A Little Bit of Work

As a teacher, I’m sometimes astonished to see just how many students make so much effort to avoid doing just a little bit of work.  I can give very simple assignments and have half of my high-school students simply not do it–and they don’t seem to care at all that their grades are affected strongly by their lack of work.  While I’ve had other problems and issues in my life, this hasn’t been one of them–a little bit of work never has been a problem for me, and I’m usually more than willing to do my share of the work, especially when I see that I’m doing it for my benefit.

Perhaps my students simply don’t see the benefit of doing the work.  Perhaps they don’t understand how doing the work can make their lives easier or richer or more interesting.  And try as I might to tell them the benefits, they simply choose not to believe my words, believing instead that avoiding work is more beneficial to them than actually doing it.  After all, it does free up an extra half-hour or hour today, doesn’t it?  And they can spend that half-hour texting friends or playing video games or talking on the phone or watching TV.

But realizing that a little bit of work almost always has advantages for us is one of the keys to life–one of the keys to helping ourselves to make a difference in our own lives.  That work can prepare us for something important in the future, it can help us to understand something perplexing us in our present, or it can earn us a bit of money or a decent grade.  That work can enrich us in ways that we can’t even imagine–if we never do it.

Sometimes when I see a task ahead of me I balk at first, not wanting to commit myself to getting it done.  For I know that once I commit myself, I’m into the task for good.  But experience tells me that even with the somewhat unpleasant tasks, it’s much better to get it done and to move on to something else than it is to delay or to avoid doing it.  There are almost always repercussions and consequences to delaying and avoiding, and there are almost always rewards and benefits to getting the job done, and getting it done right and well.

Don’t be afraid of a little bit of work.  It’s all of those little bits added up to a whole that make our lives what they are, which means that what we are is a result of decisions we have made.  And what we will be shall be a result of decisions that we will make one day.  When there are tasks ahead of us, that means that there are also decisions involved.  And what will your decisions be?

I studied the lives of great men and women, and I found
that the people who got to the top were those who did
the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had
of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.

Harry S. Truman

A Nice Thought

A woman once told me that she did not feel the need to reach out to those around her because she prayed every day.  Surely, this was enough.  But a prayer is about our relationship to God; a blessing is about our relationship to the spark of God in one another.  God may not need our attention as badly as the person next to us on the bus or behind us in line in the supermarket.  Everyone in the world matters, and so do their blessings.  When we bless others, we offer them refuge from an indifferent world.

Rachel Naomi Remen

Do I Know You?

It's interesting just how consistent we are about building walls between ourselves and our fellow human beings.  It seems that we're so interested either in protecting ourselves or in keeping others out of our lives that we look for any reasons that we can find to keep people from knowing us, or to keep ourselves from knowing other people.  After all, once we know someone else, most of us feel a kinship with them, and that isn't always a good thing because it can cause problems and distractions in our lives.  And we don't want those, do we?

It is true that knowing other people often can be a pain.  There's a certain person in our apartment complex who's a very nice guy, but who won't stop talking if you stop to talk to him.  I don't want to be a stranger to him, but whenever I run into him he talks and talks and talks, without ever giving me a chance to participate in what he calls a "conversation."  The unfortunate thing is that my experiences with him sometimes make me hesitate when I have a chance to get to know someone else here.

In other words, sometimes the walls seem logical and sensible.  Sometimes it seems that the best thing that we can do is to keep other people at arm's length in order to avoid many possible negative situations.  The problem is when we start to put everyone in the category of "don't get close," for then we most certainly can rob ourselves of some pretty positive social interaction.

We can be positive about the people we get to know well, the people who become more than acquaintances to us.  We can choose carefully based on what we know about people, and not be afraid to say either "no" or "yes" when we're deciding whether or not we want to get to know someone.  The most important thing to keep in mind, though, is that none of us can make it through this journey here completely alone, and we do need the company and often the help of our fellow human beings.  There are many humans out there who would be great people to get to know, too, if only we were willing to take the chance to do so more often!  Set your rules and set your limits, but try not to keep everyone out of your life.  If you do, you'll be the one who suffers the most.

Treat people and live amongst them in such a way
so that when you die they will cry over you,
and while you are alive they long for your company.

traditional Muslim saying

What Can I Do?

The hour before me is a blank slate.  The day before me is as yet unwritten.  There's plenty of time before me that's just waiting for me to do something, to make my mark on the world, to accomplish something unique or to rest myself so that I can recharge my energy for some future need.  What can I do with this time?  What can I contribute to the world in the next hour?  In the next day?  What can I, as a simple person alone, add to the world that will make a difference?

Does the difference have to happen on the level of many people being affected by what I do?  No, it doesn't--I can make a difference in the life of just one person, and then trust in the ripple effect, which means that a good act will spread as the recipient of that action is inspired to commit a positive act him or herself in response to their positive experience.  Do I have to know just what that person does--if anything--in response to my action?  No, I don't; in fact, not knowing shows more trust that the world can take care of itself and doesn't need me to make sure that everything's okay with the world.

