Thank you for the "thankless work"

Had an opportunity to attend a conference today, someone during the "discussion" session expressed his family situation by saying that "he is the only one who works in his family". I am sure this sentence was spoken with all the required good intentions; however, it dawned on me that the primary bread winning is considered priority work while everything else falls somewhere behind. In other words, anything that brings "paycheque" is work. Is it really the case?

Ever since I became conscious enough to hold memories, I observed my mother. Like every other mother she is a very kind women. She would get up early in the morning, prepare breakfast, very gently wake me up and put up with my cranky behavior. I was showered everyday, uniform was ironed (yes, I was required to wear a uniform in my elementary school), school bag was prepared, lunch was packed and countless other things were done. The whole drill was repeated five times every morning from Saturday-Thursday (Friday was the only day off from school) because I have four other siblings. For all this work, she never received any paycheque, not even a "thank you¨; instead, we were always complaining about things that were poorly done for us or not done for us. She hardly answered any of our criticism and just went on with the work. Shouldn't we consider all these tasks as priority work?

I am sure there are lots of other jobs and things we do for which we are not rewarded with any paycheque, not even a "thank you" yet we continue. Sometimes we volunteer while other times we are the designated volunteers. It requires a lot of moral courage in our egocentric society to put our ego aside and do something for the sake of others. I want to thank the people who perform a ton of chores without compensation. All those acts, lubricates the machinery of life, assisting it to run smoothly. Thank you.