“Whatever your
life’s work is,
do it well.” 
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To prepare for writing today’s blog post, I turned to the treasured words of the venerable Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the topic of work. Today’s writing is a follow-up to my May 20, 2025 post.

Dr. King understood and promoted the concept of the dignity of the human person. I reflected on his words two days ago as I watched a group of men cleaning the inside and drying the outside of my car at Classic Car Wash on Prospect Road in West San José. 

The men pictured in the photo above were simply doing their job, a job some may consider to be menial work. I don’t believe that such work exists. All work has meaning. When that work is done well, it should be a source of pride and respect for the workers.

“No work is insignificant,” Dr. King said. “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

What made me think of Dr. King on Tuesday afternoon was that while I watched the men working on my car, I immediately recalled one of my favorite MLK quotes. “If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music.” In other words, do your best, no matter what you do.

This was exactly how the Classic Car Wash workers did their job.

It was humbling for me to sit comfortably in the shade watching the workers tend to my car with such care and detail. I thought about why they were doing what they were doing. What motivated them to work so hard in the hot sun and to put so much energy into caring for my vehicle? I’m sure each worker has his own answer to this question. Perhaps their primary purpose is simply to earn money to support themselves and their families. If that’s their motivation to do the work, that’s enough. As I watched them doing their job, it was clear to me that they were putting forth maximum effort.

Dr. King believed that life’s most persistent and urgent question is: “What are you doing for others?” Those “others” might be the owners of the vehicles that go through the car wash each day. Or they may be the family members who will benefit from the salary the worker brings home each week. Author Lewis Carroll pointed out, “One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.” 

Having been fortunate enough to get not only an excellent education, but a Jesuit education from high school through graduate school, I learned that one of the primary goals of Jesuit education is to develop “men and women for others.” Students in Jesuit schools are taught, as Carroll stated, that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others. Dr. King, however, added the importance of doing whatever we do, including those things we do for others, to the absolute best of our ability.

Each one of us is called to do nothing less in our own lives. I’m grateful for the women and men employed at Classic Car Wash. They do their job with care and diligence, and they are deserving of the respect of their customers.