Happy Memorial Day !
What I'm about to say may sound completely wrong at first, but see if you can understand my trajectory.
I no longer do anything out of a sense of duty.
I used to think that love obligated us to duty, but now I understand love and duty as two very different motives with different
origins.
Love is selfless and gives freely. Duty is an 8-year old who is forced to clean his room. Love & Duty may very well end up producing the same action, but behind each gesture is a different animal. Whenever I feel obligated, I immediately check my motives.
I don't expect an 8 year old to have the ability to let gratitude for his abundant clothes and toys inspire him to make order out of chaos. So as a parent, I have two
options:
- Bark out orders, explain the rules, and leverage my authority until compliance arrives. OR
- Enter the room with him, and invite him into a place where my love and compassion model how putting his head down in work enables his own room and life to rise up so that he experiences the satisfaction and purpose of ordering things.
Since most of us have grown up, worshiped and learned from systems that traded influence for authority, it is no surprise we
see much of our lives as obligation and drudgery. Today, many religions fear of a god with a Stink-eye. Employees fear a boss with a stink-eye. Governments and spouses all have a stink-eye toward us.
We don't recognize that there is an alternative. But there is one. It's counter-intuitive.
Something must die so that something greater can live. We see this everywhere in almost everything in life. Our food
dies so we can live. Our relationships die so healthy ones emerge. Our passion for work dies so new passions can live. It's a universal law. It's the central story of the gospel, it is the rhythm and power of love.
When we engage in self denial for the sake of others, we are trading what seems good for what is REALLY good. It transforms a begrudged loss of our self into the only way to find and preserve our best self. It moves the motivation from the outside
to the inside.
Yes, we still have the same work to do. But we are now liberated to see it as meaningful and purposeful for better ends. Duty produces self-pity, Love produces service to others. Love unearths beauty that has resided right before us all along. Duty convinces us that a better day may come of our work, love shows us there is no better day than today. Duty defers. Love is immediate.
I hope you have an
awesome week.
k
"For whoever whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Matthew 16:25
