Ah, the fake end of another long week. Why fake? Because there’s one more birthday tomorrow.
One
Whoever commented on my blog that Toggl is stressful—yes. I probably will give it one more week and then trash it, unless I get a pretty graph or something out of it. So far if I keep on my present course, by Saturday night I will have put in 70+ hours of various endeavors called “work.” A jumble of odd frustrating moments that comprise each laboring day.
Two
But honestly, this is the human condition. As I peer backwards into history, and around the world today, the idea that you could not work for all the hours that there is daylight, and then beyond them, is absurd. Life is pain and suffering and that includes the work that keeps a person alive until he dies.
Three
Of course, children do not understand this. Everyday they ask if they can go to the park or dull the contents of their minds and hearts with a screen. And every day I ask, “Did you do all your school work?” And then they stare back at me with mute incomprehension written across their troubled brows. They squirm. They try to count over to themselves what it was they were suppose to do, because they can’t remember, and then what they did do, which they also can’t remember. Meanwhile I stare out at the vast expanse of all the things left for me and so we are fixed, in eternity as it were, until they say, “I think so,” and then I, who, in that complete moment, ceased utterly to care, say, “Oh alright then.”
Later I lament, lifting up my voice to the heavens, “No One Should Even Ask To Play If The Work Wasn’t Done.” And the heavens nod back at me and say, “That’s funny.”
Four
On that very subject, this is a long depressing piece. It’s not really an article. It’s a sort of lamentation, perhaps like mine, but not entirely because I think she is wrong about so many things. For instance, it is absurd that she would think that she can “have it all.” That is a great and terrible lie. The first reason being that she can “have” anything. Who will give it to her? The cosmos? Maybe, but that’s not how it works. Second, it isn’t her husband’s job to make it so that she can “have it all.”
I always think it is a tragic irony that women want perfect equality in their relationships, but then are angry about the cutthroat nature of life and work. They want still to be given some of the help and respect that somewhere, in the very recesses of their personhood, they know they should have. The vestigial desire for honor lurks, mocks even, and is known only through the paltry daily emotions of frustration and rage.
Five
I know this feeling. I think, somehow, that work will bring me honor. If I work hard enough and my children are clean and bright and my house is charming and then I do work that satisfies me in some way, I will be able to earn the honor and respect that somehow I know I ought to have. I will get it for myself. It will not be a gift that is given to me by those who love me, because of who I am. It will be had because of what I do. I will “have it all” because I will have earned it all.
Six
How disappointed I always am to find it doesn’t work that way. My children honor me because their father commands them to, because I am their mother. Any work I do is because I want to, and if it comes to anything, fine, but that isn’t the reason for it. All my work is a gift that I give, unearned by the wide world. Just as God’s gracious gift of salvation and dignity is not something I earned by the sweat of my brow and the length of my work day. I may “have” those things, but not because I deserved them or even did anything beyond rising up at the sound of the bird, breathing in and out moment by moment, and then lying down again at night.
Seven
The great thing about the Christian life is that you can always give honor to other people. It doesn’t matter who those people are or what they’ve done. You can stand with them, walk beside them, listen to them, look them in the face and be curious and interested in who they are, no matter what is going on in the bitter recesses of your own person. It doesn’t matter if you have been cheated or disappointed. It doesn’t matter if you are angry and grieving. Whoever the person, you can take them as they are and honor and love them as God, through the merciful riches of his grace, has loved and dignified you. It’s a gift you can give, because you have already been given something of inestimable value. It is the kind of gift that you don’t have to sit there and “have,” counting it over in misery to yourself. It is something you can immediately turn out and give away.
The only person who “had it all” gave it all away and became as nothing so that you could live longer even than the moment that plagues you now.
Go check out more takes!
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In