Nearly all the words I know about work presuppose there is a task to be done and a place to do it. Whatever else there is—the person who is supposed to do the work, for instance,—gets pushed to the margins and the focus on him or her gets blurry.
So “Time on” is addressing the work to be done because it needs to be done. “Time off” isn’t the same thing as doing the job, but the phrase still takes its meaning by reference to the job. When the job is central, “off” and “on” both refer to the relationship between the “worker’” and the job.
I’m not working anymore. How do I get time off?
Of course, the fact that I am not “working” anymore doesn’t mean that there aren’t things I want to do. In fact, there are things I commit myself to accomplish and they highlight that task-focused center and they push my focus on myself to the blurry periphery. It’s a very familiar feeling and most of the time, I like it.
But part of the reason I like it is that I choose it. [1]
Next problem. This time, I, the worker, am in the center and the “job to be done” is at the periphery. I said, above, that I am “not working anymore.” That is true, but part of the reason for that is not all the parts of me work anymore. To save you a medical overview, let me just say that I can’t always be confident that I am going to be able to get up and move around, nor that I will remember how to run the video and soundboard in the auditorium, nor that I am going to remember everything I once knew about American foreign policy.
Those particular problems aren’t all that big for the Great Decisions course because those are programs and I can manage to get myself in gear for them. I collect myself and then there is the mild and familiar stress of presenting material and responding to questions. Most of my days aren’t like that and some days I get up with real deficits to consider. And that’s where my new plan comes in.
I start with me and choose the “jobs” that fit me best. [2] This involves a fundamental reorientation, so I’m not saying it is easy. I’m saying it is simple. Here’s the basic principle: every condition of mind or body matches really with some tasks and not with others. Choose the one it matches best.
All my working life took the opposite principle for granted. The work is there and needs 
to be done—sometimes there is a deadline—and you need to do to yourself whatever you need to do to get it done. Solitude, alcohol, stimulants, brainstorming…whatever. So starting from the other end, “What job best fits what I have to give right now?” is a whole new thing. Sometimes I am frazzled and can’t focus on anything. That is the basic fact. But there is a collection of errands or chores to do that require virtually no focused thought. I can do them just as well when I am scattered as I can when I am cogent. So I choose those.
I’m lightheaded. My doctor prefers that I say that instead of saying that I have vertigo because he isn’s sure I do have vertigo. She and I do agree that there are some times that I can’t count on being able to stand up. I’m not sleepy; it’s just that my vertical orientation is being challenged. Is that a problem for me? Nope. There’s a bunch of sitting down things that need to be done. I can manage to get myself carefully downstairs to the circle of chairs and sofas around the coffee pot, for instance, and talk to whoever else sits down there.
If I am depressed, I can do the things that have, in the past, pulled me out of the hole. If I on the upswing, being optimistic and full of energy, I can try to use it to help someone rather than for self-aggrandizement. If I’m feeling unusually pacific, I can do the things I have put off because they will lead to conflict. If I am understimulated and feel like a little tussle might be activating, I can pick an activity which takes “ready to rumble” as an entrance requirement. Those activities are the ones I routinely keep away from, but maybe on this particular day, it will be just the right thing.
The examples could go on and on and my examples will be different from yours. The point is this: if you start with what you are able to do and match the job to yourself (rather than vice versa), you can arrive at a really satisfying match. It would be like arriving for work every day brimming with energy for just the things that day’s work will require of you. How likely is that? But if you start at the other end—not with the job, but with the self—it’s pretty likely.
So Why Work?
So why does there have to be any “work” at all? Let me make the case for and against 
tranquility by showing you this picture. The case for: wouldn’t it be great to be able to be like this some part of every day? The case against: wouldn’t it be awful to be like this all day every day?
I’m going to skip over the broadest answer to the question about work, which is a response to the question of what human beings are like in the most fundamental sense. [3] As a way of bypassing that, let me make a comment or two about why I need “work.”
