What You Have To Do And What You Want To Do.

Can be the same thing.

Our UPS delivery guy was always running. He would park on the street and run across our big lawn. He parked at the top of our neighbor’s driveway and ran the quarter mile down and the quarter mile back up the hill.

If I were outside when he arrived, running in place, he would hand me my package, and I would say, “Thank you.”

“My pleasure” was always his answer, and then he would run back to the truck.

Instead of thinking he had a job that kept him from running, he built it into his job and obviously suspended judgment about what other people may think about it.

Interesting approach.

Instead of coming up with reasons and excuses why he couldn’t do what he loved to do, he designed it into his life.

Nature shows the same intelligent design.

The squirrel has to find food but plays and goofs off while being very busy, diligent, and persistent.

The birds must also find food, but they sing and soar while doing so.

The tree must maintain itself, but while doing so, it provides shade, purifies the air, provides shelter, and charms us with its beauty.

We are the ones that divide what must be done and what we want to do instead of making them one and the same.

Opening the blinds one morning, I was in time to see one of our resident bunnies hopping down the garden path. He was clearly enjoying the morning.

I watched as he found one of the baby lilies I had missed spraying with rabbit repellant. He bit it off near the bottom and thoroughly enjoyed chopping it up.

I even enjoyed watching it. What’s one little lily compared to being able to observe pure happiness?

He didn’t wake up this morning thinking: “Oh, it’s Monday morning, I have to go back to work. Ugh.”

Instead, it was another day laid wide open, ready to delight in while “working” to provide food for himself.

Have you ever heard the morning chorus of birds?

Wouldn’t it be an amazing event to hear humans singing as one like that first thing in the morning? Everyone singing in the shower, singing in the kitchen, singing in the car, singing in the office, singing at the job site.

Singing together in celebration of another day.

No matter our “work” environment, we can design our personal mode of happiness into it. We don’t have to put off “running” until we get off work or retire.

Actually, we can’t put it off. Our “work” is really to express the unique expression of the Divine that each of us is.

When we don’t do that, when we choose to suppress the expression of who we are, we deprive ourselves and everyone else who depends on our shade, our song, and our running in whatever forms they may appear.

It’s not the labor we do that makes us important, and it’s not our job that makes us unique.

It is the expression of our lives that is unique, and we can and must do that even at “work” to bless not only our own lives but all life.

Take a moment and ask yourself what you are putting off doing because you have to “work.”

Now listen—because how to do both is right there before you.

I promise. Just look, listen, trust, and follow the internal, quiet, insistent guidance that will come to you.

It might not make sense at first, but it will in time. The bird, tree, or bunny may not have a choice about whether to enjoy their day, but it is part of them.

However, it is our choice, and returning to the innocence of a child and the simplicity of nature will help us make it wisely.

Don’t worry if someone else might wonder why you are running. Do it because you love it! It will be a blessing to everyone, starting with yourself!

George Eliot said, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

I paraphrase it: “It is never too late to be and celebrate what you are.”

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