Tackling the Mundane Things of Life

             A few weeks ago, I watched a youtube video created from a 2005 commencement speech considered to be one of the best commencement speeches of all-time. The speaker mentioned this: “There happens to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches…One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration.” Although the speaker had a much deeper message than this post will cover, it's worth reading on;) and then listening to the full speech.

            I agree with David Foster Wallace that there are very few moments of elation in adult life. It seems as though most of the good stuff in life happens through the aggregation of smaller decisions and effort. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of happy moments. There are a lot of them. It's just that no matter what path we choose, there are also tradeoffs and things that we'd rather not do.

           In the business world, a business owner may combat the tradeoffs by hiring someone to do the less appealing duties of the job. On the other hand, in our personal lives the people who I respect the most bear the lion's share of the burden of the mundane things as a selfless way of taking away those duties from others that they love and care about. The husband and father who gets up in the early morning to shovel the driveway is a prime example of this, so his family doesn't need to.

 

          I should mention that typically mundane things can become a source of enjoyment in the long run. You may find the time spent outdoors and getting some exercise a nice part of your day. Many activities can be transformed into positive activities by training your mind to see the value in it. It may be just a matter of adapting and finding an efficient method to make the activity go by quickly.

          Since I’ve related running analogies so consistently on my blog, I will not hesitate to do so again. Marathons aren’t won just by deciding one day to go out and run. It’s the everyday decision to prepare and sacrifice their time and energy that allows a person to finish and be competitive. Here’s my blog’s first ever poem from an author unknown:

Stick to your task ’til it sticks to you;

Beginners are many, but enders are few.
Honor, power, place and praise
Will always come to the one who stays. Stick to your task ’til it sticks to you;
Bend at it, sweat at it, smile at it, too;
For out of the bend and the sweat and the smile
Will come life’s victories after a while.

           We all need to do both the mundane and the fun parts of work to accomplish anything worthwhile! You won't get very far just doing what you like to do and avoiding the rest consistently. One of my law school professors made the following observation roughly stated about the dream of many of becoming a litigator:

The dramatic courtroom victories that you see in movies and tv are far and few between. What you don’t see are the hundreds of hours of preparation and paperwork that must be done prior to proving your case. The life of a litigator is more dull than elation.

          The alternative approach for a litigator is to come into the court room unprepared and have a moment of drama similar to the following:

           The point that I'm getting to is that there can be value in the mundane things and sacrificing for others in between the moments of elation. When you prepare and make sacrifices with your discretionary time, your joy will be that much sweeter when you accomplish big things and in making the life easier of those around you. You may even find that your moments of elation come more frequently.