Enthusiasm, Even If We Have To Work At It

On Fixer Upper, a real estate renovation show, perpetually upbeat contractor Chip Gaines faces the usual list of hassles incumbent in his work with the reflection that his father's greatest gift to him was to show him that work could be fun. Conversely, as I asked my usual questions of a new acquaintance in Bible study about what he looks for in new hires, he shared separately that enthusiasm can't be trained. I can't, he said, teach you to have fun at your job.


The two insights are not necessarily contradictory. Chip's father had a prolonged impact on his attitude toward work at a time when Chip's child heart was as flexible as the body of an infant who can peacefully fall asleep in postures an adult would find uncomfortable if not crippling. The cafeteria manager spoke to the rest of us who either were not presented with that inspirational outlook or who have been distracted from that by work's more aggravating aspects. For those of us who don't come by enthusiasm for work's chores as a default response, there is hope. Even our tendency toward suspicion and defensiveness can be deployed to invigorating purpose if we use it to guard against faulty assumptions about work.


We can, instead, engage our analytical nature in weighing the limits of our current vocational perspective – and adjusting it when it proves faulty. Charles Spurgeon, one of the most passionate men about his work that I have ever come across, didn't consider himself above sifting through his attitudes and motivations. To that end, he enlists a Dr. Payson for a checkup on work motivation. Dr. Payson provides three tests for heart health with respect to work. Payson warns Spurgeon and us that we can engage in right, noble work out of PRIDE. In this state, the attitude that moves us to go to work is a disgust at the current state of our area of responsibility. The realm in which we work should better represent us because WE are responsible for it. If our work is motivated by this drive, we will take no joy in what, at best, is only a slight relief from pride's relentless effort to crush our spirit. Second, Payson warns against work rooted in a spirit of VANITY. If we work well because we are waiting for our neighbor to notice our work and compliment us, even the occasional compliment provides only what we expect. The absence or insufficiency of compliments, meanwhile, deepens our bitterness. Last, Payson bids us be on guard against the subtle and seemingly contradictory motive of working for the sake of INDOLENCE. If we take on the burden of work because we have resolved that the burden of looking at work undone is still more onerous, we will get only the briefest of respites from any results we obtain. The law of entropy, Newton guarantees us, will always provide more disorder to address.


Even when Dr. Payson provides such excellent, practical, and pithy classifications, I find that my faulty assumptions will bury themselves more deeply in my spirit as I attempt to dig them out.  I often need a real, flesh and blood, person in front of my face to show me what the results of a renewed attitude are, or where the alternative leads. A prospective student obliged. With the semester already underway, she knew her opportunities for beginning it were dwindling, and she transferred the pressure of compressed expectations on to a colleague who transferred these pressures on to me. The student hadn't followed any of the steps she needed to undertake to enroll. She did me the favor of plainly stating her expectations, that I should ignore my other students and duties, should sit and watch a class that was full, and should notify her if an opening occurred. When I said I couldn't, she conveyed her disappointment. Is that all it takes? Are we putting the best of our passion as conveyed through our work up for the lowest bid? Are we ready to surrender any passion we have for our work to to the likelihood that the most easily disappointed are, in fact, going to be disappointed much of the time? No wonder our enthusiasm is so fleeting!

The book on Billy Graham that I'm reading, America's Pastor, surveyed his preaching and found a pattern that I will take to heart as I close.  "First warning, then hope. The warning hardly ever appeared alone.” The warning that we didn't take in Chip Gaines's positive assumptions about work with our mother's milk is worthwhile. The warning that this can sour our attitude toward our work is worth noting, but we don't have to stop with what we need to fix or avoid. We can move toward more positive thinking and living. Rod Dreher in Crunchy Conservative invites us into what he calls sacramental living. He writes, "For people who adopt a sacramental way of being, everyday things, occurrences, and exchanges provide an opportunity to encounter ultimate reality—even, if you like, divinity." For Dreher and for most of us, experiencing gratitude and greater meaning in everyday occurrences and exchanges themselves rather than rushing through them as a means to an end is an acquired, he says adopted, perspective. When we admit how the alternative mentality of expectation breeding ever-compounding expectation weighs us down, the discipline of living in the moment is not comparatively costly. As we objectively consider the alternative, sucking the marrow out of life and finding the sustenance of gratitude therein may be more invigorating than enervating.