Here I am, back from my vacation and a month off. I learned some meaningful things during the past month. I plan to explore these in upcoming blogs. In this blog, I reflect on one of them. While away, someone told me about a famous cook from the region where I was vacationing, and the secret of her amazing recipes and cooking. “She loved to cook, and she loved the people she cooked for.” How simple. A double dose of love. Parsing this, it seems to begin with loving what you do, and then loving the people that you do for. This formula or equation can be used for all sorts of activities. For example, cleaning houses, or parenting, or lawyering. Really, any work or pastime can fit this equation.
I realize that I have not always been able to follow this in my life. Considering the first part, loving what you do, I recall working at jobs that I considered a downer, a drag. I stuck with them because I believed that life was like that. I sadly recall my mother saying to me, “When you’re an adult, you have to do a lot of things you don’t want to do.” That was an unfortunate lesson to learn. Yes, there was a grain of truth in what she told me. Every job or responsibility I have ever had, whether it was a paying gig or not, no matter how much I loved it, had aspects that I did not enjoy. Cleaning my home, I don’t like to dust. In my therapist positions, I disliked doing the paperwork. But I have to dust and I had to complete that paperwork. The reality of onerous aspects of any responsibility is not the point though.
Here is the nugget of truth in the simple lesson of loving what you do. The simplicity of loving what you do and the underlying reality of loving yourself come together. Do I love myself enough to allow myself to consider doing what I love? That is the first question to wrestle with. It took me years and a lot of work to arrive at a positive answer to that question.
The next question is, do I love my work or my job? This question is then easier to deal with. If the answer is no, or ambivalent, why am I staying with the job? I have to? Okay. That can certainly be an understandable response. But perhaps it is worthwhile to start imagining what the work I would love to do would look like. I may be able to transform the job I have, or in time, change my work, and I will have done the necessary homework to make the change more possible.
The second half of the equation is then easier. If I love what I do and have the opportunity to do it, a sense of generosity comes easily. I have something meaningful and valuable to offer. And the feedback only enhances the pleasure and the love. And the circle keeps expanding. Underlying this simple equation is the revelation that doing what I love, and loving the people to whom I offer my services or goods, is a concrete expression of the golden rule, do to/for others as I would like others to do to/for me. But first, I deserve love.