I need to be doing the things that feed me and keep me healthy. I need, for example, to know who I am and I need to know that being who I am is OK. [4] I need to do the things that send back confirmatory signals. I need to do the things and be with the people who will confirm my identity and my acceptability. [5] So every day, I choose things to do that I approve of and that seem to me to reflect the kind of person I am.
That is my work. It is why I need to be doing something. Sitting around and letting my mind and my body get flabby and useless doesn’t meet the fundamental standards of what I need, so I don’t do them. Eating or reading too much “junk food” doesn’t meet the standards. Looking out for my own welfare only and not also for the welfare of those around me doesn’t meet the standards.
Now, of course, I myself don’t always meet the standards, but falling short of a clearly defined goal does give the kind of feedback that can help me on the next try. And the great value of choosing the best work you are capable of that day—a day defined to take account of whatever debilities you have that day—is that there is no day when you can not do your best.
And, with a little practice, you can learn to be proud of the smallest achievements if they are all you were capable of at the time. Well…OK….with a lot of practice.
[1] In a sense. So I “choose” to be in charge the Foreign Policy Associations’s Great Decisions discussions. I like that. But then, one week I have to hassle a double scheduling of my room and the projector blows a fuse another week, and a few dissidents dominate the discussion on a third week. I don’t like any of those and I didn’t choose those particular experiences—except that, in a sense, I “chose” them when I “chose” to organize the program.
[2] So somebody is going to say, “So…why pick any jobs at all?” That’s a really good question and I have a really good answer—for me. I don’t have a good answer for anyone else, although I have suspicions that could be elaborated into a theory that applied to everyone equally.
[3] If I went that way, I would have to say that humans are inherently goal-oriented and then I would have to say what would count as a goal and then I’d have to write a lot of things I don’t know anything about.
[4] That’s the plainest version I have ever come up with of Putney and Putney’s formulation (in The Adjusted American: Normal Neuroses in Self and Society) that we seek “an accurate and acceptable self-image” and that we seek to expand them through our actions and our associations. There are theological implications that could be drawn from the language I am using here, but I think they are superficial.
[5] That does include, by the way, people who think I did something wrong and that I have the strength to be told that and the energy to starting doing it right.
For reasons I can no longer recall, a big distinction was made, where I grew up, between “a reason for something” and an “excuse.” By usage, I learned that a reason you gave for something was one or the other. I never heard anyone say that a reason was so inadequate that it could not serve as an excuse or that a reason was so compelling that it did serve as an excuse. The old usage is still in place, I notice.
For one thing, the IOYK excuse functions as a kind of euphemism. It is a socially acceptable reason where “the real reason” might not be so acceptable. If there are parties you don’t want to go to or projects that aren’t really worth doing or jobs you would rather leave for someone else, saying those things in those ways will get you into trouble. Or reasons for not texting an “old person.” Using IOYK will not. People accept it more or less at face value and don’t take it personally.
And not only that, but the people to whom this reason is presented and who accept it as legitimate—they accept it, that is, as an excuse—will also learn the broader premise we are using. “He thinks of himself as old” our friends will learn to say, “…and so he would probably not like to be invited to the party or told about the project.” And, of course, our friends talk to each other too, so this assessment of what we might respond to spreads across our friendship network, with the result that many invitations may simply be not offered. “He always says No,” our friends will say as they consult each other, “and he will say he is too old.”
the basis of the show—Dr. Shaun Murphy is better than everyone else at the hospital in diagnosis and treatment and worse than everyone else in interpersonal relations—is hard for me to manage. I also thought that they would settle on a format and just crank each week’s episode through that format and be done with it.
