Category: Life’s challenges

Pouring your heart into what you do

In the last blog, I asked: ‘If we are to have a life well-lived, what are (at least some) of the principles we should live by?’ I used the story of building St Vitus Cathedral to illustrate three of those principles.

I’ll use another building project this time – a building so remarkable it’s one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

My work took me to India many times. Alison was able to come with me on one of those trips. While we were in Delhi, an affluent Indian friend offered to drive us to the Taj Mahal. That’s a 115 mile (185 km) journey, not far but likely to take a long time on a crowded road. It didn’t take a long time, not with my friend observing his rules of the road, which were not many.

The Taj Mahal is every bit as impressive as its reputation and its story.

It exists because of love and loss. In 1607 the 14-year-old Shah Jahan, soon to be Mughal emperor, glimpsed a girl selling silk and glass beads. She was Mumtaz Mahal, a Persian princess aged just 15. Jahan told his father he wanted to marry this girl. Five years later he did.

He had other wives as well, but his love was supremely for Mumtaz who travelled everywhere with him, and bore him many children. In 1631 she died giving birth to their 14th child. Jahan was distraught, and vowed to build the richest and finest of mausoleums over her grave.

He kept his word.

At the heart of the Taj Mahal complex is a tomb built of white marble brought from all over India and central Asia. Throughout the site 28 varieties of precious and semi-precious stones were used for inlay work. More than 1000 elephants transported construction materials. A 9.3 mile earth ramp was built to bring the heavy stone close to the building site, where an intricate post-and-beam pulley system placed the blocks exactly in position. Overall some 20,000 skilled artisans worked on the Taj – masons, stonecutters, dome-builders, inlayers, carvers, painters, embroiderers, calligraphers.

The tomb itself consists of a large square plinth on which stands a symmetrical building topped by a large dome and four lesser domes. Four minarets are built just outside the plinth, each tilted slightly away so that they could never collapse on to the tomb. Other magnificent buildings were constructed, and beautiful gardens with long pools, paths, fountains and ornamental trees. One of the breathtaking views is to see the Taj reflected in the water, the exact hue of the white marble varying according to the intensity of the sunlight or moonlight.

It took some 22 years until the whole site was complete. As well as being one of the Seven Wonders, the Taj Mahal is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It draws between 7 and 8 million visitors each year (though less during Covid virus restrictions).

From its story, I draw these lessons for how to do our best with our lives.

Not to plan is to plan to fail

I’m not a fan of the sub-heading I’ve just used; it seems to denigrate spontaneity. But it has truth. Big enterprises require good planning and preparation. Without those, they do fail.

I’ll give two examples from my home country.

Above Oban – which sits on the west coast of Scotland – stands McCaig’s Tower. It’s also known as McCaig’s Folly. John Stuart McCaig was a wealthy banker who admired Greek and Roman architecture. So, for the hill overlooking his town, he designed an elaborate building based on the Colosseum in Rome. Inside its walls would be a museum, art gallery, and a central tower in which he’d place statues of McCaig and his family. Work began in 1897, and by 1902 the outer ring had been built. It was 200 metres in circumference, with two tiers of 94 arches. It was very impressive.

But that’s all there ever was. All work stopped in 1902 because McCaig died of a cardiac arrest, aged 78.

Personally I feel a Colosseum look-a-like above a Scottish coastal town is out of place. But I commend McCaig for being a man of vision. However, I can’t commend planning which doesn’t include funds to complete the project if the benefactor dies. McCaig’s Folly has never been finished.

Edinburgh has a monument with a similar story. In 1822 wealthy Edinburgh citizens raised money for a memorial to Scots soldiers who had died in the Napoleonic wars. They wanted to replicate the Parthenon in Athens stone for stone. It would be built on Calton Hill which overlooks the centre of the city.

The work began, and twelve columns were raised. The lintels were put in place, using the largest and heaviest stone ever quarried in Scotland. It took 12 horses and 70 men to get the stone up the hill.

In 1829 the money ran out. Only half the funds needed had been raised. The wealthy citizens had not put together an adequate ‘business plan’ to take the project to completion. Perhaps they blamed others for not being generous, but the folly of bad planning was theirs. What was intended as a National Monument is sometimes called a ‘national disgrace’.

Failure to plan or prepare adequately never works.

I have interviewed dozens of people for jobs. I’d ask: ‘What do you know about our organisation? Perhaps you’ve got information from our website?’ And about 50 per cent of the time, the answer would be, ‘No, I don’t really know anything. I didn’t look at your website.’ That was a bad answer. How could people think I’d appoint them to a senior position in a major organisation about which they hadn’t bothered to do the most basic research? It was a terrible failure of preparation for an interview.

Detailed and careful preparation went into the construction of the Taj Mahal. That building really mattered to the emperor, so he ensured everything was done right.

There is a timeless principle there. What we do should matter so much, we plan and prepare well.

If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well

For a few years, Alison and I helped a small church in a run-down area of Edinburgh. We ran a children’s club, did pastoral visiting, and I did occasional preaching. There were many challenges for that church, including its building. It was small and inadequate for the work the leaders wished they could do. Why so small? Because it was never meant to be more than the hall alongside the main building, but the main building had never been built.

