Former British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher said, "Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied
at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing. It’s
when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.”1
Work that seems beyond our capacity
is often a blessing and brings us a happy exhaustion. It obviously
doesn’t need to be performing life-saving surgery on accident victims to
fit this description. Hikers atop a mountain after a strenuous climb,
athletes who willed their way to a difficult win, or parents who
collapse on the couch after a day full of sacrifices of time and energy
for their children—they all know what it feels like to be spent but
smiling. In such moments, we discover what we’re made of, and we find
that we are capable of much more than we thought. We might be physically
tired, but we are emotionally renewed.
It’s a myth that the key to a
satisfying day is to relax, put your feet up, and sip cold lemonade. The
real way to feel joy at the end of the day is to have achieved your
goals, to have pushed yourself to accomplish your tasks. When our day is
filled with unexpected challenges, instead of seeing them as obstacles
that interfere with an easy schedule, perhaps we can reframe that
outlook and see them as opportunities for fulfillment and
satisfaction—the unexpected rewards for a job well done.
1. In David K. Hatch, comp. Everyday Greatness: Inspiration for a Meaningful Life (2006), 241.
Music and the Spoken Word Program #4311
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