by Rob Bell
This is where I start.
If your work feels beneath you, or monotonous and meaningless, try giving it everything you have like it’s the only thing you have.
The joy is in the work.
The satisfaction is found in knowing that you’re here, you’re alive, and you get to make something with your life.
You’re throwing yourself into it,
and you’re surrendering the outcome,
at the same time.
PART 8
The Power of the Plates
In the everyday world, you’re just plugged into all the possibilities. Every time you get bored, you plug yourself in somewhere: you call somebody up, you pick up a magazine, a book, you go to a movie, anything. And all of that becomes your identity, the way in which you’re alive. You identify yourself in terms of all that. Well, what was happening to me as I was on my way to Ibiza [for eight months of retreat] was that I was pulling all those plugs out, one at a time: books, language, social contacts. And what happens at a certain point as you get down to the last plugs, it’s like the Zen thing of having no ego: it becomes scary, it’s like maybe you’re going to lose yourself. And boredom then becomes extremely painful. You really are bored and alone and vulnerable in the sense of having no outside supports in terms of your own being. But when you get them all pulled out, a little period goes by, and then it’s absolutely serene, it’s terrific. It just becomes really pleasant, because you’re out, you’re all the way out.
—Robert Irwin
I’ve written this book sitting at my desk.
When I was first starting out I needed a desk but we didn’t have any extra money. My friend Tomaas knew this and one day he picked me up and drove me to my favorite furniture store and bought me this desk. I’ve been sitting at it almost every day for more than fifteen years. In the mornings Kristen and I make our kids’ breakfast and take them to school and then I sit down at this desk and I start in on the day’s work.
On my desk is a lamp shaped like salad tongs. There’s a pen some friends from South Africa gave me and a stack of thick white paper from a mill in Sweden. Next to the computer is an odd picture of two men walking that my sister gave me twenty years ago. There are some notes next to that picture for a talk I’m going to give. And that’s about it.
I tell you about my desk and what’s on it because when you’re creating your life, finding your 1, throwing yourself into it, facing your blinking line,
the details of your life are vital to your staying true to your path.
Where you sit,
the tools you use,
the physical environment you inhabit,
the rhythm of your day and week,
the rituals that remind you who you are and what
you’re doing here—
these details are important because
how you do anything is how you do everything.
No matter how distracted or weary I am, sitting down at my desk centers me, reminding me that I have work to do and that it matters.
Next to the heads (how can a sentence go wrong when it starts with those four words? You remember those heads—the ones the drummer from Puddle Slug made?) a skateboard is hanging on the wall. It’s a Dennis Busenitz Pro model. When the REAL skateboard company made this particular Dennis Busenitz Pro model board, they misspelled his name BUSENTIZ.
So what did Dennis do? He sold those boards for more money as a limited edition TYPO board. How brilliant is that?
Next to the board is a canvas print of a young woman with a bandanna over her face and a can of spray paint in her hand. She’s just written on a brick wall,
If you want to achieve greatness, stop asking for permission.
Next to her is a guitar, a picture a high school girl gave me that she made out of torn-up pages from a Bible, a print of my wife Kristen, a surfboard fin, and a framed Larry Bird trading card.
I carried that Larry Bird trading card in my wallet everywhere I went for more than a decade until it started to wear out, and so I framed it and then got a new one for my wallet. My grandpa and I used to watch Larry Bird play basketball on Sunday afternoons. Grandpa would sit in his favorite chair and I would sit on the floor next to him and we would discuss how great Larry Bird was. Larry Bird wasn’t the fastest and he wasn’t the strongest and he couldn’t jump the highest and he was pale and gangly, but he totally threw himself into the game. This meant something to me—a gangly kid with strange hair sitting there next to my grandpa in Williamston, Michigan, on those Sunday afternoons.
The details matter.
What you have hanging on the walls.
What’s on your desk.
The stuff you fill your life with.
There is a difference between details and clutter.
Clutter is the books on your shelf that you’re never going to read, the stacked-up papers that have been untouched for months, the endless flotsam and jetsam in your car, your closet, your garage, your kitchen, your bedroom, and your office.
Clutter is all those clothes that you haven’t worn in years filling all those shelves and drawers.
Clutter is all those possessions you’ve got piled in the garage just in case you might need them someday. Even though it’s been seven years since you first made those piles and haven’t looked in them since.
Details are those pictures that remind you why you do what you do.
Details are those books that are filled with underlining and notes. Or the books that you actually will read.
Details are those few items of clothing that you actually do wear.
Details are those objects you use regularly that help you do better whatever it is you do.
Details are the tools of your craft.
Details remind you who you are, where you’ve been, and what your path is.
Our lawyer Nicole uses one kind of binder. When we meet with her, whatever it is we’re talking about and whatever papers we have to sign are always in these particular binders. On the front of the binder is the logo of her firm, a small additional cost that you could easily argue doesn’t make a bit of difference.
