Volume 8, Issue 4, page 9
16
With
SZIS
Part 7. CHAP. V--IN THE BEGINNING IS LOVE OU WERE not given much
to analyze , especially of
yourself. But on this morning, in the second hour of the work
day, you couldn't help yourself. Things were
happening, certainly bedause of your New -Old Associate whom you
bad called in. In fancy, perhaps, but
serious fancy, as if for a 16-hour-long conference, you were
askingHim about a little of everything. And you
were asking in a kind of left-handed way.
"Just why." you asked yourself, "did you take this job?"
As soon as you asked it, you answered as Jesus might have
answered if you had asked Him.
"I took it because I could find happiness, personal satisfaction
in it."
That was doubtless the proper answer, but was it the correct one?
" Whatever your job," Jesus might have interpolated bere,-you
should love every second of it!"
"If you had," you said to yourself, "you wouldn't have stayed at
home until the last minute, however much you
loved your family, every noisy last one of them. No, you'd have
gotten out of there, out on the highway, to reach
the job you loved in order to make sure of a good start on the
day. Not to impress the boss-no; not to get to work
before traffic became too beavy-no, noneof that. Actually, YOU
waited until the last minute because you didn't really
like your job and wished to cut off its head in the morning, its
tail at night, so there would be as little of it as
possible to endure. Then. at work, you dawdled, taking water
cooler breaks, coffee breaks, each one somewhat longer
than was quite proper."
But this particular morning you didn't feel that way. Not at all!
you'd been doing this job for, well, years, going
thru the motions, and caring not much about it, tho you worried
that you might lose it after becoming habituated to
it so long you could learn any other only with great difficulty.
You were aware that some other employer might
nothire you at all.
So now, what?
I'm supposed to love the job?" you whispe;e'd under your breath
to your Associate-forthe-Day.
'*How else can you get the most out of it?" you asked for Jesus,
since He didn't speak loudly enough for you to
hear. "Love what you are doing, and it will love you in return."
"It, a 'something', will love me in return?" you asked while your
hands flew in their tasks as if already they knew
the answers. "Nobody outside my family loves me, certainly no
thing, or situation, loves me; I scarcely even love
myself . .."
said, remeifiber? 'Love thy neighbor as th;s'Ielf 1. No place in
there was it said you should not love yourself.
Love yourself, else
The fIBEI
you can love nothing and nobody else. Love, I ike charity - they
are the same -begins at home. Love yourself and
everything you think, feel, do. It follows that then you will
wholly love your njighbor and everything he does.
You'll love your boss, your employer, the work of your hands.
'Many a man and woman. trapped (or what he or she
would call trapped) in a hated job, must remain on that job until
he or she learns to love it."
"I'm to love details?" you ask. "Like not
using too many paper clips. like making sure
of all the p's and q Is when I write ordinary
notes' ' I Like smiling at people as if I liked
them, until it becomes a habit maybe-and they
start smiling back? Smiling back, that is, when
we have a breathing space in the midst of hap-
py labors, for smiling? How can I like what I
am oing, and those who are doing it with me?
I can start with urging myself to like what I
do. I can start with loving John Doe, who jig-
gles and makes me jiggle, who smacks his lips
and pops his gum, who steals ten minutes to
every one I steal, who polishes the apple so
that, 'surely, when there is a new, better,
better-paid job open, and the choice lies be-
t!een John and me, he'll get the nod? I Ill love
him because I know that he, like myself, must
find his own salvation - in this world and out
of it. How he does it is no business of mine.
If I want that better job, I must do this one
better, beginning by loving itl"
Thinking that made even the money received from it seem more
important, even tho it wasn't more money. Even
so, you could make it seem like more because you had done more,
and better, to earn it. Did you love the money.
then, because you learned to love the job? It followed certainly.
And what was wrong about loving money? Love it
and it went further, did better work for you, purchased more of
such happinesses as could be purchased.
"You look," said the boss, stopping by, "like the cat!"
"The cat?"you repeated, somewhat stupidly, at the same time
hearing a soft murmur of laughter in the invisible
right close by.
"That ate the canary," said the boss. "Haven't been knocking down
and getting away with it, have you?
Youknow, we keep theplace under police surveillance now to
prevent petty pilfering. You found a way to beat it ?"
The boss was joking, of course. or maybe he knew of that
letterhead you had used for personal matters, those
paper clips you'd just haDpened to take home, the pen that had
somehow got mixed in with homework and hadn't
been returned, maybe because Number One son had gathered it in to
love?
"I've been guilty," you confessed, then and there, "and this very
minute I've been taking inventory, adding up
what I've been doing for the outfit, trying to balance it against
what I'm being paid for doing."
"Nobody in this outfit," said the boss, 94gets paid enough,
especially me."
111 'm paid enough, " you stated. " at 1 east , I 'm paid for
doing things I don It always do all-out. I'm resolving this
instant to do a little more. After all, I agreed, for a certain
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