This one is called “Point Three Percent,” [2] and in it we meet an amazing boy. Evan Gallico (Dylan Kingwell, who also plays Steve Murphy, Shaun’s brother, when they both are young). [3] Evan is committed to protecting his parents. That is the common element of the several strategies he adopts. He is bright and caring and perceptive. He is not the kind of kid you want to see die of cancer.
things God can no longer do once He has committed Himself to free choice in his creatures. That is what intervenes between “if I believe in Heaven, I’ll have to believe in God” on the one hand, and “then I’ve got to believe that God made me sick,” on the other. Evan believes that whatever happens must be the will of God because God can do anything. But it seems to me that God limited the playing field a great deal by creating people capable of saying Yes or No to Him.
been lost on scholars, for instance, that in Matthew, Jesus’s first sustained teaching was on a mountain. Moses went up the the mountain (Sinai) the get “the Law” from God. Jesus went up a mountain to give a series of contrasts to that Law, each of which began, “You have heard how it was said to our ancestors…” and then continues, “But I say this to you…” [1]
This device of Matthew’s is, as I say, widely recognized in his gospel, but it is not widely recognized in his narrative about the birth of Jesus and it is noticeable there as well. You would think that a writer who thinks of himself as a teacher has a point to make, he would work it into every part of his writing, even the birth stories. And he does. Here are some examples.
fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: I called my son out of Egypt.” (Matt 2:13) So…what prophet is Matthew talking about? It is Hosea (11:1) where Hosea, in using the expression, “my son,” means Israel. And Matthew knows that Hosea meant Israel. So how does he manage to appropriate it so that it refers to Jesus? I can argue all I want that in Matthew, Jesus would have been a little boy, but I can’t find any pictures in which he is not an infant.
about Jesus sounded familiar.” Placing Joseph’s family in Egypt allows Matthew to re-appropriate the scripture, “From Egypt, I have called my son.” For Matthew and/or for his readers, this is a sign of the providential working of God to bring us the Messiah just as he had promised.
This is the first line on the paper. Remember the “slaughter of the innocents by the Pharoah in Egypt?” And then the parallel line. Well, there was a slaughter of Israelites at the time of Jesus as well, this one engineered by Herod the Great. [5] And we say, “Oh, right. I knew that sounded familiar. This story of Jesus is so very much like the story of Moses.”[6]
“some evil things” along with all the good things; all the things they do are evil because they, themselves, are evil. And their evil character is obvious. It doesn’t require group decision making or the preponderance of the evidence or anything like that. It is obvious to everyone.
And there are more people, it turns out, who were true blue revolutionaries but who really hate to see this good-hearted friend of the revolution killed for “crimes of good judgment” and they object. At which point they follow him to the guillotine (or wherever) because the logic of infallibility still prevails. And that is how the revolutions eat their children.
convicted moves from hardened sexual predators to occasional predators to men who suffered instances of bad judgment to people who were insensitive to the response a woman might have had to what had appeared to be a consensual act at the time. So when I say that accusation feels so good—it is “empowering”—that it drives downward the standard for crimes committed, it is movement along this scale that I have in mind. [1] I found this a fascinating collection of familiar faces and Cosby was well into his practice of predation by this time.
It is the job of the women who care about where the relations between the sexes are going who have the responsibility to speak up. Why not the men? Because they have a prominent interest in not being accused of things and therefore their testimony can be readily set aside. Why not the hard left edge of the feminist movement? Because they are concerned narrowly with “punishing all the bad guys.” They are the revolution in its accelerated form. It is not their job to stop pursuing evildoers. It is their job to care about the unity of the movement and that is why they should listen to their more moderate sisters about how much is too much.
This is a very large change is how we have understood what we need to have to do our work during our workday. There was once the very general sense that you needed to do what was necessary to get a good night’s sleep because that was the foundation of a good day’s work. Consider Point 4 in this chart. From a commercial standpoint, that is a terrible plan because it provides no chance at all to sell energy drinks. [3] Nothing in this picture cues the reflection, “I’m really dragging today. I need to be sure to get a good night’s sleep tonight so I am more alert tomorrow.”
and battery and that “it” needs to be charged up so that “you” will feel energetic. In fact, you ARE the battery and the recharger—both, simultaneously—and if you were really determined to stay with the metaphor, all you need to do is to make sure the battery charger part of you is still connected to the house current. The only way I know to do that is to sleep adequately and to eat well and to exercise wisely. You, the battery recharger, will work just fine if you do that and you, the battery, will have all the portable energy you need.
neither a food nor a drug. It is a “food supplement” and they don’t study the effects of those until they start making people sick.