That’s not unique. On my preaching travels around the UK, several times I went to a church which began decades earlier meeting in a hall until its main worship building was erected. But they were still in the hall. Nothing more had ever been done.

Lack of money would be one reason for the incomplete work. But, sometimes, complacency. I imagine the first members found the hall met their needs because, in those days, there weren’t many people. As the years passed, only a few more joined them. There was always enough space. Unsurprisingly the motivation to give sacrificially to erect their main sanctuary building gradually faded. Their hall was ‘good enough’. And so it had stayed for a hundred  years.

I’m no fan of millions getting spent on large church buildings, but I am a great fan of doing everything needed for the mission of the church. Originally there was a big vision for those churches, but over the years it had dimmed and died. I can’t be glad about that.

I’d say the same about any enterprise. It’s about finishing what you start. Committing all the skills and resources that are needed. Believing that if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.

The Taj Mahal teaches me that lesson. Of course the Taj is extravagant, but probably not outrageously extravagant for an emperor. And not for an emperor grieving for the princess he’d loved with all his heart. He longed to give her the best he could give. And he did.

Living life well always means giving the best we can give.

Pouring your heart into what you do

We enjoyed living in Aberdeen in the north east of Scotland. Summer was Alison’s favourite season, not for the weather but because she could work in the garden until after 11.00 each evening. Aberdeen is far enough north that night-time in mid-summer is truly dark for only two or three hours. Alison could probably have gardened until midnight, so 11.00 was no problem.

She loves gardening. It’s more of a passion than a hobby. She belongs to the local gardening group where experts give lectures. She joins webinars with top gardeners sharing their knowledge. She plans out her garden work, and keeps a journal of what she’s planted and how it’s prospered. A garden is never finished, always on the way, so Alison is never quite satisfied with her flowers or vegetables. But – as the principal beneficiary – I know she does a great job.

The simple truth is that we give our best to the things we love. In high school my best marks were in English and history because I enjoyed studying those subjects. My friend David excelled in all things scientific, and became a leading research scientist. Another of my school contemporaries was great at golf, poured his heart into it, became a professional and played in the Open Championship.

We strive for excellence in the things we love. What we love isn’t always related to our career. It can be family, or church, or our sport, or our hobby, or taking on civic responsibilities, or caring for the disadvantaged in our community, or rehoming abandoned dogs, or studying philosophy. We’re all unique, and so will be our passions. And where they lie, so we will direct our energy, our time, and our skill.

It’s good and right to bring passion to bear on all we do. Emperor Shah Jahan never dreamed of building a mausoleum for his wife. But then she died, and the love he’d had for her motivated him to build a supreme tribute to her that millions today admire. He poured his heart into the Taj Mahal. And it shows.

A life well-lived involves planning and preparing wisely. Doing everything well. Pouring our heart into all we do.

–

One more set of principles next time, again from a construction project. But this one is different. It fell down.

——————————

If you’ve found this blog post useful, you won’t be alone. Use the ‘Share’ button to send it on to a friend or family member. Or point them to www.occasionallywise.com  Thank you!

‘If only everyone thought like me, things would be much better.’ No, they wouldn’t.

During two weeks in an Aberdeen hospital I got to know most of my fellow patients. Further down the ward was the 25-year-old who’d been there for 12 weeks after smashing his leg by simply falling off his stationary bicycle. Across from me was the man whose wife visited each evening, after which he’d phone his girlfriend. Then there was the old fellow from a remote island off the north of Scotland. Until this illness, he’d never left his small island. Not once.

But the patient I never got to know was right next to me. We exchanged a few words, but that’s all because he had his own TV and watched soap operas all day. Since he had no earphones, I endured every episode too. Most evenings his wife drove a long way to see him, but they didn’t talk – they spent their hour watching one of the prime time soaps together.

I couldn’t do what he did. So much of his life spent on so little. I wanted out of that hospital to pour my energy and skills, such as they are, into things of importance. I wanted my life to matter. I wanted a life well-lived.

But perhaps I’m the odd person. Maybe more people are like the man in the next bed, thinking only about finding pleasurable ways to pass the time.

But, if we are to have a life well-lived, what are (at least some) of the principles we should live by?

Starting with the story of a building project, I’ll lay out some principles in this blog. In other blogs I’ll add some more.

Here we go.

After living in our current house for about nine years, Alison and I finally decided we had to enlarge the back of the property. We’d always disliked the smallness of our kitchen, particularly since it was also a passageway to another part of the house. It was time for a house extension.

An architect did the drawings, the necessary official permissions were granted, and we engaged a builder. He started work in February, and promised the project would be done by June. It wasn’t done by June. Not even nearly. The work continued through the summer, and finally he said it would be finished by Christmas. I almost asked him ‘Which Christmas?’ In the end, the builder kept his promise but only just – the last workman left on Christmas Eve.

It seems all building projects over-run. But our experience pales into insignificance compared to the story of building St Vitus Cathedral in Prague.

There were religious buildings on the same site from the year 960, some of which were enlarged after 1060. But I won’t include those.

