Love the process

" There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil." Ecclesiastes 2:24 ESV. 

I recently joined the workforce and just being constrained to a place of work, just takes up so much time, without even getting into the costs of the physical and mental efforts that go into having to work. I think it's about a third of your time that you spend on your occupation, at times we even see more of our work colleagues than we see our own family members. I'm immensely grateful to be in a working environment that is cheerful an pleasant, when considering how much time I get to spend there. 

Going off a tangent on the topic of work. When I began my efforts in pursuit of a job I had to open a LinkedIn account. This being a social media platform of sorts it's nearly unavoidable to compare oneself to  others on the platform. This is also fueled by the fact that human resource personel actually do look at your LinkedIn profile, and compare it against other applicants. The platform really turns into a place of showing who is excelling in what. 

Success stories sell. There's just a much more appealing factor to hearing about a recent win from a person you might know. In Roman times banquets where held for victorious soldiers for days at a time. The preparations for the war were not celebrated as much if at all. Much like today the seemingly mundane tasks are not the ones that get the spotlight in the stories we come across. 

A thought comes to mind about whichever athlete is deemed the fastest man on the planet at the Olympics. What we see is a clip that's barely ten seconds, what usually goes unseen is the work that has been put into it from the past four years. The diet the athlete had to follow, the early mornings, the late nights, the conditioning of the body and honing every single bit of their technique to the highest possible degree. The amount of work put into sprinting across 100 metres, compared to the actual event and the celebration afterwards feels almost disproportionate. 

The time we get to celebrate our efforts should not be the only time when get a kick out of things. It's too short of a time to be rejoicing. If only we could fall in love with the process more. We spend so much time working and progressing than we do getting results. Success is  a destination we all enjoy getting to, but if we do not enjoy the journey how can we ever get there. When we do love the journeying, we probably will not get stuck on previous successes so much, because we can appreciate the wins and look forward to the next endeavour just as easily. 

I enjoy resting quite well, I also do want to enjoy toiling. This being because there may come a time to toil in order to take care of others. There may come a time when I toil and I do not see the fruit of my labour straightaway. There could instances where another gets the credit for what I am doing. In all these times may be able to find satisfaction in being able to work. Good things take work to accomplish, I do not think there's anyone who does not like to have what is good. I just hope we can all have the love, the consistency and discipline needed to go after it all.