Every so often I take myself off on a mission of uncertainty, a merry go round ride of self-questioning over one thing or another, sometimes trivial, sometimes soul searching to the nth degree. It’s akin to making mountains out of molehills.
Today, it’s nth degree, a day of questioning motive, purpose, and mission. This time, it’s about why I spend the early morning hours of every day struggling to fill up the blank screen of my mind and my computer with words that may or may not be of interest or benefit to anyone. Why? What’s the point?
Tomorrow will mark the two-month anniversary of the day that I wrote the first blog of my new assignment, and it seems to me that there is very little reward considering the time and effort involved. Why am I doing this? Why, why, why? This is the second time in a week that I’ve wandered down this road in search of blog why’s . here Maybe today, I will get an answer.
I once was assigned to a temporary job in the business information center of a major corporation (aka library). I was led to believe that the job it would be for couple of days, but instead it was for six months. I was invisible, a nonexistent body sitting in a cubicle all day filing the newspapers and mountains of publications dumped on my desk hourly. It was voluminous. I was horrified at the thought of having to do a job that I hated day after day for half a year. I could have quit, I suppose, but if there was a lesson to be learned, I didn’t want to miss it. So I stayed.
On my first day, I sat down at 8:30 a.m. and started work. I worked and worked and worked hating every minute of it, until I thought it must be time for lunch. It was 9:30 a.m. Only six months and six more hours until the assignment would be over. I thought I might die before the end of the day.
There is a saying that if you don’t like what you do, you’d better to learn to like what you do. It occurred to me that if I was to survive the next six months, I’d better decide to like what I hated. I started my second day with a new attitude and sat down at my desk and worked until my supervisor poked her head into my cubicle and suggested that I go to lunch before the cafeteria closed. It was 1:30. There is nothing like a little change of mind and heart to change the day.
Six months later when the assignment was complete, I hated to leave. It had been like a speed reading course in spiritual growth and had provided some of the most profound lessons of my life. Hate became love, and what started in dread, ended in joy.
With life in a library as a reminder of gifts both seen and unseen, I shall go about my current writing assignment with renewed joy and without need for external validation nor reward because the reward is in the journey. When the assignment is complete, I will look back and say, “Oh wow! What a great assignment”
As a friend suggested early on, perhaps daily blogging is my spiritual practice. Maybe so, in which case, I will go about my business one day at a time, and pretend that I am writing my dissertation. Maybe I am, maybe not. Either way, that’s reward enough for me.
Oh and by the way—the publish button will before 8:45 a.m. Progress!
Note: The photo above is courtesy of New Waves of Light, a website designed by anonymous individuals around the world who share the intention of bringing light and love to a world of darkness and chaos. (newwavesoflight.org or NWOL.us).
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