It’s strange to think about, but so much of the quality of our lives depends on how we approach our work. Do we do it with violence, or care? Are our days characterized by haste, followed by indolence, or by persistently taking that extra second or minute needed to actually interact fully with a task? When doing pullups–to take an example from my morning–you can just struggle through them, then move on; or you can feel them all the way through, and watch and feel yourself moving. You can even detach emotionally from struggle, and achieve aesthetic pleasure in ANYTHING.
When I deadlift I always relax completely before doing the movement. I don’t tighten up until the moment I apply pressure. And even though it IS a struggle, I don’t process it that way. My BODY is struggling. I’m just the one who gave the orders.
Surely living well is some combination of detaching from unpleasantness, and giving in fully to the pleasureable? And would not, then, work well done be full engagement with the task, focusing both on the abstraction of work well done, and the present reality of details which can be unfolded in infinite and pleasingly unexpected ways, in even the most mundane of chores?
These are, at least, Buddhist ideas. The more I grow as a person, the more I realize the Buddha did nothing more or less than state the obvious. That it wasn’t obvious to people then, or people now, is simply due to Mara, the demon of stupidity, who you can believe in, since he has got you too. Yes, you.