We’ll start counting from when work started on the present building. It began, on the instruction of Charles IV, in 1344. Work slowed when the king diverted one of the early architects to other projects, such as the construction of the Charles Bridge. As the years ticked by, architect succeeded architect, each contributing their own features to the building.

Then the slow work became no work. In 1419 the Hussite Wars halted all construction. It wasn’t a short interruption. Little happened for a long time because of wars, a major fire, lack of funds, and probably apathy. The half-finished building stayed that way for over 400 years.

Then, mid-way through the 1800s, a society was formed with the purpose of completing the cathedral. They began by removing some elements of earlier design, repairing others, and in 1870 laid the foundation of a new nave. A whole new façade was built in the later years of the century, and a rose window created in the 1920s.

The cathedral was complete by the time of the St Wenceslas jubilee in 1929. I’ve visited it, and it is truly a remarkable building. It’s also a large building. I was told you could park a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet inside (though there would be a problem getting it through the doors). The cathedral has a prominent location, sitting inside the boundaries of Prague Castle, towering high on the hill above the Vltava River.

So, construction began in 1344 and was completed in 1929. That’s a staggering 585 years. Don’t ever complain again that your building project is taking too long.

The construction story of St Vitus Cathedral gives us some principles of living well.

The best and most lasting of things take time

Nearly 600 years was a very long time to build a cathedral. But the end result is magnificent. In the 21st century, however, what we want we want now. Waiting isn’t in our vocabulary.

While living in America, my TV viewing was interrupted by ads for the P90X fitness system. I was shown how ‘Wayne’ had lost 43 lbs in 90 days. The trainer said: ‘Work out with me and you’ll be shocked by the results.’ I’m sure I would have been shocked, though not in the way the trainer meant.

What that ad was selling was quick-fix fitness. That’s much the same as ads telling us we can speak a foreign language in a week, or look ten years younger with an instant makeover, or pass your motorcycle test after one day’s training, or have a gorgeous garden after one visit to the garden centre.

We’d like to believe these messages. We want things now. Not next week, next month, next year. And we don’t want the effort of mastering a skill, or waiting until the right time, or allowing something to mature or develop.

But that’s not how the best things happen.

I like to remember that God put Jesus on this earth and then gave him 30 years before he started his ‘public ministry’. Time had to pass. The work was too important to rush.

For the important things we do, the same principle applies. Skills must be gained. Maturity and wisdom must develop. The right time must be reached. The right preparations made. The right care put into the work.

We need to be the best we can be. We need to do the best we can do. Those take more than 90 days.

We can’t be loners

Thousands of people, with hundreds of skills, were used to build St Vitus Cathedral – architects, foundation diggers, wall builders, roof builders, creators of stain glass windows, furniture makers, painters of fine art, and so on.

But the foundation diggers couldn’t have built the walls, nor could the stone masons have erected the complex roofs, and neither of them could have installed the beautiful windows.

The important things of this world need people with many different skills and insights.

But there are two problems with this principle.

One, it offends some people’s pride. ‘Are you saying I’m not competent to do this work?’ they’d say. To which I’d want to answer: ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying’. The task requires more wisdom and skill than any one person has.

The other problem is that people don’t like to hear alternative views. They might grudgingly agree there should be input from others, but they don’t want that input to challenge their already established opinion. It should line up behind what they already want to do. It’s annoying and awkward when someone puts forward another proposal. An angry voice eventually shouts: ‘Why can’t you see things the way I do?’

In other words, ‘if only everyone thought like me, …’ ‘if only everyone agreed with my ideas…’  if only everyone had my vision…’ then things would be much better.

No, they wouldn’t. They’d be much worse.

Important things require interaction and interdependency. Ideas and abilities generated by only ‘one brain power’ and ‘one skill set’ would be seriously limited. Good work needs others.

One challenge, then, is to overcome our pride, to accept our ideas may not be the best, and to really believe others have wisdom. Then comes the second challenge, to blend several visions into a cohesive and effective whole. There’s nothing easy about those challenges. But not to try is disastrous.

We must play our part in our day

Since it took so long to build St Vitus Cathedral there’s something peculiar about the experience of the workers. The first foundation diggers toiled generation after generation, and not one of them saw a wall go up. The same was true for the early wall builders, fathers and sons raising high walls, but never seeing a roof in place. And probably those who built the roofs never saw the marvellous art placed later inside the cathedral.

So, almost none of the tens of thousands who laboured on the cathedral during  585 years of construction ever saw the end result of their work: people gathering there to worship God. They never saw the whole thing complete.

But – and here’s the essential truth – each played their part in their day and each part was needed. The wall builders couldn’t have erected towering facades if the foundation labourers hadn’t done their work. Roofers couldn’t have built steep and complex roofs if the walls hadn’t been built.

Every generation who worked on that cathedral needed the one before to have toiled hard and well on their part of the building, because they were now (literally) standing on it. And every generation after them would stand (or fall) depending on how well they did their work now that it was their day.

For the same reasons it’s important we give our best in our day, wherever that’s needed: in our workplace, our family, our church, among our neighbours, in our town or city. We stand on the shoulders of our forebears, building on the work of those who came before us. Others after us will want to stand on our shoulders, the shoulders of people who have given their whole hearts to our tasks and responsibilities. We are the forebears of the next generation.

