Work
03/08/12 05:37
It is a simple fact that the human body is meant for work. We are actually very good at walking, lifting, carrying, pushing and pulling. In times when most humans were engaged in hunter-gatherer lifestyles, we could cover significant distances at reasonable speeds by running.. Add a simple machine such as a bicycle or a row boat and we can cover great distances.
In many ways the Olympic Games celebrate the capacity of the human body to do work. Of course there is great fun in sport. We derive pleasure from being able to run faster or throw an object farther than someone else. We are naturally competitive. We like to compare. We remain interested in the games for a lot of different reasons. It is an opportunity to display a bit of national pride. It is an opportunity to watch someone do something of which we are not capable. It is an invitation to marvel at the incredible power and grace of which humans are capable. And it is a celebration of the power of work. Hard work and determination can carry a person far indeed.
We have taken great delight in Gabby Douglas winning the women’s all-around gold medal. This spunky and determined teen has demonstrated courage and commitment for many years. It took tremendous courage for her to move away from home at age 14 to train with a world-class coach. It took non-stop work for her to move from being a better-than-average gymnast into an Olympic champion in less than two years. She is simply amazing!
Humans are, of course, capable of great feats of thinking as well. It is not just the capacity of our bodies for work that enables us to live and thrive. We have survived as a species in part because of the abilities of our minds. We can anticipate the future. We can envision solutions to problems. We have developed systems of language and communication that enable us to be relatively efficient at passing wisdom and knowledge from one generation to the next. There are many games in the Olympics that celebrate the powers of thinking. Strategy is critical to many of the games. Any athlete will tell you about the mental discipline that is as significant a challenge as the physical demands of sport.
There are rare moments when we witness a balance of thinking and acting – of mind and body. It is amazing and wonderful. But for many of us, we spend much of our lives a bit out of balance. In the normal routine of my days, I spend a bit too much time sitting and thinking. I enjoy difficult mental challenges. I like to solve problems. I delight in working with other people and learning to listen and respond appropriately to them. My work is rich and meaningful.
But too often I get caught up in my sedentary ways. I sit and read. I sit and work at the computer. I sit and visit with people. I sit and study the scriptures. I sit and sit and sit and sit.
And I sill live in a body that was meant for standing and stretching and walking and running. I try to balance some of that with disciplined exercise. I row and paddle and bike and walk on purpose to help keep my body in shape for the endurance that this life requires. It is true, however, that I am somehow more faithful in my academic and spiritual disciplines than I am in my physical disciplines. When I am tired, I can let exercise slip. When I am busy, I find it harder to justify taking time to go rowing or walking.
Like many lessons in life, the lesson of physical work is one that I have to learn over and over again it seems.
I haven’t been sleeping well in the past couple of weeks. There is nothing particularly unusual about this. I haven’t been a good sleeper for decades. When I was a college student, I used to wake in the night with my mind working on my studies. One of the great treats of having a private room in my sophomore and junior years was being able to get up, turn on a light and open a book at any moment that I wanted. I often would go to bed early, wake for a hour or more of work in the middle of the night and then return to bed for a second phase of sleep. So I usually don’t think much of the fact that I can’t sleep. I just chalk it up to my interest in life. There are lots of things to do. Sleep can wait for a time when I am not so busy.
I did observe, however, that I was having no trouble sleeping when I was on vacation recently. So I thought, “there must be a little stress involved.” I am working hard to keep a lot of things going at the church. There are the normal conflicts that inhabit human institutions, especially those that welcome all kinds of personalities and strive for diversity. But there is nothing exceptional about the amount of stress at work.
Last evening, after supper, I went back to the church in my work clothes and cut down a tree that was dying. It is a simple chore. There are plenty of others in the church who could have done the work, but it is an ornamental crab tree and I like to have some apple wood on hand for smoking and grilling food. A tree like this one will provide several years worth of chunks of apple wood for my use and for sharing with others. So I volunteered to cut down the tree. The tree was small and the job pretty simple. But there were lots of branches, so it took some time to cut off branches, load all of them into the trailer, rake up the leaves and other things left on the ground, tarp and tie down my load and head for home. When I got home, I worked until dark feeding branches into a chipper to make mulch for flowerbeds and the garden. When it was dark, I came in, had a couple of glasses of water, cleaned up, read for a while and went to bed.
I slept, as they say, like a baby. The next moment of consciousness was when my morning alarm sounded.
It is a simple truth – work makes me sleep better. Physical labor is a better way for me to spend an evening after a day at the office than any of my more sedentary hobbies. You’d think that a person my age would have learned that lesson years ago.
So I didn’t watch the Olympics last night. Perhaps the best value of the games is not their power to entertain, but their power to inspire.
