It was an early Thursday afternoon. I’d made the 26-mile run into Burley to the sale with a little load of leppy and oddball calves that, after a few weeks of TLC and too much money spent on grain, finally appeared respectable enough that I dared take such a ragged lot wearing my brand to town. I knew I’d probably take a beating on them, as they’d most likely be run through the ring as singles, but even at that, with the market sailing along at all-time highs, I figured I’d still come out with the win.
As I headed back through town on my way home, lost in a pile of disparate thoughts bouncing around in my head, a radio ad came drifting through the speakers. Something about the ad caught my attention. It was the familiar and oft-repeated phrase, “Do something you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
I’d heard that particular mantra dozens of times, and I’d never been sure how to process it. It always left me a little confused and empty, as if it were taunting me with the insinuation that real happiness would always elude me. After all, professionally speaking, I had always sought to do what I loved. But there have been few days that have passed when I didn’t feel a little overworked, if not downright worked over.
On this day, as all the previous trifling thoughts were suddenly whisked from my mind, and I, for some reason, set a laser focus on the cheesy slogan, I developed a precise and solid opinion of it: What a load of garbage. With due apologies to anybody who may be fortunate enough to live the fantasy of this silly adage, I’ll attempt to defend my position.
Without stating the obvious flaws in such a philosophy, I believe it cheapens the very purpose of the human experience and the honest pursuit of excellence, if not happiness itself. Work can beget happiness, though the actual work itself may not necessarily present much joy in the moment. Is it even possible to truly appreciate goodness, joy and contentment without experiencing, with a minimal level of understanding, disappointment, grief, sorrow or sadness? Allow me to indulge you with a personal case study on the matter.
After making the three-hour trip from our southern Idaho home to the Utah State University campus in Logan, my wife and I found a parking spot and trotted up the hill to the graduation ceremonies for the USU College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences. Though out of breath from our little uphill trek, we slipped through the doors just as the graduates, our youngest son, Peyton, among them, were entering the arena below us. We found our seats next to his wife, Lexy, their 5-month-old baby boy and Lexy’s parents, and settled in for the pomp and circumstance. In my experience, I have found most graduation ceremonies to be less entertaining and more of a perfunctory exercise, graced by my attendance merely because I’m a minor part of somebody’s support system. Even so, I can’t say I don’t enjoy the experience to some degree. It’s understandably quite satisfying to see someone you care for be rewarded for honest effort put forth in reaching a significant milestone. On this day, at this ceremony, the college was honoring around 1,100 graduates, the largest graduating class in its history.
As I sat there perusing the list of graduates in search of a familiar name and half-listening as an associate dean introduced the dean, my interest was slightly stirred when she mentioned something about a presentation by the dean in honor of two students nominated by the faculty, who truly represented what they hoped were the defining ideals of the college.
Everyone has a story, and I love people’s stories, so I sat up a little straighter to listen. The first account detailed the dedication of an aviation student who was only the second student in the history of the department to complete a double major in two very difficult disciplines.
As the dean started his presentation of the second student, he choked up a little bit with emotion. This further caught my interest, so I decided I’d pay better attention. He spoke of a student who, in hopeful anticipation of finishing the requirements of his degree, had signed up for a full 15-credit-hour course load for his last semester. He spoke of the student’s past service in the military and of his full-time job and of his wife who was expecting the couple’s first child. My eyes instinctively filled with tears as he detailed the hardships placed on the couple as she was diagnosed with a rare, incurable form of cancer that precipitated the emergency delivery of their baby two months early. The dean spoke of the dedication of the student and of caring faculty members who shepherded him through a finals period that coincided with the birth of his son and the expedited sessions of chemotherapy that ravaged his young wife’s body as she battled the relentless, unforgiving cancer.
I tried to be discreet with tears rolling down my cheeks as Dean Kenneth White concluded his remarks about my remarkable son. This 27-year-old man was the same kid who, as a teenager, sometimes thought of any excuse he could conjure up to get out of doing morning chores, who snuck out the window at night and silently pushed the car half a mile down the road with his brother so his parents wouldn’t hear them drive off to meet their friends. This was simultaneously that same kid and a completely different kid – one who, though he didn’t at first fully grasp the worth, learned early on the value of hard work and the precious rewards of perseverance. And, though the road ahead is uncertain, I’ve no doubt that he and his bride will face it with determination and welcoming arms, open wide to the prospect of the hard work that lies in front of them and the full knowledge that their efforts poured into that work will bear priceless fruit.
So, if you go the rest of your life without working a day, you’re most certainly missing out on the best life has to offer, no matter how much you may think you love what you’re doing.