Put simply: just as we needed those who came before us, those after us will need us to have given our best.

Today is our moment, our time, our day. It’s when we influence lives for the best, shape the world around us, and build something strong that lasts and something magnificent for which others will be grateful. Others came before us, and others will come after us. But this is our day. We cannot fail in what we’re given to do.

The green-eyed monster

What is prohibited in the Ten Commandments, included among the acts of the flesh in the New Testament, listed as one of the seven deadly sins, and described by Shakespeare as the green-eyed monster? *

The answer is envy.

It’s hard to imagine there’s anyone who hasn’t been envious. You might think it’s especially a failing in affluent societies, a temptation of people in suburbia who ‘want to keep up with the Joneses’. Whatever others have, they want it too. But envy also happens in the poorest of places. Someone has a better tea pot, or bicycle, or job, or a rich relative who sends them money, and others want these things too.

It’s an understandable sin. We all want our lives to be better, so we envy those who have things or connections or abilities which would improve our lives, if only we had them too.

Sometimes we justify our envy. ‘It’s not fair they have these things,’ we reason. ‘Why shouldn’t I have them as well?’

I studied Human Resources as part of my management degree. One paper described how staff reacted when the work was demanding but the pay poor. Interestingly, their research showed that employees would work for low wages providing everyone doing that work had the same low wage. But if some were paid more, those on less were seriously discontent. They wanted parity. They wanted what others were getting.

On the whole, though, few try to justify envy. Down the ages envy, and its close cousin jealousy, is considered wrong.

I’m going to set out three ways in which envy is harmful. I’ll finish by adding three rather different thoughts.

First, how envy harms lives.

Envy is a cruel master

I spent a lot of time trying to help Gwyn and Julie. People would think they were a great couple with two wonderful children. But they had a secret. They were lost in a maze of unpayable debts. They owed money to the bank and on five different credit cards, and when they’d maxed out on their limits, they’d borrowed from short-term lenders at astronomical interest rates. That wasn’t all. They’d bought from several catalogue companies, the kind where you pay small sums every week but the overall cost of goods is high. And they owed significant sums for unpaid utility services and local taxes.

I sat with them for hours, tried to list every outstanding amount, and, just when I thought we were done, Julie or Gwyn would remember another debt. They were deeply submerged in a financial swamp. Debt collectors phoned constantly and banged on their front door at all hours.

The couple seemed unable to think straight so, on their behalf, I began contacting credit card providers, banks and catalogue companies. Most of them were amenable to working out payment arrangements. I introduced them to a friendly bank manager, and we considered consolidating all their debts and structuring a payment plan.

But, just before any of those remedial arrangements went into effect, I saw Gwyn and Julie’s children playing on brand-new bicycles. How could they have those new bikes? I caught up with their parents, and asked for an explanation. ‘All their friends seemed to have new bicycles, and we couldn’t let our children not have them too,’ Julie said. I asked how they found money to buy them. Sheepishly she said, ‘We got them from a catalogue company we’d never used before’. More debt. Soon after Gwynn and Julie were made bankrupt. I lost touch but I believe their marriage fell apart a year or two later.

There are three hard truths from Gwynn and Julie’s story. First, the fundamental problem behind most of their debt? They saw what others had and they had to have it too. Second, their envy was uncontrolled. It got them into debt, and then more debt. Third, despite outward appearances, and despite all they bought, Gwyn and Julie were miserable. So miserable, it ended their relationship.

Envy is a cruel and destructive master.

Envy is insatiable

Envy doesn’t have limits. It’s inexhaustible. We may think, ‘If only I have this, then I’ll be satisfied.’ But we’re not. We will always see something better than what we have already, and we’ll want that too.

One of my favourite podcasts is ‘No Stupid Questions’. A recent episode had the title: Why Do We Want What We Can’t Have? ** The presenters included the story of a stone cutter who constantly wanted something better for his life.

A stone cutter is passing the house of a wealthy merchant and sees his expensive and fancy possessions, and his important visitors, and he says to himself ‘Wow, that merchant must be so powerful. It must be amazing to be like that.’

The next day he wakes up as the merchant. So he’s happy for a while. Then he sees a high-ranking, important government official being carried in a sedan by his servants. And he thinks ‘Woah! How powerful that official must be.’

The next day he becomes the official, and this trend continues and the guy becomes the sun, he becomes a big storm cloud, and he becomes the wind. Then he finds that the one thing he can’t move when he’s the wind is a massive rock so he grows envious of the rock.

And next day he’s the rock. One day he hears the sound of a hammer hitting his surface and he thinks ‘Wait a minute! Wait a minute – what could be more powerful than me, the rock? And he looks down and sees a stone cutter…

That story says it all. Envy is never satisfied. There’s always one thing more, then another and another, an unending lust for things better than those we have already. In the end it get us nowhere.

