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Today's
Quotation:
So
much of unhappiness, it seems to me, is due to nerves;
and bad nerves are the result of having nothing to do, or
doing a thing badly, unsuccessfully or incompetently. Of
all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are
those who have not found something they want to do. True
happiness comes to those who do their work well, followed
by a refreshing period of rest. True happiness comes from
the right amount of work for the day.
Lin
Yutang
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Today's
Meditation:
There
are many people who link unhappiness to not having enough to
do, or to having a lot to do but not getting any joy out of
it. A person who works on an assembly line, for
example, may have plenty of work to do every day, but may
put into his or her work the bare minimum of effort
necessary to get by. And this is understandable--after
all, how creative can one get while working on an assembly
line, doing the same work every day?
But
when we're busy, it's up to us whether that time is well
spent or poorly spent. I've worked on an assembly line
for medical products, and I stayed focused on the end use of
the products--they actually could save people's lives.
It's up to us to decide whether we're going to do the work
we have very well, or do it to the least of our
abilities. If we want to be happy, it seems, it's
necessary for us to see the work that we do as important,
and then to treat it as if it were truly important. We
all can't be doing only what we want to do all of the
time--if I were able to do so, I would have spent my whole
life doing nothing but writing novels. But that's not
where my life has led me, so I spend most of my time doing
other work, and doing my best to make sure that I do a good
job, for the sake of the people for whom I'm working.
This
attitude allows me to be at peace, and to find fulfillment
in my work. I don't come home feeling as if I've
wasted a day, or as if my work has no meaning. All
work has meaning, and if we do our work well, we add to the
lives of those who are touched by the work we do. And
if we can keep this in mind always, we won't let our nerves
get the best of us.
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