Working Toward Ruining Our Lives

What happens when the grit that made America a place where you could be whatever you could work hard enough for turns on its head?

In western culture we often hear wondrous, wispy questions about how much we’ve innovated and what developments are on the horizon. But we’ve, at the same time, left untended other critically important things whose benefit cannot be quantified. Things like: community, healthy relationships, simply being. 

We’ve become so consumed with return on investment that we’ve corporately doubled down on logic and grit, but failed to realize that those things—and moreover the success they can at times bring—are not our goal in life. Those pursuits are merely there to serve the goal—to care for others passionately: doing good, loving mercy, with humble acknowledgement that we are in need of grace because of our insufficiencies. Instead, we consider those an opportunity cost. If we lose those, we may gain even more time for success (or more sneakily, that if we have little bits of those sprinkled in, we can be even more successful), but to the end that we lose our lives. 

In the long run. And the short.

We are lonely, tired, overworked, stressed. Often with "no way out."

There's too much emphasis on what’s possible in our lives, not enough on what’s best. Rest for our hearts, camaraderie (not as a means of allowing us to be more profitable, but because it’s what brings us alive and is inherently good). Granted, this enables us to then work harder for the good of those around us...whereas that doesn’t mean simply to profit and rest on those laurels. No.

Instead, without work, we rest on the laurels of our Creator, God, who empowered us to live lives of purpose and compassion, boldness, and diligence. Because those things are good. 

Not simply for profit. Or a guise of ‘making more profit to help more people.’

Only the Lord knows our hearts, but surely we can test our own motivation when we allow ourselves to ask ourselves if we truly—first and foremost—do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. 

If we do, we certainly feel the power of those moments and situations. If we do not, rather when we do not, that’s when we get ourselves into trouble. Upside-down living.

In an age of working extraordinarily hard, let’s place emphasis on saving ourselves for the slower, less-planned moments. I think we'll live happier lives and will be surprised at how much better we are at our vocational work as well. And the value of that work will be upheld all the more, not as an end, but as a beautiful accompaniment to truer, lovelier living.