Envy is no judge of what really matters

I arrived in the car park of the golf club, and began getting my gear out of the car. I was getting ready to play in a pairs match – my partner and I against two golfers from another club. My partner arrived in his Jaguar. Then the first of our opponents drove into the car park in his Porsche. Minutes later our second opponent came in his Audi S5. I hadn’t come in any of these elite models of car. I came in my Nissan. For a moment I wished I had one of their cars. I wouldn’t have been fussy. Any of them would be fine. But I caught myself quickly, realising ‘I already have a good car. It does everything I want a car to do.’ What matters with a car is that it gets you from A to B with reasonable comfort, safety and reliability. My car does that. The brand name is not what’s important.

Envy doesn’t think like that. Envy casts greedy eyes over anything supposedly better or more desirable than what you have already, and says ‘You should have that’.

Envy doesn’t think of affordability, or climate impact, or even suitability. It considers only things like prestige, speed, and impressing others. They are not the things that really matter.

I’ll finish with three rather different points about envy. The first will seem surprising.

  • Sometimes envy pushes people to do the right thing

Envy is a bad driver, but occasionally points us in a good direction. I’ll give an example.

While I worked in America, my car was a Subaru. I’d never owned a Subaru or any 4 x 4 car before, but it was the right car to have for the snow and ice of a Chicago winter. I deeply appreciated that car’s road-holding ability when the temperature was minus 18F. But what I most enjoyed was its reversing camera. Put the car into reverse, and a rear-facing camera showed an image on the dashboard of whatever was behind. I loved showing that to friends. Some said, ‘Wow! I wish I had that feature on my car.’ That was envy. But a good envy, because reversing cameras don’t just prevent you reversing into a wall, they stop you running over the toddler who’s invisible to wing mirrors but standing right behind the car. My friends’ envy meant they’d insist on a rear-view camera when they next bought a car, which might save a life.

In that instance envy served a good purpose.

  • Envy is not inevitable. It’s a choice

Envy feels like it’s a reaction. Your neighbour builds a wonderful extension on their house, or takes their family on the vacation of a lifetime, or gets promotion at their work, or inherits a million from an aunt they never visited. And you react with ‘I want that too’ or ‘I wish that would happen to me’. It’s an instinct, the thought that inevitably comes to mind.

But envy is not inevitable. It happens so quickly and easily it feels automatic. We’ve become used to it, as if coveting what our neighbour has is a preset feature of our humanity.

But it isn’t a preset. Envy is a choice.

Envy is a choice just as greed or lust or anger is a choice. If someone puts a plate of Danish pastries in front of me, must I eat one? Or two? Or three? If I see a beautiful woman, must I imagine having sex with her? If someone is rude and insulting, must I punch them on the nose? We’d say there’s no must about any of these. We might fail, but it was never inevitable we’d fail. Nor is it inevitable we’ll fail with envy.

The hard truth is this: envy is a choice. We are not helpless beings, pushed around by irresistible instincts. We can make decisions, including a decision not to envy what others have.

  • To beat envy, turn the other way

You’ll have heard or read this: Happiness is not having everything you want, but wanting what you have. (It’s a saying attributed to many writers.) It’s rather simplistic. But what it points to is powerful: contentment.

For a time the Apostle Paul was held prisoner in Rome. From his prison he wrote letters, including the one to the church in Philippi. Given his circumstances these words are remarkable:

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.  (Philippians 4:11-13)

Paul was beaten, thrown out of cities, deserted by friends, suffered poor health and, here, languished in prison. Yet, whatever his circumstances, he was content. But please notice that twice he says he has ‘learned’ to be content.

We’ve all learned things – how to use tools, how to speak a language, how to drive a car, how to grow plants, how to play chess, and many more. We didn’t know automatically how to do these things, but we learned. It took effort, time and commitment, but we got there.

The same is true with contentment. There aren’t ten easy steps to memorise and, suddenly, you’re now perfectly content. It’s choosing to be at peace with what you have, and choosing to resist the urge to chase what you don’t have. I’d never pretend that’s easy, but I know it’s possible.

And here’s an encouraging truth. If two things are in opposite directions, moving towards one takes you further from the other. Contentment and envy lie in opposite directions, so the more we walk towards contentment the further we are from envy. I can’t overcome envy by thinking constantly about things I envy, hoping that one day I’ll wake up not wanting those shiny new things others have. I overcome envy by focusing on the very many thing I have already that bring me contentment. I choose to be content, and let envy perish by neglect.

I urge you to do the same.

——————————-

*  The tenth of the Ten Commandments is: ‘You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.’ (Exodus 20:17) 

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Galatians, says this: ‘The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.’  (Galatians 5:19-21)

Thomas Aquinas – the 13th century Italian philosopher and theologian – is considered to have defined the standard list of the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth.

Shakespeare used the term ‘green-eyed monster’ in Othello, Act 3, Scene 3:

“O beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”

**  No Stupid Questions Ep. 68 https://freakonomics.com/podcast/nsq-envy/

Don’t kill the horse

‘God gave me a horse, and a gift to deliver. Alas, I have killed the horse and can no longer deliver the gift.’

I first read that quote many years ago, and I’ll explain the sad reason behind the statement.

The words are attributed to Robert Murray M’Cheyne, a presbyterian pastor in Dundee from 1836-1843.

