Are You Doing Your Work?

I have been thinking a lot lately about what our “real” work is. Do you know what yours is? It’s not necessarily your job. In fact, your job might be the thing you have chosen to do to distract yourself from focusing on your real work.

Now do not misunderstand me, I’m not one of those who is going to tell you to chuck everything you have accomplished in your life and go live out your dream to be a painter in Costa Rica. Quite the opposite. While I believe that understanding what you were meant to do and fulfilling that work is key to living a productive, happy life, I do not believe it is the be-all end-all of our earthly existence.

I have always believed my work to be writing, as it’s the one thing I have to do. It’s the thing I always come back to when the storms and upheavals of life finish tossing me end-over-end. Writing fulfills me and helps me understand my world in way that nothing else does. But my mother-in-law died of Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) in our home a few years ago. This insidious disease strips its victims of all ability to move or even communicate, while leaving their minds unaffected to fully comprehend that they have become prisoners in their own bodies. In the end, though, this horrible illness did grant one tender mercy. It took her slowly enough that all of her children were able to be at her bedside when she passed.

As I am well into middle-age now and can see the end of my life much clearer than ever before, I can tell you this, writing may indeed be my work, but when I’m on my deathbed, how many books I wrote, or how successful I was as an author, will matter little to me when compared to having my loved ones gathered around me. They are my legacy and matter to me far more than whether someone is still reading my books in a hundred years.

But you will also note that those two things, doing your work and investing in you family, are not mutually exclusive. You can do both, and even have a job that puts food on the table. It simply means that you will have to try a little harder to accomplish your work. You’ll have to give up watching TV at the end of the day, get up a little bit earlier, or maybe loose some sleep. And though that may seem like a tremendous sacrifice when you feel you are already stretched too thin, is it worth it to live a happier, more fulfilled life? Only you can answer that. But if you are reading this, and it’s nagging at you because you know exactly what I’m talking about, do something about it now! Not tomorrow, because you know too well that tomorrow NEVER comes. Get off the couch and get to it now!