01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, July 5, 2005

WELLESLEY, Mass.

THE HALLS of Congress are abuzz with talk of again raising the retirement age -- this time to as high as 69 years. This would be a shame. If the retirement age is raised, many people will lose the opportunity to start working in their 60s.

A majority of our population does not work between ages 16 and 60. It labors.

Labor is the hated drudgery done to keep body and soul together. Although work is sometimes used in the same vile sense as labor, the word also has a second meaning. In this second sense, work not only helps meet our physical needs but also gives us self-fulfillment.

The distinction between labor and work is not just American. It's a universal distinction, as is shown by the fact that, like English, most languages have two words for work: one denoting joyless drudgery and the other denoting spiritually satisfying activity.

The difference between labor and work is at least partly subjective. It depends on how we feel about what we are doing. One ditch digger may work and another labor. Ditto for accountants, cops, doctors, teachers -- you name it.

One of the great things about Social Security is that it has provided many Americans with an opportunity they would otherwise never have had: to stop laboring and start working.

Some people in their 60s work as unpaid volunteers. Or they may do unpaid work at home -- weaving, whittling, even watching TV.

Others find, for the first time in their life, paid work that they can do in a joyful rather than bleak spirit. I saw this once at Disneyworld, where some of the part-time employees were retirees from labor doing work as entertainers.

The lucky people, of course, are those who have loved their work all their life and can just keep on working. But it would be a shame for those who have not been so lucky to lose, in their 60s, their first chance to go to work.

James Hoopes is a professor of history and ethics at Babson College, in Wellesley.