Apples to Apples

     Jobs vary from the seemingly insignificant tasks to the crucially vital necessities. But how do we determine where on the scale an occupation falls? What makes one job more or less important than another? Where do our respective occupations fall on the number line of job significance? It is difficult to pinpoint where one job would be compared to all of the others. There isn't a single order of importance; there isn't the most and least important with a line of others in the middle. It's comparing apples to oranges. You can't say a doctor is more or less important than a teacher because doing so is paradoxical. The teacher can't be more important because the doctor is saving peoples' lives, the teacher is just providing information. Yet one can argue that without teachers, would there even be any doctors? So which one is it? Is it the person who saves people that would otherwise die today? Or is it the person who teaches the doctors who will save people tomorrow? Is the present more important to preserve the future? Or is planning for the future and ignoring the present a better option? Who's life is more valuable? Mine or my future child's? The decision cannot be made, each option is contradictory. So the importance of jobs is not a scale, it cannot be measured in numbers or figures; it is more of a matter of how and why each job is important. What makes each job important is the only thing we can determine, and in my opinion, there are two categories a job can fall into.
       Jobs can be progressive, innovative, making life easier for humans. These include most jobs: doctors, scientists, engineers, lawyers and politicians, as well as waiters, clerks, garbage men and the often-looked-down-upon task of pumping gas. Whether they are glorious and pay huge salaries, or they are demeaning and pay minimum wage, these are the jobs that make life easier. These are important to society, because they advance society and keep it going at the fastest speed possible.
      There are a few jobs that don't make tasks in life easier, but make life more worth living. These are the arts: music, painting, photography, film, tv, culinary arts, video games, drawings, pictures, color, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings. These are the things that make life so beautiful. They put meaning into life, and join us together as an intelligent, caring community of people. Without the arts, life would be very bitter, dull, and depressing. But without the jobs that make life easier, how could we go on to make the arts? Neither are better or more important than the other, because they are both essential to the future of the human race. The make-life-easy jobs invent, discover, and innovate. They continue to advance the world so that we will make it to tomorrow, and that we will not have to fight to survive. The arts ensure that future is one that's worth living in.