And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night. - Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran is no ordinary book. Not reading it is being blind to the wisdom of life.
I went to get my brother’s guitar serviced yesterday at an age old store in Panjim. I noticed that the actual people running the place were very much in sync with their tasks, generous with their support and love to both the instruments and customers. They probably would have been there as part of a culture originally set by the founder but the desk was helmed by someone who is new, likely the heir of the founder and very much out of tune in a place so synchronously charged. I didn’t get my guitar back as there was still work to be done but the way it was being tended to was like a baby in a healing spa. Anyone wise enough should bypass the owner to reach the sanctum of the store where one can actually feel Love through work.
Many a times we tend to forget how privileged we are with the work that we have gotten into. Its not hard to get lost or overwhelmed by the logistics of the trade and see work as drudgery. But every work we do badly, when we let the drudgery, the resentment, the regret, the lack of something else, the myriad problems of life, when we allow it to flow into our work and let it infest our work, we take it away from someone who could do it better, more happily.
Its not so much that you have to love your work for that means they are two different things. Applying something to something else. And it especially doesn’t work when you have signified through ages of conditioning that ‘work’ is something unenjoyable. For joy and love are companions and taking joy away from love nullifies it. So instead, work up your love, like you work up a gentle flame for your beloved and express that through the task at hand. Yet again as Gibran puts it:
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth….It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.….It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit. - Kahlil Gibran
I’ve noticed over time that working as such not only makes the outcomes better but allows me for much more gratification in the things I do.