Dreaming of Living to Work

I often hear people ask another in casual conversation “what is it you do for a living?” I think while this question encompasses the common mentality that we work to live; it fails to reflect the way things should be of living to work. This statement may create many to think why in the world would I want to live for my job? Work is often seen as something we want to be liberated from. Many of us trudge along in our jobs working for money. We go to college, not to understand the world better, but to become trained in a skill or a trade that will lead to gainful employment. Then we become employed and cannot wait to get home after work or have our weekend of freedom. Work then becomes a manner of necessity to acquire the freedom to do what we really want to do with our time.


However, what if we looked at it another way, the way artisans look at their life. Artists whether musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, etc. seek to make manifest their desire to create. Some succeed and bring in money to live by that allows them to continue to do what they love.


I think we can find that thing that we would most enjoy to do with our life by asking ourselves, what is it we would do if money and time were not a problem? If we had all the time in the world and money couldn’t hold us back what would we give our time to doing? To put it another way, what is it we dream of doing with our life?


Once we know what that is, and I would wager that many have known for years but haven’t thought its attainment possible, we can look at how we can achieve that end. Obviously we need money to live in this world so that which we do would most likely need to provide an income to support ourselves or our families. If we look at that thing we desire to do as possible to attain we may be able to see how it could be manifested.


For me, that thing is writing. I love to write. I could write hours upon hours each day. Writing though is something I could get paid for if I did freelance journalism or some other manner of employment. So I could use what I most desire to do to bring in an income to sustain its reality. This would be an example of living for work instead of working to live.


I think many of us would be much happier in life following that deep dream of ours then working because it’s a responsibility we must bear for whatever reason. Now of course there is nothing wrong with hard work and supporting one’s family. What I am discussing doesn’t negate that, I am just redirecting that to join it with doing what we desire to do and accomplishing both ends.


I wonder often how many attorneys practice law because they love justice versus it being a lucrative career. How many in the medical profession serve because they love to help people rather than needing a good job? How many people working in customer service jobs actually like people versus needing to make some money? I am sure some do. I have met attorneys who love justice and want to help those in need of legal services and do their job because they love it. I have met nurses and doctors who truly care for their patients. I have met those in customer service that love people and are happy serving the needs of others. But there are many more that can’t wait to escape the working world to something else. What if it didn’t have to be that way? What if we could work at what we love? What if we could follow our dreams and have the time and money necessary to see them come true? I think we can. I think our dreams are there to be followed.


I recall a scene in the Adam Sadler movie Mr. Deeds. Deeds is speaking at an assembly of board members and stock holders of his deceased uncles company. He is seeking to remind these people all consumed with the bottom dollar what is important in life. He asks them what they wanted to be when they grew up. People began to answer him, first tentatively and then jubilantly. One said, a fireman, another said a veterinarian and others chimed in with their childhood dreams. The scene captured that desire in us to follow our dreams and their realization that they were on a different path than that which would fulfill them.


One last thing, I think some people are in their dream job and have forgotten that with the day to day drudgery of work. What was once a goal in college to be such and such and do a particular thing became forgotten when it became a responsibility one was tied to instead of a dream one was living. If that’s you take time to remember why you embarked on this career path to start with and see if it is still true for you today. If it isn’t, is that because your dream has changed, or your realization that you’re living it has been lost and needs to be regained?


We can all find that dream of our hearts and it is never too late to enter into it. Lost time can be quickly restored once we step into that dream bringing the desire of our hearts into a reality we can live. No dream is too big. If you dreamed it and it has been in your heart just waiting to come to fruition it can be made manifest. Consider your dream. Pull it down off the shelf, dust it off, and dream about it. You might be surprised what you can come up with to start living it.

Feed The Desire To Know Truth

Man hungers after truth in such a way that it is greater than a desire for mere abstract intellectual knowledge yet at the same time we seem to reduce it to such a thing. Our drive for inquisitive curiosity into the questions of purpose and meaning seems tantamount to something more satisfying than the abstract. I propose that our desire for answers is not satisfied by intellectual propositions, but only by tangible relational experience with the embodied Answer.

We have all encountered factual answers to our questions whether we see those presentations of facts as valid or not. We experience it only with our minds. What if it were possible, as C.S. Lewis aptly illustrates, metaphorically, to “taste it like honey and be embraced by it as by a bridegroom?”

In C.S. Lewis’ book The Great Divorce he tells a fanciful supposal story of a journey towards heaven. In one of the scenes a person of intellect is talking to a person who has already experienced heaven. The person of intellect is explaining his journey of inquiry and his desire to always have inquiry for he believed the journey better than the satisfaction. He asks the heavenly person if he would still be free for the pursuit of inquiry to which the person responds, “Free, as a man is free to drink while he is drinking. He is still not free to be dry.” Then he elaborates, “Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth.” The man who was from heaven was trying to show the man still earthly minded that his hope for answers could find ultimate fulfillment in a greater fashion than only factuality, but the Great Answer Himself. Despite the offer the man of intellect went away satisfied to be pursing without ever finding that which invoked his pursuit.