M’Cheyne was born in Edinburgh in 1813 and enrolled at the city’s university when he was only 14. A few years later his Christian convictions came alive, and he began studying divinity. As he completed his theological study he wrote this: ‘Life is vanishing fast, make haste for eternity.’

That ‘make haste’ mindset controlled everything M’Cheyne did. Each moment had to be invested in profitable work. Soon he was minister of St Peter’s Church in Dundee. All around he saw people with ‘hardness of heart’ to the Christian gospel. He worked day and night for their lives to change.

After three years of constant work his health was affected. His heart was suffering ‘palpitations’ and quickly they got worse. His friends were concerned; his doctor advised complete rest. Reluctantly he agreed, and returned to the family home in Edinburgh. The following year he was persuaded to join a group of ministers assessing Christian work in Israel; M’Cheyne’s inclusion was partly because the climate would be good for his health. He was gone for six months. During the return journey he became dangerously ill and nearly died. But he recovered and, once stronger, returned to Dundee.

While M’Cheyne had been away, a ‘revival’ had broken out in Scotland including Dundee. When he returned to St Peter’s church, things were very different from when he left. The church was filled. People with a deep concern for ‘eternal realities’ cried out for God’s mercy.

He threw himself into his work with renewed passion. He met with anyone seeking God. He preached in St Peter’s, and in the open air, and at meetings across Scotland, and into England. No-one could have worked harder for his people.

In February 1843, he toured north west Scotland – an area with rugged countryside, high mountains, narrow passes, and almost everywhere exposed to the worst of weather coming off the Atlantic Ocean. M’Cheyne preached 27 times in 24 places, often struggling through heavy snow to his next engagement.

By the time he returned to Dundee he admitted he was desperately tired. But typhus fever had broken out across the city so he visited sick person after sick person, hardly taking rest. Of course he was not immune. His own burning fever began on March 12th, and after a week he became delirious and died on March 25th. M’Cheyne was engaged to be married, and aged just 29.

He died convinced that he’d given his all for God and God’s work, yet sensing that somehow he’d ‘killed the horse’ – his body – which God had given him to deliver the gift of the gospel.

The words spoken by M’Cheyne near to his death have helped me and frightened me. What’s frightened me is the warning that I could bring all I was meant to do with my life to a premature end. What’s helped me is the realisation that life is a marathon, not a sprint, and the goal is to finish, and to finish still strong.

Before explaining more, let me be clear here what I’m not talking about. People have accidents, or become victims, or develop illnesses. Everything is changed through no fault of their own. A soldier loses his legs when a roadside bomb explodes. A young health worker in Asia contracts a disease to which she has no resistance and dies. An aid worker in the Middle East is kidnapped, and though eventually released has ongoing struggles with fear and loss of confidence. A young mum contracts cancer and dies within two years, leaving behind a husband and two very young children.

These are tragedies. These are people whose lives were ended or damaged long before anyone would have expected. They never had the chance to fulfil the potential everyone believed they had. But they didn’t cause the events which happened to them.

Their circumstances are not what this blog is about. I am writing about things we do – things we control – that damage or shorten our futures.

Because these things are numerous and varied I can only give examples.

Sometimes the issue is personal management of our health. I wrote in a recent blog about back problems I’ve had throughout my adult life. (Will life always be this way?, 13.9.21) I asked the specialist I saw in America if my damaged back could be the result of a rugby accident when I was 15. (I was hit in my back by an opponent’s knee as he tackled me.) ‘No,’ he said. ‘The state of your back is not the result of an accident. You were likely born this way.’

So, no-one caused my back pain, but there has always been one person responsible for managing it. I’ve been good about that, but not as good as I should because most of the time I’ve been overweight. Carrying too much weight stresses knees and back. It was easy to find excuses. When you’re a minister you go to meetings at which the host puts out scones and cakes. As an executive leader you go to conferences where they feed you three cooked meals a day. At other times you meet with people in restaurants. While in America, I had days with meetings like that at breakfast, lunch and dinner. One breakfast meeting in a restaurant lasted so long my lunch guest arrived. That was convenient, but did serious damage to the waist line.

Weakness of will meant I often ate the wrong things. Even when I ate the right things, I ate too much. Now that I’m retired, and almost always eating at home, I choose healthy things. Sorry, I should tell the truth – Alison chooses the healthy things. And I’m very grateful she does, as I weigh a lot less now than I did.

That’s my confession – I’ve not always looked after my health. I suspect most people could make a similar confession, though not necessarily about weight. Perhaps smoking? Or drinking more than a little? Or not getting enough sleep? Or anything else that risks shortening our years.

Then there’s the issue of overwork which M’Cheyne likely got wrong. I’ve seen employment adverts which virtually spell out that they want an employee who’ll give 110 per cent, surrendering heart and soul to the company. These are invitations to abandon health, family life, friendships, recreation, for the greater profit of a business. That deal is never worth taking.

Yet many do sign up, and they go along with a culture which demands that you start early and finish late, that you don’t take most of your vacation time, and that you answer your phone or emails any time of night and day. Often the wages are good, but you pay a heavy price to get that income. Marriages break up. Children become strangers. Health breaks down. And nothing lives in your mind except work.

