Posts Tagged: “Two Tramps in Mud Time”

“Balancing What I Need to Do and What I Enjoy Doing”

On September 23, 2018 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Have you ever said or written something, and then wondered what you meant by that?  I had that experience just now.  I was writing my daily e mail report and affirmation to send them to my sponsor.  Here is my affirmation for today:

“Today, by God’s grace, I am balancing doing what I enjoy doing and what I need to do.  When I do this by God’s grace, I am discovering that what I enjoy doing and what I need to do are the same thing.”

There are things I need to do—lots of them.  They range from cleaning the bathroom, to taking care of the dog, to preparing for a class I’m teaching tomorrow at the university, to helping my wife lead our community group this evening.

And there are things I would enjoy doing.  They range from taking a ride on the Little Miami Bike Trail to taking a nap this afternoon.  (I will try not to do both of these things at the same time.)

In this context, it was the second sentence of my affirmation that struck me, and that I am trying to understand.  Can those two things—what I need to do and what I enjoy doing—really be one?

I think that the short answer is, Yes!  However, as with most short answers, this “Yes!” needs to be unpacked.

Can necessity and enjoyment be one?  Yes, but the word “can” is crucial here.  The unity of “need-to” and “enjoyment of” is possible, but not inevitable.  We all know people (and some of us have been those people) who never enjoy anything—even things they enjoy!  If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, it is.  But we’ve probably all experienced that, either with other people or with our own selves.

In his book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis has one of his characters (who is in hell) say, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.”  I do believe that there is hell.  I don’t know if people are that honest and aware in hell.  But sometimes, I do suspect that some of us occasionally visit the suburbs of hell.  Any time when we don’t do what we need to do or what we enjoy doing, we are probably flirting with hell.  And rest assured that hell will always flirt back.

And perhaps, on the other side of the equation, one aspect of Heaven is that those who are there have discovered a way to make necessity and enjoyment one.  Perhaps the last stanza of Robert Frost’s poem, “Two Tamps in Mud Time” strikes the right balance, which is Unity.  Frost pictures a man (himself?) splitting wood when two unemployed lumberjacks walk by.  One of them stands to watch, and the man splitting wood knows only too well that the lumberjack is silently asking for work to make some money.  And the necessity of one man trumps the enjoyment of another man.

But Frost ends with the following observation:

“But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.”

So, today, by God’s grace—and only by God’s grace can I do this—I will balance and unify what I need to do and what I enjoy doing.  Writing this blog post is a first step.

 

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