Tying Things Together During These Last Days of the Easter Season
As we continue to work during these waning days of our glorious Easter Season, let's start today off with something we posted on the Second Sunday of Easter. It's based on a theme we've addressed on a number of occasions: comparing our efforts to improve our work life and, more importantly, our spiritual life, with physical exercise. Here we use the example of using really hard work-outs to gain substantial improvement, comparing these to our vigorous spiritual discipline during Lent:
It's kind of like taking on a really intense, extreme work-out routine. You don't do it 365 days a year. There's a period of days or weeks where you really apply yourself all-out. You understand and embrace the reality of "no pain, no gain." It's the price you pay for improvement. Then there's a period of respite and restoration. But you don't run out and eat Crispy Creme donuts and guzzle beer during that break time. You maintain your discipline, just not with the same intensity; you recover and restore. Then, if you seek further improvement, perhaps you take on another round of those intense work-outs.
What brings this all back into focus today is something that occurred in my business towards the end of Lent that illustrates this. It will help us tie together some of the thoughts we've posted during this Easter Season.
I had just completed a work project that was seeded almost three years prior. It's date of completion was a moving target since there were a number of moving parts that depended on circumstances beyond my control. As it turned out, the final pieces fell into place right before Holy Week. The project entailed creating and installing a new way of managing and monitoring a fundamental and critically important part of our business. Our hope was that, with that now in place, we'd be able to monitor that part of our business closely to see that things run as we've designed them to run.
I must admit, as six months grew to a year, then two, there were times when I doubted we'd ever reach our goal. Did I bite off more than I could chew? Nah. That's wasn't the problem. I simply underestimated - by a lot - the work that would need to be done to get the desired result. And as we began our third year without having reached our goal, doubt turned into bouts of outright despondency, generously seasoned with intervals of anxiety that overflowed from the workday into some sleepless stretches at night. My spiritual reading proved especially helpful during this stretch.
This passage, for example, reinforced the importance of never giving up. On second thought, it was more like "Never give up - no matter what." The author is referring to the spiritual life, but the message easily translated into my daily toil. Regarding the virtue of hope, Fr. Jacques Michel, S.J. (1712-?) points out:
"The arguments that show the necessity for Christian hope are readily admitted; but the devil endeavors, by his artful suggestions, to make the despondent soul find pretexts for not applying them to herself. Indolence or aversion to everything that gives trouble is common to all men. When we have devoted ourselves to God’s service, we would like to enjoy the happiness of our condition without its costing us much..."
While indolence wasn't the issue, the troublesome nature of this especially difficult endeavor did cause me to at times question whether the effort would be worth the trouble. The tendency to aversion to which Fr. Michel refers enters in here. In such moments, there was a temptation to go for "second best" rather than dig deep and do what needed to be done to get where we wanted to go. It would have been so much easier to settle for "Best - 1" (or 2 or 3) rarher than insist on Best. Fortunately that didn't happen.
Next time we'll get see how we can apply the lessons learned from this specific, albeit intense, challenge in a broader fashion. For now, I'm just grateful we climbed the mountain and have started down the other side.
We'll finish today's thoughts by re-connecting with the comparison our efforts to improve our work life and, more importantly, our spiritual life, with physical exercise. During the course of this long, difficult project, my physical and spiritual discipline (such as they are) definitely provided the sustenance to keep at it as well the boost needed to power through those moments of despondency and anxiety.
Just sayin'.
It's kind of like taking on a really intense, extreme work-out routine. You don't do it 365 days a year. There's a period of days or weeks where you really apply yourself all-out. You understand and embrace the reality of "no pain, no gain." It's the price you pay for improvement. Then there's a period of respite and restoration. But you don't run out and eat Crispy Creme donuts and guzzle beer during that break time. You maintain your discipline, just not with the same intensity; you recover and restore. Then, if you seek further improvement, perhaps you take on another round of those intense work-outs.
What brings this all back into focus today is something that occurred in my business towards the end of Lent that illustrates this. It will help us tie together some of the thoughts we've posted during this Easter Season.
I had just completed a work project that was seeded almost three years prior. It's date of completion was a moving target since there were a number of moving parts that depended on circumstances beyond my control. As it turned out, the final pieces fell into place right before Holy Week. The project entailed creating and installing a new way of managing and monitoring a fundamental and critically important part of our business. Our hope was that, with that now in place, we'd be able to monitor that part of our business closely to see that things run as we've designed them to run.
I must admit, as six months grew to a year, then two, there were times when I doubted we'd ever reach our goal. Did I bite off more than I could chew? Nah. That's wasn't the problem. I simply underestimated - by a lot - the work that would need to be done to get the desired result. And as we began our third year without having reached our goal, doubt turned into bouts of outright despondency, generously seasoned with intervals of anxiety that overflowed from the workday into some sleepless stretches at night. My spiritual reading proved especially helpful during this stretch.
This passage, for example, reinforced the importance of never giving up. On second thought, it was more like "Never give up - no matter what." The author is referring to the spiritual life, but the message easily translated into my daily toil. Regarding the virtue of hope, Fr. Jacques Michel, S.J. (1712-?) points out:
"The arguments that show the necessity for Christian hope are readily admitted; but the devil endeavors, by his artful suggestions, to make the despondent soul find pretexts for not applying them to herself. Indolence or aversion to everything that gives trouble is common to all men. When we have devoted ourselves to God’s service, we would like to enjoy the happiness of our condition without its costing us much..."
While indolence wasn't the issue, the troublesome nature of this especially difficult endeavor did cause me to at times question whether the effort would be worth the trouble. The tendency to aversion to which Fr. Michel refers enters in here. In such moments, there was a temptation to go for "second best" rather than dig deep and do what needed to be done to get where we wanted to go. It would have been so much easier to settle for "Best - 1" (or 2 or 3) rarher than insist on Best. Fortunately that didn't happen.
Next time we'll get see how we can apply the lessons learned from this specific, albeit intense, challenge in a broader fashion. For now, I'm just grateful we climbed the mountain and have started down the other side.
We'll finish today's thoughts by re-connecting with the comparison our efforts to improve our work life and, more importantly, our spiritual life, with physical exercise. During the course of this long, difficult project, my physical and spiritual discipline (such as they are) definitely provided the sustenance to keep at it as well the boost needed to power through those moments of despondency and anxiety.
Just sayin'.
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