Work is good and honourable. But overwork kills the spirit and the body.

For some, career and much more is shortened by serious loss of reputation. It happens when someone fakes their curriculum vitae to get a top job. Or when they’re found to have given bribes to win a contract. Or they lied in court. Or they falsified accounts to make the business look more profitable. These things have significant legal consequences, but even if the legalities are escaped the actions are usually career-ending.

Sometimes the failure isn’t legal but moral. I worked beside a journalist who’d had an affair with the wife of a very prominent civic officer. The relationship ended when it became public. The wife’s marriage was damaged, and so was the journalist’s career because he had to move far away to find another job. Tragically, church ministers can fail morally in similar ways. The vast majority would be ashamed of their actions, but they were weak when they should have been strong. It’s not always ‘career’ ending – there can be restoration – but the damage done is never small.

There have always been addictions, and they have dreadful consequences. Addiction to alcohol is mostly obvious. The same can be true with drugs sold on street corners. But addictions to prescription medications are often secret. And often deadly.

This information on deaths from drug poisoning in England and Wales comes from the British government’s Office for National Statistics

Almost half of all drug poisonings continue to involve an opiate. For deaths registered in 2020, a total of 2,263 drug poisoning deaths involved opiates; this was 4.8% higher than in 2019 (2,160 deaths) and 48.2% higher than in 2010 (1,527 deaths). Opiates were involved in just under half (49.6%) of drug poisonings registered in 2020, increasing to 64.5% when we exclude deaths that had no drug type recorded on the death certificate.*

It shocks me that opiates cause almost half of drug deaths, and the number has grown by almost 50 per cent over ten years. Often few knew someone was addicted until they overdosed and died.

There are other kinds of addictions too, such as gambling and pornography. Increasingly, worries are expressed that computer gaming has become compulsive, and not just for children. Perhaps TV soap operas are also addictive. I knew someone who recorded two or three every evening, and sat up late watching them.

I find much to admire in the life of Robert Murray M’Cheyne. And I never learned how to limit my commitment to caring for people’s bodies and souls. The sacrifice always felt worth it.

But there’s also much to learn from M’Cheyne. His words about ‘killing the horse’ and so ‘can no longer deliver the gift’ are sobering. Would he have wanted to have lived and ministered for longer? I feel sure he would.

There is a challenge, then, in his words. We make choices, and what stops us fulfilling our potential will be a bad choice.

————————————-

* Extract taken from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsrelatedtodrugpoisoninginenglandandwales/2020

There will be someone you know who’d benefit from reading this blog. Please send it to them. Use the ‘Share’ button or point them to www.occasionallywise.com. I’ll be grateful, but, more importantly, so will they.

Right doesn’t cancel wrong

It’s April, 1912, and in the boiler and engine rooms of the Titanic, firemen, mechanics and engineers are working flat out. The captain has ordered a near maximum speed of 22 knots. Sustaining that speed is back breaking work for those who stoke the boilers and keep the thundering machinery running. But they get it right; nothing goes wrong with those engines.

But something does go wrong, just not in the engine room. The lookouts in the crow’s nest don’t have binoculars – they were borrowed and not returned. So the men on watch gaze as best they can into still night air. The lack of airflow is a dangerous problem. Wind-driven icebergs disturb water. Stationary icebergs are hard to see. Suddenly, dead ahead, there’s an iceberg. They sound the alarm, the ship alters course, but too late to avoid a sideswipe against the ice. The hull is breached and water floods several compartments and spreads. Less than three hours later, the supposedly unsinkable Titanic disappears beneath the water taking some 1500 people with it.

Six hundred and eighty eight of those who died were crew; that’s 76 per cent of those who began the voyage. Many were firemen, mechanics and engineers. They’d done their jobs. Those engines raced the Titanic forward. But what was done right didn’t make up for what was done wrong. Almost certainly many things were wrong. For more than a hundred years people have questioned why the vessel was among icebergs, why warnings of icebergs weren’t heeded, whether it should have been going so fast, whether the iceberg should have been seen earlier, and much more. The Titanic was luxurious in appearance and sailed magnificently, but none of that counted when it hit the iceberg and became one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters ever.

Here’s the lesson from this. Getting one thing right doesn’t compensate for getting other things wrong. The below deck crew made the Titanic’s engines run as smoothly and sweetly as possible, powering it through the water. That was good. But it didn’t make up for sailing at speed into water strewn with icebergs.

We comfort ourselves that what we’re getting right compensates for things we’re getting wrong.

It doesn’t and here’s another example.

I was in a restaurant, and noticed that a large pizza was placed in front of a nearby customer. He was far from a small man. I couldn’t help but think he must have eaten a lot of large pizzas before.

What intrigued me wasn’t that the customer was about to eat a pizza which could have fed a family, but his chosen beverage. He was drinking a can of Diet Coke. Normally I’d think well of someone avoiding the approximately 140 calories in a regular cola. Except the pizza he was tucking into had about 2200 calories. Since the recommended calorie intake for men is 2500 calories per day, that customer was getting 88 per cent of his day’s allowance from that one pizza. I thought: ‘What’s the point of a diet drink when its benefit is well and truly erased by your giant pizza’.

