all of its own. Picking peppers, making pipes in a factory... Sometimes it feels good to become a cog in a machine. When the body is distracted by limitless, repetitive work, the mind is free to wander. The worst jobs I have ever held are the ones that distract the body too little, and the mind only slightly. When the choice comes to either working in an empty department store or digging ditches, I'd probably pick the digging first. Labor is rewarding, it's invigorating, and it's oddly conducive to a life of thought and contemplation. St. Benedict founded his order upon "work and prayer," after all.
Maybe we shirk the life of simple work too readily. We place no work at all upon a pedestal. That's a holdover from the era when the average peasant worked himself to death. Now we find ourselves on the other extreme. We no longer work our bodies, yet we continue to work ourselves to death.
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