Reader question:

Please explain “heavy lifting” in this passage (Way too many parents are filling out job applications for their grown children, Yahoo.com, March 20, 2019):

“We’ve forgotten this very important fact: you have to remember that one day you will be dead and gone,” Julie Lythcott-Haims, a former Stanford University dean and the author of How to Raise an Adult, told Quartz at Work last year. “When we over-help and become the person who does the heavy lifting and thinking in our kids’ lives, they will be totally lost and abandoned when we no longer can.”

My comments:

He who does the heavy lifting takes the heavy load or does the toughest part of a job.
Since we’re talking about parents, let’s use mom and dad as examples. Say, mom and dad have just done shopping and ended up with several bags of stuff to bring home. In some bags are the heavier goods, such as cans of coke and bottles of beer. In other bags are lighter stuffs such as makeup tissues and leafy vegetables.

Now, who do you suppose is responsible for carrying the bags containing coke and beer?

Right, dad takes hold of the heavy bags.

Hence the idea, daddy does the heavy lifting. He does the physically more demanding job while mom carries the lighter bags.

“Heavy lifting” very probably comes from the sport of weightlifting where strong men (and women) try to lift hundreds of kilos of weights over their head.

That’s “heavy lifting”, literally.

Figuratively, “heavy lifting” is synonymous with the heaviest or toughest part of a job. People who do the heavy lifting are the ones who take the most responsibilities and the most demanding or challenging part of a task.

Now, back to our example. Some parents consider their children as kids, no matter how old they are. I’ve heard mothers say, for example: “You are my son, my baby. Even when you’re 60-years-old you’ll still my baby.”

These parents are, well, parents – parents who can never stop parenting. And some of these parents take a dominating role in their children’s decision making even if the children are or should be old enough to make their own decisions.

I say “should” because when young men and women are old enough to look for jobs and filling out application forms, they should be considered old enough, right?

Old enough and adult enough, grownup enough.

Right, and at that age, parents should not over-help and continue to do the heavy lifting.

Lest their children be unable to know what to do when you are gone.

That’s a fact of life, a cold, hard fact of life. Parents likely die before their kids. If you make all the decisions for your children, they’ll be at a loss what to do when you’re no longer there, i.e. when you are dead and gone.

They’ll be at a loss, that is, in more ways than one.

All right, here are media examples of “heavy lifting”:

1. Michael Jordan is one of the best players to ever play the game of basketball. With a list of accolades matched by a few, Jordan made his mark in the NBA with how dominant of a scorer he was and how he led the 1990s Chicago Bulls.

Winning six championships in six NBA Finals appearances, Jordan was easily the talisman for the 90s Bulls, who were probably one of the most dominant teams the league has ever seen. These six championship rings and the six Finals MVP trophies certainly are one of the standout landmarks of Jordan’s career.

While comparing MJ to others like LeBron James in terms of the GOAT debate, fans and pundits often bring up the six championships that MJ won and how that was more impressive than LeBron’s four rings. But it seems like one former player isn’t convinced of the narrative.

In a recent episode of his show, former NBA champion Jason Williams threw some shade at MJ as he discredited the six championships that Jordan won, claiming that he wouldn’t have won them without Scottie Pippen, saying:

“I just look at you as a player, like you know I look at you Shaq, I watch your highlights, you can freaking hoop. I mean, I don’t really look at championships’ rings like that. Because Jordan don’t get those rings without Pippen and Pippen don’t get the rings without Jordan… It takes a team.”

While Williams might be correct in analyzing a player’s individual skill, discarding championships certainly is not the correct approach. Although there is no doubting that winning a championship is a team effort, there is often a superstar who does the heavy lifting, and for the Bulls, it was Michael Jordan.

Similarly, for any championships that LeBron James has won, he has often been the one who has put up talismanic performances. While it is correct that the 90s Bulls teams were well built, they were centered around the talents of Michael Jordan. If not for Jordan, the Bulls would not have succeeded.

- Jason Williams Throws Shade At Michael Jordan While Playing Down His 6 Championship Rings: “Jordan Don’t Get Those Rings Without Pippen.” FadeAwayWorld.net, August 12, 2022.

2. Robert De Niro is giving credit where credit is due when it comes to girlfriend Tiffany Chen’s devotion to their daughter.

The actor, 80, offered a glimpse into his life as a father of seven kids, telling The Guardian on Sunday, October 15, “It doesn’t get easier. It is what it is. It’s OK.”

De Niro praised Chen, 46, for being the primary parent raising their daughter, Gia, 6 months “I don’t do the heavy lifting. I’m there, I support my girlfriend. But she does the work,” he noted. “And we have help, which is so important.”

In response to a question about enjoying fatherhood, De Niro said, “Of course I do. [I am happy with] all of it.”

De Niro also shares son Raphael, 46, with ex-wife Diahnne Abbott. He previously adopted Abbott’s daughter Drena, 52, from a previous relationship as well. In 1995, De Niro and Toukie Smith welcomed twins Julian and Aaron, now 27. The Killers of the Flower Moon star also is a father of son Elliot, 25, and daughter Helen, 11, with ex-wife Grace Hightower.

De Niro started dating Chen in 2021. “It feels great,” De Niro told Hoda Kotb of fatherhood in May. “I have certain awareness – when you’re older you have awareness of certain things in life, dynamics, everything, family dynamics. You can’t avoid learning certain things and how you can deal with those and manage them and this and that, the usual.”

- Robert De Niro Says Tiffany Chen Does ‘The Heavy Lifting’ Raising Their Daughter, Yahoo.com, October 16, 2023.

3. Berkeley has so many quiet heroes we pass by every day who do challenging physical work without fanfare (or remuneration) to make our city a better place to live.

Steve Glaeser, who passed away last month at the age of 62, was certainly one of those people. If you traverse the public pathways of Berkeley, it’s likely you’ve run into Steve leading the Berkeley Path Wanderers’ Association’s (BPWA) all-volunteer path-building team. His 19 years of hands-on pathway construction work has contributed mightily to the city’s network of over 136 public paths and stairways.

Steve was a native Berkeleyan; born at Alta Bates Hospital and raised in the Elmwood neighborhood with his brother Mark and his sister Kathy. His parents, Rachel (a retired pediatric nurse) and UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry Robert Glaeser still live in the home Steve grew up in. His family remembers Steve scrambling around the Berkeley Hills up to Grizzly Peak as a kid to explore his hometown.

“Steve loved maps of all kinds – topographical or maps of paths in other cities, such as San Francisco. Steve always enjoyed hiking, as far back as I can remember,” recalls his sister Kathy. “And he loved the paths,” she adds.

After graduating from The College Preparatory School and receiving a degree in Physical Geography from Cal, Steve went to work as a warehouse supervisor in Berkeley then as a customer service rep for Conifer/Crent Company in Richmond. After early retirement, he returned to the outdoor project work he loved from his Boy Scout days.

“Steve started volunteering with BPWA around 2005, and was a very regular and extremely capable worker,” says Charlie Bowen, who has overseen the path-building operation with BPWA for decades. She adds, “Creating a highly skilled crew of volunteer path-builders was Steve’s idea and he was the foreman during the work.”

Steve worked on more than 20 paths, including the most challenging ones. Many of these paths required clearing densely covered hillsides of ivy and the laying of over 200 steps per path on very steep terrain (with Steve doing much of the heavy lifting). Complex planning and calculations were needed to make these stairway projects a reality.

- Remembering Steve Glaeser, who did the heavy lifting to make paths in the Berkeley Hills, BerkeleySide.org, February 6, 2024.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：張欣）