“Happiness, I have
discovered, is nearly always a rebound from hard work.” David Grayson
We are told that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a
single step. It is a cliché, because it is true.
When our firewood for the season was delivered (my electric
chain saw won’t work out in the forest where there is a real dearth of
electrical outlets!) the trailer-load looked like it would take quite a while
to unload and move to our wood racks. I was sure it would take hours.
However, once I began, it went quickly. I began the process
of picking up the logs with one hand, laid and balanced them on the opposite
forearm (against the chest), and repeated that process until some supervising
muscle cell yelled, “Enough!” – and then I walked with the armload out the
garage, up the steps to the deck, and then finally arranged them on the rack. I
then repeated that whole process again and again in an almost robotic fashion.
Before I knew it, trailer-load one was done – and it had taken all of 35 or 40
minutes!
I felt good. I was happy. If I had stood there first,
pondering the details involved in moving wood from one spot to another, I would
have gotten worn out just with the thinking part of it. But, rolling up
figurative sleeves (I kept them down to protect my arms from slivers, spiders,
sap, and other such what-not), I simply dug in, did the deed, and when
finished, stepped back quite pleased with the results.
“Happiness,” says David Grayon (whose real name is Ray
Stannard Baker), “is nearly always a rebound from hard work.”
Hard work produces happiness. Chemists, doctors, and
physical fitness aficionados will say it is the endorphins that produce that
sense of pleasure we feel, and no doubt they are partially right.
But the happiness I am thinking about isn’t so much the
drug-induced euphoria we get from a good cardio workout (something about which
I know VERY little), but that comes from the sense of satisfaction we
experience when there is a job to do, precious little resources for getting it
done, and overcoming the inertia to just do it (no trademark infringement
intended).
Created in the image of God, I believe we are designed to
tackle tough problems and solve them, and even if we fail, to feel OK. Don’t
get me wrong. No one likes to fail. No one likes to lose. But there is
satisfaction in being finished.
What is important is giving it our best shot, and then
developing an appropriate level of amnesia to carry on with our next project.
Amnesia?
Yes. We need to be able to get past our failures. They don’t
define us. They are part of life’s experiences. We need to reflect on what we
did (or failed to do), decisions we made (or failed to make), and then file
away in that messy cerebral junk pile we call a “brain” the information we need
to make better decisions, or find better options.
We may perspire from our labors, but we don’t need to sweat
the results. As my grandmother used to say, “Horses sweat; people glow.”
Too often, though, we hang onto a sense of shame about our
failings, and we begin to think WE are failures. That’s what we need to forget.
That’s where the amnesia comes in.
After we humans messed up in the garden of Eden, I think
maybe God just conveniently forgot the death penalty he had handed out in his
preemptory warning to the young couple.
He figured, “Hey, we’ll work this out.” And rolling up his
sleeves, and humming a sweet celestial tune, he began his journey of a thousand
miles. His first step was to take Adam and Eve by the hand, and to walk with
them out into the world.
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