Of Doing Not Enough

Whenever there is over-emphasis on avoiding work, and over-emphasis on idleness, there is also need to remember the blessing of work, the privilege of work, the pleasure of work—and of the unsatisfied needs of the whole wide world, and the inner discontent that comes without work.

From a time when children were exploiting by working too much, too soon, too long to their physical and mental detriment, we have swung far to another side, with youth too often idle, and often prevented form acquiring the skills, the competence, the usefulness, and satisfaction that come only with work.

Doing constructive things is the basic law of life. Look at all creation, with all its wondrous physical functioning,–mankind, nature, rainfall, sunshine, the growing of the seed, and the infinite mind that orders it all. Look at the glory and accomplishment of creation—and then look at the drab dullness of doing nothing—or of doing not enough.

“The way to be nothing is to do nothing,” said Nathaniel Howe. Men, children, young and old, become frustrated, unhappy, with little or limited incentive, little or anything satisfaction in service.

“God has blessed us with the privilege of working…” said David O. McKay,… “work is a divine gift…too much leisure is dangerous…Learn to like your work…Learn to say, ‘This is my work, my glory, not my doom'” ¹

“A perpetual dream there has been of Paradise,” said Thomas Carlyle, “and some luxurious Lubberland, where…the trees bend with ready-baked confections; but it was a dream merely; an impossible dream…Is not labor the inheritance of man?…His highest…blessedness is, that he toil, and know what to toil at;…”² “When we look into the long avenue of the future, and see the good there is for each of us to do,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, “we realize after all what a beautiful thing it is to work and to live and to be happy.”

Work and leisure must be balanced—but we are to overdo either one—it would better be work.