In closing, here is a link to a story that inspires me. It seems I am not too old for good physical activity:
http://www.news.com.au/weird-true-freaky/this-90-year-old-pole-vaulter-is-our-hero/story-e6frflri-1226442404042
In many ways the Olympic Games celebrate the capacity of the human body to do work. Of course there is great fun in sport. We derive pleasure from being able to run faster or throw an object farther than someone else. We are naturally competitive. We like to compare. We remain interested in the games for a lot of different reasons. It is an opportunity to display a bit of national pride. It is an opportunity to watch someone do something of which we are not capable. It is an invitation to marvel at the incredible power and grace of which humans are capable. And it is a celebration of the power of work. Hard work and determination can carry a person far indeed.
We have taken great delight in Gabby Douglas winning the women’s all-around gold medal. This spunky and determined teen has demonstrated courage and commitment for many years. It took tremendous courage for her to move away from home at age 14 to train with a world-class coach. It took non-stop work for her to move from being a better-than-average gymnast into an Olympic champion in less than two years. She is simply amazing!Humans are, of course, capable of great feats of thinking as well. It is not just the capacity of our bodies for work that enables us to live and thrive. We have survived as a species in part because of the abilities of our minds. We can anticipate the future. We can envision solutions to problems. We have developed systems of language and communication that enable us to be relatively efficient at passing wisdom and knowledge from one generation to the next. There are many games in the Olympics that celebrate the powers of thinking. Strategy is critical to many of the games. Any athlete will tell you about the mental discipline that is as significant a challenge as the physical demands of sport.
There are rare moments when we witness a balance of thinking and acting – of mind and body. It is amazing and wonderful. But for many of us, we spend much of our lives a bit out of balance. In the normal routine of my days, I spend a bit too much time sitting and thinking. I enjoy difficult mental challenges. I like to solve problems. I delight in working with other people and learning to listen and respond appropriately to them. My work is rich and meaningful.
But too often I get caught up in my sedentary ways. I sit and read. I sit and work at the computer. I sit and visit with people. I sit and study the scriptures. I sit and sit and sit and sit.
And I sill live in a body that was meant for standing and stretching and walking and running. I try to balance some of that with disciplined exercise. I row and paddle and bike and walk on purpose to help keep my body in shape for the endurance that this life requires. It is true, however, that I am somehow more faithful in my academic and spiritual disciplines than I am in my physical disciplines. When I am tired, I can let exercise slip. When I am busy, I find it harder to justify taking time to go rowing or walking.
Like many lessons in life, the lesson of physical work is one that I have to learn over and over again it seems.
I haven’t been sleeping well in the past couple of weeks. There is nothing particularly unusual about this. I haven’t been a good sleeper for decades. When I was a college student, I used to wake in the night with my mind working on my studies. One of the great treats of having a private room in my sophomore and junior years was being able to get up, turn on a light and open a book at any moment that I wanted. I often would go to bed early, wake for a hour or more of work in the middle of the night and then return to bed for a second phase of sleep. So I usually don’t think much of the fact that I can’t sleep. I just chalk it up to my interest in life. There are lots of things to do. Sleep can wait for a time when I am not so busy.
I did observe, however, that I was having no trouble sleeping when I was on vacation recently. So I thought, “there must be a little stress involved.” I am working hard to keep a lot of things going at the church. There are the normal conflicts that inhabit human institutions, especially those that welcome all kinds of personalities and strive for diversity. But there is nothing exceptional about the amount of stress at work.
Last evening, after supper, I went back to the church in my work clothes and cut down a tree that was dying. It is a simple chore. There are plenty of others in the church who could have done the work, but it is an ornamental crab tree and I like to have some apple wood on hand for smoking and grilling food. A tree like this one will provide several years worth of chunks of apple wood for my use and for sharing with others. So I volunteered to cut down the tree. The tree was small and the job pretty simple. But there were lots of branches, so it took some time to cut off branches, load all of them into the trailer, rake up the leaves and other things left on the ground, tarp and tie down my load and head for home. When I got home, I worked until dark feeding branches into a chipper to make mulch for flowerbeds and the garden. When it was dark, I came in, had a couple of glasses of water, cleaned up, read for a while and went to bed.
I slept, as they say, like a baby. The next moment of consciousness was when my morning alarm sounded.
It is a simple truth – work makes me sleep better. Physical labor is a better way for me to spend an evening after a day at the office than any of my more sedentary hobbies. You’d think that a person my age would have learned that lesson years ago.
So I didn’t watch the Olympics last night. Perhaps the best value of the games is not their power to entertain, but their power to inspire.
In closing, here is a link to a story that inspires me. It seems I am not too old for good physical activity:
http://www.news.com.au/weird-true-freaky/this-90-year-old-pole-vaulter-is-our-hero/story-e6frflri-1226442404042