Transforming Duty into Pleasure
By Silver Rose
Transforming Duty into Pleasure
Atlanta, GA – I sat down to write this column in the midst of an amazing evening thunderstorm. I LOVE thunderstorms and have ever since I was a child. I clearly remember lying in bed on summer evenings in our Boston suburb home, barely able to breathe it was so hot. The air was completely still. Sticky with sweat, I would kick off the covers. Suddenly, I would hear it – the thunder – and I knew relief was on the way. I would watch the curtains start to flutter with a slight breeze. Then a few big raindrops would plop on the roof and the first streak of lightning would hit the sky. I would shiver with delight. I could lie there for hours watching and listening. I always knew something much bigger than all of us was talking directly to me.
This evening I caught myself ignoring the storm, nose to the grindstone, typing away at the computer. Suddenly, I thought, “WHAT are you doing? You LOVE thunderstorms and this will probably the only one during your short visit. ENJOY it!”
What to do? This was a dilemma. I still had to write this column. And yet…and yet…
I am now sitting in my friend’s beautiful rainroom (she calls it a sunroom) typing this on my laptop at 11PM EST. The rain is fiercely beating down on the two skylights. I am all alone. The rest of the household are in their bedrooms. Whenever I hear the thunder, I stop typing, look up, and wait for the lightning to put on its show.
I couldn’t be happier. And I’m working.
Certainly not everyone reading this has an opportunity to work somewhere other than their office. But what everyone reading this DOES have are opportunities to transform duty into pleasure.
What are yours? Could you, while doing your work:
· Play music you love?
· Have flowers on your desk and breathe in their sweet fragrance?
· Look up from time to time and enjoy the pictures on your desk or on your walls?
· Delight in the view from your window?
· Bask in the warmth of the heating unit during the winter and the cool air conditioner in the summer?
We all agree that we should take more time to “smell the roses,” but then act as if it’s impossible to do in our day-to-day work. We can, and should (for it will make us more productive) take time to enjoy our surroundings and breathe in the beauty around us, even as we work.
If you were to describe your workspace by what you are primarily focused on all day, what would it sound like? For some of you, it would be a gigantic computer screen.
For others, it would be a sea of paper. For still others, it would appear to be hordes of demanding people. By taking time to notice things beyond what is right beneath our noses, we begin to realize there is more to what we are doing than the work. There is the environment in which the work is happening. And that can be very pleasing if we take some time to make it so OR just observe that it already IS so.
The Law of Attraction says, “You attract more of what you focus on.” By focusing our attention, even for brief moments, on those things in our environment that please us, more of what pleases us will start to show up. And that would result in even more pleasure in the midst of performing our duties.
And even if none of that were true, it’s simply more fun to do it that way!
