Thus my mother, over lunch, when I brought one of my boards to the table to prime it before painting. She is so slow that I often use the time around the meal to do other things in her company. And she hit the nail on the head. She understood perfectly well the original meaning of this wise formula, appropriated cynically by the Nazis. As Freud has argued close to the end of his life, work indeed liberates.

Footnote

1. Inscription on the gate of the Konzentrationslager Auschwitz (today, Oswiencim).