Does my act have to be acknowledged in order for me to know that it's had a positive effect?  Not at all.  Sometimes the unacknowledged acts, the things that we do that simply pass into history without anyone else noticing them, are the most important of our lives.  Do I need to let someone else know what I've done in order to feel better about it myself?  Not at all--and often when we tell others what we've done, we do so with the intention of being rewarded with some sort of compliment.  If we do this, then there's a good chance that we can diminish the purity of what we've done--a simple good act for the sake of a simple good act becomes a simple good act for the sake of acknowledgement or praise.

What can I do today?  What can I do in the next hour?  How can I affect the world in simple, positive ways without having to change my life or the lives of others?  What things can I do that will brighten someone's day, or hour, or even someone's few moments.  What can I give someone else that they can take with them throughout their day and remember the good feelings they had when they first received the encouragement or praise or simple gift?

What can I do?

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait
a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Anne Frank

There's Always Someone

Over the last few years I’ve read more and more about people in prison being released because new DNA testing procedures have proved their innocence of the charges for which they were imprisoned.  The latest man I read about had been in prison for 26 years, but he’s now a free man.  And while I do see the negative aspect of these situations–this man had spent 26 years of his life in prison for someone else’s crime–I also see an amazing positive side to this phenomenon.  Specifically, I find it very encouraging to see that there are people out there who care enough about other human beings to take the time to develop and administer tests that can be used to vindicate other people, whom they’ll probably never meet, and get them released from prison.

There are lots of great people out there, doing great things that benefit other members of the human race.  The human race isn’t all about greed and selfishness and violence and fanaticism; rather, it’s about giving and sharing and doing things for other people.  It’s about serving and helping.  We human beings get along best when we’re doing things for others, hopefully in a field in which we really enjoy working.  There are doctors who love being doctors who do great things for people, and teachers who love being teachers who also contribute great things to their fellow human beings.  We tend to see more of the unhappy people in the news, though–the teachers- or artists-to-be who live frustrating lives because they’ve chosen a different career in order to make more money and pay more bills.

It gives me a lot of hope to see that people are developing these DNA tests.  It gives me a lot of hope to read about doctors and lawyers who contribute their time and effort to other people who normally wouldn’t be able to afford their services.  I’m hopeful when I see people holding doors open, picking up trash, helping someone else carry something.  We humans have a wonderful ability to help others, and there are plenty of us out there who are making just that their most important goal.  I only hope that I’m able to live up to my potential when it comes to contributing something positive to the lives of others–and I think that if I make that a major focus of mine, then I most certainly will live up to that potential.

 You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Khalil Gibran

An important thought

You can think about your problems or you can worry about them, and there is a vast difference between the two.  Worry is thinking that has turned toxic.  It is jarring music that goes round and round and never comes to either climax or conclusion.  Thinking works its way through problems to conclusions and decisions; worry leaves you in a state of tensely suspended animation.  When you worry, you go over the same ground endlessly and come out the same place you started.  Thinking makes progress from one place to another; worry remains static.  The problem of life is to change worry into thinking and anxiety into creative action.
Harold B. Walker

Somewhere Close

My wife and I finally had a day off together today, the first one in a long time.  Over the course of the last week, we talked a lot about what we were going to do with the day.  All sorts of things came to mind--day trips to mountains about four hours away, trips to visit friends a couple of hours away, even the possibility of taking an overnight trip somewhere.  Finally, though, we thought of going somewhere nearby, a spot in a National Forest that was supposed to be quite nice.  So that's what we did--we drove less than an hour to get up into the mountains close to where we live, and we parked the car and went for a nice two-hour walk.  We saw a few deer, hawks, and lots of other birds.  We didn't hear any cars or other noise pollution, and we were out in the wild, enjoying the fresh air and the silence and the sunshine and the clouds and the breeze.
Sometimes it seems that if we want to do something new and different, we look far away for our inspiration.  Believe it or not, though, there are many wonderful things to see nearby, close to where you live.  We just tend to think that since they are so close, we'll always have a chance to see them, so we put them off until some other time.  This is why so many New Yorkers die before they see the Statue of Liberty, and why so many people in Arizona and Southern California and Nevada never have seen the Grand Canyon.

But we don't have to go far away to have a good time or to see something exciting.  We can find those things close by--all we have to do is look for them, and make the decision to visit them as soon as we can.  If we don't do this, we risk missing out on some of the nicest things around, thinking that the better things to see have to be further away.  It's a lot like we treat ourselves, thinking that the best things are outside of ourselves, while we have some pretty marvelous characteristics and traits inside of ourselves all the while.

What's near you that's beautiful?  What's amazing that's located nearby that you haven't yet seen or experienced?  You can find those things and enjoy them immensely, but only if you look for them and then make the decision to visit them and make them a part of your life, a part of your memories, a part of all that you've experienced on this beautiful planet of ours.