7.4 True Work is Play

When purpose and pleasure are brought together work becomes play. Every bit of work done in this spirit strengthens the man who does it. It is recreative as well as creative. Artist and carpenter - they make pictures and chairs, but even more they make men, themselves. Think on what you are doing more than on the result, or what you are going to do afterwards. You will not then miss the pleasure of little things. I pick up my pen; there is sheer and undiluted pleasure in this, if I allow myself to experience it. It is natural and pure, and mine when I stop fighting, it. In such little things thought, love and will can flow and grow. And then arise peace and strength and - in active life - the union of work and play.

Moderation is another law. Play ceases to be play when there is fatigue or overstrain. We have much to learn from the animals and even from the plants in this respect. ``Grow as the flower grows'', says Light on the Path http://www.theosophical.ca/lightonpath.htm, ``opening your heart to the sun''. Said Jesus: ``Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these''. It is deadly fear of the morrow that makes man's work a toil, that makes him sweat in bitterness. But the law of life says: ``Do the wise and right thing today, and leave the result to take care of itself''. This is not a doctrine of idleness but of work that is play instead of toil.

An illustration of this is to be seen in the way in which different people take a long journey. One man will get into the train and remain in a fever of impatience until he reaches his destination. He has fixed his mind on something that he wants to do there; in the meantime his journey is a toil and a misery. Another knows how to use and enjoy the scenery, the people and even the train itself.

These thoughts bring up in my mind two contrasting pictures. I see Western man sitting on his tractor moving along a field. He does not seem to be enjoying his work. Perhaps he is thinking of something else - of going to a dance or a cinema. He has been educated in a practical way but not for the understanding of life and enjoyment of the common day.

I see a Hindu villager tilling a field. I know what is in his mind. He is perhaps singing to himself one of the old songs. He is thinking of the earth and the water that waters the earth, and he loves them both with every nerve of his body. If he were a kissing man he would kiss them, but he belongs to a devotional race, so he salutes them, and touches them with a feeling that he is being blessed. He looks at the grass banks which border his field. Along their narrow tops he will walk away from his work at eventide. He will walk without shoes, and his feet will feel and respond to the irregularities of the path. As he comes to each border-tree on that path he will feel happy, as though he had met a friend whom he does not fear. And so he will come at last, without hurry, to his earth-walled and palm-roofed home, where his wife and children live, and where his fathers before him have lived, perhaps for a thousand years.

But perhaps I have misjudged that Western man. Perhaps he is thinking not of dance and cinema, but how when he reaches his home in the evening he will go out and work in the garden for a while, touching the soil and the little plants, with a slightly busy wife and toddling child near by - away from the deadly constructiveness of his daily work, which even when it gives him elation does not give him joy, into some simple living with life.

It may be said that I have taken extreme cases of West and East in my contrasting picture. Yes, that is so, yet there is something in it in general, and undoubtedly we human beings will have to bring work and play together for both our individual and our social redemptions.