Are we truly satisfied with factual knowledge? Or is there something deeper, grander, more spectacular that is at the heart of our desire to know? Do we want to know just to know more facts in our minds? Or do we want to touch the Answer? Do we want to taste the satisfaction of something eternal or are we doomed to contentment of abstract systems of intellectual propositions true or otherwise. I think the pursuit for intellectual knowledge is noble and has great merit, but if it stops there I think it is lacking something vitally fundamental. In the depths of our being we yearn for knowledge, understanding, truth, answers, purpose, meaning, unity in diversity, community etc. These left divorced from their eternal nature are unsatisfied and hopeless. There is nothing of substance in these desires unless they are properly married to the eternal One.

People think that they will find satisfaction in wealth and then upon attaining it they find there is no satisfaction to be found there. Some think vows of poverty will bring satisfaction to the soul and yet they don’t find it there either. Some think being academically knowledgeable is the key to fulfillment and yet it leaves them discontent. Others think if only they could be the best at their career, or have the best family, or the be the champion in their field of sports, and yet when the day is over they experience the same yearning for something beyond that they just can’t put their finger on. I propose to you that we are all searching whether we do it with a pursuit of knowledge or a pursuit of wealth we are looking for the eternal satisfaction. If we follow that desire and seek the truth, I do not refer to intellectual facts, but the Truth that satisfies the soul we will find the Truth.

In saying this, I am not diminishing the importance of thinking, of reason, of logic, of intellectual knowledge. Obviously if there is a Truth like that of which I speak it would need to be one in which satisfies on that level as well as on the spiritual eternal level. It wouldn’t make much sense as truth if it violated epistemology so damagingly. Logic, reason, thinking, desire, all of these things are tools to attaining the Truth, thus Truth will not violate them. It may violate the way we currently think these tools work depending on how far off our thinking is to reality, but it won’t violate logic and reason itself. It won’t violate nature; it will affirm the natural world. It will complete the picture, not destroy the picture. We live in the real world so certainly the Truth about the real world will make what we may see in black and white come into full HD color. Follow your desire for Truth and you will find something more magnificent than you thought possible.

The Reality of Desire

Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud were huge proponents of atheism in the early part of the Modern Era. Karl Marx spoke of religion as the “opium of the people.” He alleged that the need for religion derived from socioeconomic problems and if these problems were alleviated religion would no longer be a need of the people. His proposal, as most know, created communism as the solution. He proposed that a class-less society would fix the problem and create a utopia. History records a tragic bloody result of his philosophy.

Freud on the other hand decried religion as being a result of a psychological need to project one’s childhood father relationship to a God being as an adult. In contrast, Freud had a horrible experience with his own father and yet he never developed any philosophy concerning a psychological reason for his denial of God.

Both Marx and Freud agreed that humanity had a deep desire for God. Marx linked it to economic injustice and thought that government leaders could enact the change to end the need for God. Freud thought that we would evolve past our need for God as we matured as humans and that we would see God is dead and we have killed him by rising above such childish fantasies.

However, here we are in the year 2008 and most of the planet still seeks to fill their deepest need for God and many seek to fill that need by various world religions. Christianity has a unique claim that God came down to earth as a man, the Son of God, and paid the debt of sin for us so that the way to Him is Christ and not by any penance, works, religions, mantras, rituals etc. He is the answer to our deepest need. He appeared in history, had a lineage, in a time and place that can all be verified. Even these men who are so famous for their denial of Him acknowledged the need of humanity to know Him. I don’t think there are valid needs without valid fulfillments. If you are hungry you can eat. If you are thirsty you can drink. If you are tired you can sleep. If you desire to fill your soul you can do that too, with the only One who can satisfy. There are drinks that won’t quench thirst and there are foods that won’t satisfy hunger, likewise there are religions that won’t meet the needs of the soul and there is Christ who can and will. The awesome think about finding Christ is that you can still enjoy the desire and have that desire filled at the same time. It’s as if you are drinking from the best water imaginable that isn’t to quench your natural thirst, but the thirst of your soul. Jesus said of Himself that He is that living water.

Spiritual Desire?

“I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician . . . I had always felt life first as a story; and if there is a story there is a story teller.” G.K. Chesterton

Naturalism never explains the mysteries of life. If truth is only what we can determine scientifically then there would be no mysterious unknown. The supernatural world exists. We see evidence of it daily. Millions of people worship in some form or fashion. Why? Why the innate desire to worship? Why is spirituality hardwired to our being if there is no spiritual world? Evolution cannot explain it.

Why do we cry out to the living God when we are in deep need? George MacDonald wrote, “I don’t think you could dream anything that hadn’t something real like it somewhere.” If we have this desire there must be a fulfillment somewhere as C.S. Lewis comments, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Our hearts cry out to worship because there is a God who created us to worship. We desire spirituality because the spiritual world exists. Some seek spirituality and settle for a counterfeit of the real and become involved in things that are not of God. But for a counterfeit to exist there must also be a real in which it is counterfeiting. Press on toward the truth and you will find life more abundantly.

We are all a part of one grand story and its omniscient Author has a purpose for you in His story. The question is will you submit your story to His authorship.