One thing right (the diet cola) couldn’t cancel what was wrong (his massive pizza).

How can we pretend that doing one thing right negates one or more things which are wrong? But sometimes we do think like that.

I’ll list three reasons for that idea, and why those reasons are invalid.

We think what’s good compensates for what’s bad, because it comforts us to think that way.   When I was about 15, I was in the top performing class of pupils my age, but I scored near to the bottom of that top group. Almost everyone in the class did better than me. For example, I sat five national exams in that school year. Here were my results:

English – passed.

History – passed.

Maths – failed.

Arithmetic – failed.*

French – failed.

German – so poor I wasn’t allowed to take the exam.

That performance was not good, not at all good. But I wasn’t too disappointed. After all I’d passed in two subjects, those I was actually interested in. So that was okay.

It wasn’t okay. Passing two, failing three, banned from taking another – that’s never okay. Through many of my school years, my teachers’ verdict was consistently ‘Could do better’. I simply didn’t put any effort into studying subjects that I didn’t enjoy. If I had I’d have passed.** I might never have been top in my class, but I didn’t need to be at the bottom.

Instead I underperformed but comforted myself I’d passed something. That was an excuse. I could and should have passed them all. I was indulging in false comfort.

We think what’s good compensates for what’s bad, because at least we’re doing something.    The guy who ordered Diet Coke was at least doing something towards weight loss. I have my own versions of that mindset. If I’ve started pulling weeds out in the garden, I’ve done something towards getting it under control. If I’ve started on my next study assignment, I’ve done something towards completing it. Both of those are good. I’m on my way. It’s an achievement.

Starting is an achievement. But it’s not success if that’s when we also stop. Drinking Diet Coke won’t get restaurant man to his right weight unless he cuts back on pizza eating. Pulling out a few weeds won’t get my garden in order when more weeds are springing up at great speed in every other part of the garden. Writing a couple of paragraphs of a study assignment is not great progress if the deadline for the 2000 or 3000 word assignment is just days away.

We feel better once we’ve done a little. But doing a little can become a substitute for not doing everything we should.

We think what’s good compensates for what’s bad, because we reckon good things outweigh bad things.    If everything was weighed, surely the good we do would tip the scales the right way. ‘Today I phoned a friend going through a hard time. I bought coffee for a colleague. I complimented someone on their work. And I washed the car. Yes, I know I cheated on my expenses, told a neighbour I wished he lived somewhere else, and murdered my boss because he was getting on my nerves. But there was more good than bad in my day, so that’s okay.’

That list of a day’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is, of course, ludicrous, but I’ve exaggerated it to make two points.

First, good and bad things don’t carry the same ‘weight’, any more than ten light parcels weigh the same as ten heavy parcels. You can’t compare buying coffee for a colleague with murdering the boss!

Second, the bad things shouldn’t exist at all. If you had a thousand good deeds in your day, they still wouldn’t compensate for theft or murder. Doing something right doesn’t cancel doing something wrong. The wrong should never happen.

So, if we can’t take comfort in having some good in our lives, while ignoring the bad, what do we need to do?

The short answer is living with no half measures and no excuses.

No half measures because often something isn’t better than nothing. When I play golf, I may reach a hole where there’s nothing between the tee ground and the green except water. If I want to get my ball on the green, I’ll have to hit it 150 yards through the air. Hitting it 80 yards isn’t enough. Nor is 120 yards or 140 yards. These are all ‘something’ but they’re not enough. My ball will land in the pond unless I hit it more than 150 yards.

Likewise, the fact that the Titanic’s engines were first rate and running flat out was ‘something’, but it wasn’t enough when the ship sailed straight for an iceberg.

None of us are perfect, and we’ll often fall short. But when we accept ‘short’ as enough we’re in trouble.

No excuses when we’ve simply not given our best. I left school with the worst exam results for anyone in the ‘A’ stream of pupils. I wasn’t much interested in some of the subjects, and I didn’t relate well to those who taught them. But those were excuses, and don’t come close to justifying my lack of effort. I could have done much better, and even if I had a hundred excuses I’d still be guilty.

It’s been many years since I stopped thinking that getting a few things right compensated for getting so much else wrong. Here, in closing, is the image of how I’d like my life to be.

Picture an athlete – a sprinter – giving everything to finish their race well. Eyes focused on the line, arms and legs pumping, chest pushed out to breast the tape. Long before that moment, they’d ironed out the flaws in their technique and mindset, and trained their body to run the distance at full speed. They prepared and on the day they performed. Everything was honed to be the best it could be, and they gave it. There were no half measures and afterwards no excuses.

That’s my ideal of how my life should have been lived. I’ve never wholly succeeded, but I’ll always try.

——————–

*  At that time Scottish schools separated arithmetic from maths, hence separate exams.

**  A year later I was more motivated and did pass the maths exam, and when I was 20 (and wanting admission to university) passed ‘Higher’ exams in French, Geography and Accounting. Some years further on I studied for a PhD degree, and read German text books and included passages in German in my thesis. Perhaps I was a ‘late bloomer’.