Enjoy the doing

“One thing I noticed is that many of us, we do what we call work for a goal. For a result. And in the doing, it’s not that much happiness. And yet that’s our life going by. If you’re transcending every day, building up that happiness, it eventually comes to: it doesn’t matter what your work is. You just get happy in the work. You get happy in the little things and the big things. And if the result isn’t what you dreamed of, it doesn’t kill you, if you enjoyed the doing of it. It’s important that we enjoy the doing of our life.” ~ David Lynch

There is something rather absurd about the way we live.

We spend Monday waiting for Friday.

We spend years working towards a promotion.

We spend decades saving for retirement.

Always working towards something.

Always waiting for the reward.

As though life were an unpleasant journey to somewhere better.

But here’s the problem.

The journey is your life.

The work.

The learning.

The mistakes.

The ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

These are not the things standing between you and happiness.

These are the things your life is made of.

And if you spend your years enduring them for the promise of something better, you may discover that the reward was never worth the price.

Which brings us to today’s lesson.

Learn to enjoy the doing.

Find work you can become interested in.

Take pride in doing ordinary things exceptionally well.

Enjoy becoming better at something.

Enjoy solving problems.

Enjoy learning things you didn’t know yesterday.

Find satisfaction in effort, not just achievement.

And when something doesn’t work out, take the lesson and try again.

Because success is never guaranteed.

But you can still make good use of the years you spend pursuing it.

You can become wiser.

More capable.

More useful.

You can make friends.

Help people.

Create things that didn’t exist before.

And enjoy yourself along the way.

Of course, some things will be difficult.

Some days will be miserable.

That’s life.

But if you spend most of your days wishing they were over, perhaps it’s time to change how you’re spending them.

Because one day, your work will be finished.

Your ambitions will no longer matter.

And the years you spent chasing your goals will be the life you actually lived.

So pursue great things.

Work hard.

Have ambitions.

But find something to love about the process.

The greatest success is not reaching a destination where you can finally enjoy your life.

It’s building a life you enjoy living on the way there.