High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Work’

Nestled beneath the ferns at the base of the great pine, the little mushrooms hummed in contentment.

They were happy for the rich soil that fed them and for the soft drizzle that had been falling throughout the day.  It was, they thought, perfect mushroom weather.

High above them and just to the west, a crew of elves had spent the day painting the last leaves of the mighty oak.  It was their final assignment for the season, and although they adored the way the burgundy rust color spread itself across the leathery leaves , they were tiring.

It had been a busy season and they had worked long hours.

Just as they were finishing the last bough, the wind turned cold and whisked in a driving rain.

“We’ll never make it home before dark in this weather, Eddie said to his crew.  Let’s see if we can’t find a cozy place to spend the night.”

The rain made it hard to see, but after a bit Freddie, Eddie’s brother, saw them.  “Look!” he cried.  “Mushrooms!”

The elf crew dashed through the cold, wet rain and collapsed, laughing at their mad dash.  “Check it out!” Freddie said as he spied the seed-laden pine cone lying right outside their little camp “Dinner!”

After they stowed their buckets and brushes and feasted on the seeds, the elves snuggled into the soft bed of pine needles, relaxed into the hum of the mushrooms and the sound of the pouring rain and began crooning their favorite elf songs.

“Oh, what a fine thing it is,” sighed Eddie as they all drifted off to sleep, “to complete a good day’s labor and to have a place of rest.”

The little crownvetch blossom could have been overwhelmed at the amount of work to be done.  Hundreds and hundreds of cells had to be fed and cared for, after all. Their timing had to be precise in order to open her petals.  Everyone had to put on the right color and stand in the right place in line.  But she didn’t give a thought to any of it.

Overwhelm wasn’t something she believed in.  She was confounded when she heard how much energy the humans poured into it.   But they were beings fond of great drama and that was just part of their play.

She, on the other hand, was a small roadside flower.  And her part was simply to bloom in the sun, and to experience the bliss of it in her heart.  She let the sun take care of the timing of things.  She left the care and nurture of the cells to it, too, and to its partners, the earth and the rain.

It was the job of the cells themselves to find their right colors and places, and she wholly trusted them to do so.

And so she lived with a divine nonchalance, experiencing her life as a flower, floating on the deep, deep bliss of being exactly who she was meant to be.

In that beautiful, timeless place where hours run past unheeded, where you’re fully engaged in what needs to be done, and doing it well, life sings.

Some call it work; some call it play.   They’re both the same when you’re there.  You get in your rhythm, find your stride, and nothing exists but the doing.   Hunger disappears, emotion vanishes, context becomes invisible.

All that exists is the doing–skilled, focused, as natural as breathing, and freeing you somehow, buoying you above all distractions.

It’s only afterwards you feel it, only when it’s over.  And then the satisfaction rushes in, and the joy, and you know it’s what you live for.

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What if each task was a privilege and joy, and you accomplished it with ease?
What if you decided there was no one you had to please?

What if you let your work be play?  What if you thought it was fun?

Wouldn’t it wow you?
Wouldn’t it wow them?
Wouldn’t it get things done?

Imagine the magic you could perform if you took on each job with pleasure, if you dug right in as if you thought you were digging for wondrous treasure?

If you slipped into each moment with confidence and delight, imagine how smoothly things would flow, how many things would go right.

It’s all a matter of attitude. You can make things tough, you know.  Or you can dance through the minutes gracefully, like grasses in the snow.

The mother duck looked so alert and poised as she sailed out into the pond, a bevy of little ducklings following in her wake.  I imagined she was content, following the path that nature laid out for her, performing all the tasks of motherhood by instinct.  She was made to do exactly what she was doing.

I don’t know, of course, whether ducks feel contentment or not.  But they look pretty peaceful.  It’s hard to imagine them saying, “Geeze, I hate this job.  I can’t go anywhere without all these ducklings following me.  Can’t a girl get a break?”

Not all of us find work that feels like we were born to do it.  When I drive to my office in the morning I sometimes wonder how many of the other commuters are going to jobs they dreamed someday they would do.  Very few of us, I’d wager, despite all the “do what you love, the money will follow” advice out there.  But we do end up in work that allows us to exercise our capabilities and, once we’re past the learning curve, to apply our strengths and talents in performing our duties well.   And to the extent that we apply them, giving our work our focused attention, doing it well, we find satisfaction in what we do.

That combination—engaged attention on an activity where our skills meet its challenges—is the recipe for what psychologists call “flow.”  Feeling neither bored nor anxious, you’re absorbed in the moment, performing with focused attention.  You feel in control. You have a clear sense of what you’re working to accomplish.   You lose track of time.  There’s just the activity.  And at the end of the day, you feel that you did something worthwhile.

In addition to the satisfaction that follows a stretch of being in the flow, the skilled performance of our duties yields other psychic rewards.  It provides us with a sense that we contributed our piece to the larger whole.  The earnings from our work help us feel self-reliant.  The work itself moved the company toward its goals and served its clients or customers.  We were part of society’s rhythm as we performed it, connected.  We held up our part.  We met the expectations of our position.  And those things generate a sense of belonging, pride, and self-esteem.

So it’s Monday and most of us are sailing out into the pond, ready to paddle through another work week.  And most of us grumble about it, and say we would rather be eating bon-bons at the beach, or playing golf or gardening.  But the truth is there’s happiness in duties well-performed, however subtle and overlooked its appearance may be.