Two Considerations on Great Undertakings.
Or
The Purpose Driven Life and the Final Reckoning.
Part One.
The other day I met a man who had been at the same task for eighteen years.
I was out of idle curiosity wandering around a library, it was one of those splendid old libraries with books on obscure topics kept behind glass doors in tall bookcases, and with heavy wooden writing tables set in the light of high windows, the sort of library that makes you imagine you could write something quite clever, when an elderly gentleman struck up a conversation with me. He was sat at a desk with a computer cataloguing items in the library and putting them online. There were forty thousand items to be catalogued, books, articles, artefacts, he sometimes wondered if his time was well spent. He thought it important that the contents of the library be made freely available to all not just to regular visitors and those who happen by so he had volunteered for this Herculean task.
I assured him that for what it was worth I thought he was right and that he was engaged in a public service, but then it would have been hard to suggest that his eighteen years of labour thus far had not been well spent even if that had been my opinion. Anyway, he seemed quite pleased with my reply and I moved on…although a couple of further thoughts did occur to me as I read over book titles vaguely aware of my own reflection in the glass.
Firstly, he seemed quite frail, will he perhaps fall short and sadly pass away before his task is done? Would anyone take it up in his place? What if it were to remain incomplete?
The second thought was what would he do with his time were he to complete the task? No doubt he would feel a sense of satisfaction and achievement, but the next day? Would he find himself bereft of purpose?
It seems to me that great tasks are undertaken by people that could be fools or heroes. It is often difficult to tell which they are. Great tasks take ownership of those who labour to own them.
Thank goodness I am neither a hero nor a fool, merely curious.
Part Two.
I skim stones over water when I can. By the sea or by a broad river. I have for as long as I can recall. It is a skill; selecting a flat rounded stone and then sending it low and spinning across the surface of the water with a swift throw and a flick of the wrist. A good skim will skip the stone several times on the water before the stone inevitably losses momentum and sinks. It is a skill that I do not claim to be particularly accomplished at, but I take pleasure in the art and diversion, and it means no one can say I haven’t used my time well because although the stone sinks my heart does not.
Woe to ye who take up great burdens but cannot play!
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