Why is work so hard? Why do so few of us feel creative and fulfilled by what we must do?
I ask myself this every time it’s my turn to do the housework, and the rest of the family leaves the house. This morning I resolved to make everything spic and span, until I remembered how hot, angry and frustrated I became last time. I simply couldn’t step back into the picture of myself from my last turn, when the dog ran all over the house in muddy paws, and the mop broke into five pieces leaving me to scrub on bare knees.
As I sip the last of my morning tea, I come across these words from over five hundred years ago.
Your separation from God, from love, is the hardest work in this world. -Hafiz (The Gift, translated by D. Ladinsky)
Entitled “A Cushion for your Head”, this extract from a mystic Sufi piece caught and held my attention. A sudden insight made me recognize its relevance to my own problem. As long as my family was there, and with them, love, I could do even the dirtiest work without feeling resentful.
Most of us, as parents, can remember such examples. Often, a baby would throw up all over me, and the only effect would be to intensify the bliss of mother love. This kind of joy is not only restricted to work with family. Once, my three-month old son peed straight into a doctor’s ear, and the kind man just laughed.
Yet often while we’re working we feel bitter and resentful, divorced from the flow of love. Before parenthood, I worked as a civil servant in a building hidden from the public, where my office had no contact with those I was supposed to serve. For 15 years, my career seemed less and less meaningful until I finally quit. Yet my friend Penny, a social worker, had daily contact with people in trouble. Her work was much harder, and more challenging, yet she was motivated to continue many years longer.
As the above quote sums up, it’s not the work itself, but the “separation” that’s the problem. If we can overcome this feeling of isolation, we can energize our work and our lives. I am not writing to convince you to join any religious sect. In fact, I find this quote most helpful when I don’t interpret it as part of a formal, orthodox relationship with God. I believe Hafiz, a highly individualist Sufi prophet, who speaks with respect of Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed, is talking about God as the love that flows through us.
Creativity has become a bad word, especially among accountants, but one thing is evident whether God or Science is the Creator of our world:
Life, and our survival on this planet, relies on continued creativity. There are multiple ways this can happen. Yet if we believe in denial, if we cannot find any way to be creative, then we are working against life.
Three Ways to Make Work Easier
1) Stop calculating, and start feeling.
All of us know how it feels to become energized by the spirit of love, as we feel it for others. Pet therapy, for example, has helped many Seniors turn around from deathbed situations. No matter how small, how simple, the gift we give to the world, we are nourished by the giving of it.
When we are not giving, or not seeing the positive results of our giving, we shrivel up into a shell. Our only purpose becomes to protect ourselves, and the wealth we have accumulated. Yet those who calculate theirs among the highest riches are often the most miserly and lead the poorest lives. They become unable even to be generous to their loved ones, even themselves.
A close friend from a wealthy family wanted to play the guitar. His father, an accountant, insisted on a financial career. As my friend grew older and wiser, he saw how limiting his work with numbers was. He found a way to bridge toward another life. He volunteered to help musicians overcome their tax difficulties. In this way, he found friends who helped him enter a world where he has now found a balance between work and art.
2) Engage in an active, evolving spiritual relationship with the world.
When we allow ourselves to explore, rather than calculate spiritual gains as though they were money, we become true expressions of the divine. Jesus said: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.” He was a seeker all his life. He did not remain hidden in a cloister of rules. He worked among the common people, searching and finding new ways to bring divine love to them.
3) Let your Gift take on a momentum of its own.
Perhaps you have chosen unfulfilling work out of obedience to your parents, or the way you were brought up. Maybe it seems that denying your brightest talent in order just to serve time at work, is the way to show love to your own children.
Yet the Bible says “Do not hide your light under a bushel.” Even if we do not believe in God, it’s easy to see, as parents, that when we deny our talents, we are teaching our children to do the same.
My mother was a gifted painter, and my father was born with a superb singing voice. Yet they both abandoned these, and told us it was for our sake. All my life, especially when I see films of great sons of great fathers, like Mozart and Renoir, I wish that my parents has allowed their art to enter our lives even in a small way.
Nature's Path 