They said “We saw his star as it rose…” To get what that means, you have to give up the regular rotation of heavenly bodies. They were not saying, “We saw Venus come up again and we were so excited.” They are sawing, “A new star—a never before seen star—appeared in the heavens.” And they are saying. “We know from where and when it appeared, just what it means. It means there is a new king, an heir apparent.” Here is the traditional “following the star through the desert” picture. What a waste.
Not to knock the Wise Men too much. The star did reappear to them in Jerusalem and it guided them the remaining five miles to Bethlehem. Not only that, the star “stopped” and it “stood over” the house where Joseph and Mary and their little toddler, Jesus, were living. [6] It’s difficult for us moderns to understand just what itmeans for a star to stand “over” a house. My son, Doug, has another idea. He thinks the Wise Men just went to the house with the Christmas lights on. Right there on your left, on Main Street.
fraction thereof I could manage. I was supposed to run 1776 miles between the 4th of July in 1976 and the 4th of July in 1977. This was to be the kind of thing joggers did to commemorate 1776, the year the Declaration of Independence was signed. I had fallen behind during the winter and I was taking long runs several times a week and no matter how long the run was, I added that little half mile around new faculty circle—just to get the extra milage. And so I wouldn’t be thinking of them as just more running, I called them “victory laps.” This is Brittain Lake. The western part of the victory lap passed just uphill from the edge of this picture. And the picture below–that’s me in 1977 finishing the 1776th mile–is on the far side of the lake.
Invictus, President Mandela (Morgan Freeman) instructs his head of security, Jason Tshabalala in the need for white people in the security detail. “Forgiveness starts here,” says Mandela. In the second one, Pay It Forward, Arlene McKinney (Helen Hunt) comes to the railroad yard where the homeless gather to offer forgiveness to her mother, who lives there. There are more than 40 seconds of wordless images, showing first the mother’s face, then the daughters, as both women realize what has been done. Here is Angie Dickinson as the mother, talking to the reporter who broke the story.
I have found very few people in the category I would call “non-Christian” who are not members of some other faith. But there are some–really, there are– who have had so little contact with Christianity than they have no feelings for or against it. They are the missionaries’ dream of primitives who have no religion at all. Blank slates waiting to be written on.
think it will offer the largest challenge. A bunch of Christians with different backgrounds, different traditions of scriptural interpretation, different ways of making their faith make sense, will see these simple film fragments differently. And these differences may be fanned into disagreements. There is no way of telling, really.
describing—and have thought there was no way they could get there with integrity, I’d be happy to offer my own experience to them as an encouragement. [6] I can do that because I am aware, more than most people, of how I got where I am. I like being where I am even while I know it won’t do for everyone what it has done for me. Robin the Brave, here, with Princess Melora.
what I feel and what I know and what I do are always in some kind of tenuous balance—very much like the BOSU ball shown here.
I began my trip toward this destination while watching an episode of The Mentalist. Patrick Jane, who has done his share of onstage magic, asks why it is that magicians are accompanied on the stage by beautiful young women in skimpy outfits. The reason he gave is that the more time the audience spends looking at the assistant, the more leeway the magician has for managing his feats of illusion without being caught at it. The presence of the young woman means that the “eyeballs,” in the current phrasing, are going to be over there while the things the magician cares about are over here.
topic from the violence against blacks to whether Robert E. Lee should be revered as a patriot (Virginia, his highest loyalty) or decried as a racist and a traitor. Similarly, CHEB changed to topic from the rising militancy of the White Supremacy movement to “a clash of forces” in which both sides—remember that is the pro and anti Robert E. Lee “sides”—have honorable people. As horrible as those statements are, they are the assistant. What is the magician doing while I am gazing spellbound at the assistant?
