Exactly. Spend a summer nailing shingles to roofs in 100F weather all day, and then complain to me about how awful an open office is (with air conditioning and a comfortable chair to sit on). I’m grateful every day that my old man pressured me to get a technology education so I didn’t have to destroy my body daily doing construction like he did.

>Exactly. Spend a summer nailing shingles to roofs in 100F weather all day, and then complain to me about how awful an open office is

Both can be awful.

Just because physical labour is physically tiring, it does not follow that mental labour might not be even more stressful.

I worked farm labour in my 20s and those were some of the best jobs I ever had.

Every meal was a banquet and I slept like a log. Potatoes tasted so good, it was as if I was eating ambrosia.

I also believe that the body and the mind need to be worked together.

The disembodied work typically done in offices is unbalanced, and can be very taxing.

Kings 200 years ago didn't have to spend most of their lives working.

Are you sure about that? From the but of history I know, monarchs had extremely busy schedules and high demands on their "free" time, and I don't expect that all of that was particularly fun.

Especially having to go around "curing" scrofula by the laying on of hands [0].

0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_touch

statecraft is a job. It's a popular fiction that historical monarchs spent all their time indulging their hedonistic impulses, but it is fictional.