Except that it does.
It’s a small detail, but I always notice it.
There is an elegance to the work that Nicole does, a dignity that she brings to her work that is inspiring. I see it in the wristband filled with pins that the tailor wears, in the worn leather tool belt around the waist of the construction worker remodeling a house down the street, in the pencil my friend Dave uses when he designs surfboards.
I point out these details because we are tactile creatures. Fabric, leather, graphics, paint, paper—these substances and surfaces we surround ourselves with powerfully affect us.
Our external environments mirror our internal lives.
If your desk is cluttered,
don’t be surprised if you find it hard to focus.
If your closet and garage are piled with stuff you
don’t use,
don’t be shocked when you are easily distracted.
If things are lying around your living and working space that don’t serve a clear purpose, don’t be amazed that you aren’t very calm and centered.
If you often feel like you’re in one place but your thoughts are ping-ponging from one idea to the next, examine the space you’re in.
Is it clean?
Is it organized?
Does everything in it need to be there?
What would happen if you emptied that room and over the next few months brought in only the things that you need? How much of what is in there now would you bring back in?
How much of that stuff that surrounds you every single day is actually vital to your path, and how much of it is in the way?
We are integrated beings, everything in our lives connecting with everything else. When we feel like life is passing us by, like we’re skimming the surface of our own existence, often the best place to start is with our material possessions. Clean out the closets and
and bookshelves and garage, sort out what goes and what stays. Be ruthless. If you don’t use it, toss it.
It’s extraordinary how even small changes in your exterior environment can deeply shape your interior life. Clean, intentional physical space can dramatically affect how calm your mind and heart are.
Rhythm and Sabbath
And so I sit here at this desk I’ve been sitting at for fifteen years and I do this work. I write this book. Work on a talk. Record a podcast. There’s a window in the first part of the day when I create things, and then it closes. By lunch I’m no good on that front. No new ideas; it’s like pushing a rock up a hill.
So I don’t force it. I do other things. Going to meetings, answering emails, making phone calls, organizing trips—whatever else. And then by dinner I’m done. No more work for the day. We eat dinner, we watch sports, we go see friends, we walk the dog, we get groceries, we help the kids with homework, we play with Legos.
There’s a rhythm to the day because there’s a rhythm to everything.
You just took a breath. You’re about to take another. Inhale, then exhale, then another inhale. In and out. There’s a rhythm to your breathing. It’s the same with nature. There’s the gradual dying of fall, the death of winter, the spring with new life bursting everywhere you look, and then summer in all its fullness. And then fall comes again, and the rhythm continues.
There’s the rhythm to waking and sleeping. When you wake up, your body is firing cortisol, which gradually tapers off as the day goes on. Cortisol is related to adrenaline, giving you the energy you need to go about your day. And then later in the day as the sun goes down your body ideally begins releasing melatonin, anticipating the end of the day when you will drift off into a deep sleep.
Have you ever checked your email just before going to bed and then found yourself wide awake staring at the ceiling at 2 A.M.? Of course. At just the moment when your body was most relaxed, ready to get the sleep it needs, you jolted it back to life with the light of the computer screen and new ideas and problems to solve and more things to do. Checking that email was out of sync with the natural rhythms of the day.
Breathing, nature, sleep—there’s a rhythm to all of it.
And then there’s my Friday afternoon ritual. Sometime around 4 P.M. I turn my computer off. When I do this, I always have the same physiological reaction: It’s like my entire being takes a deep breath. I relax somewhere in my cells. I feel the release in my bones. I sigh like a great weight has been taken off my shoulders.
I turn my computer off knowing that I won’t turn it back on until Sunday at the earliest. No email, no work, no creating, no writing. The workweek is done.
I started this ritual because my days used to look all the same. Monday looked like Sunday which looked like Saturday which looked like Thursday. Around that time someone told me that animals in a zoo demonstrate adverse behavior when they’re left on display for more than six days in a row.
What? I’d never heard that. There’s a six-day rhythm built into creation?
I was reading a book at that time about the Exodus story in the Bible and how the Hebrew slaves in Egypt had to make bricks every day.
Bricks, bricks, bricks—day after day. Every day the same. That’s despair: when every day looks like every other day. But then these Hebrews are rescued from Egypt and brought out into the desert, where God commands them to set aside one day a week and do no work.
And some of them can’t do it. They literally can’t take a day off from work.
In Egypt, their worth and value as slaves came from how many bricks they produced. When they left that life, they left that understanding of what it meant to be a human being. And so one of the first things they are told to do is spend one day a week remembering that they are not slaves and that their worth and value do not come from how many bricks they produce.
One day a week to remind themselves that they are human beings, not human doings.
What struck me about the story is that even though they get out of Egypt, it takes a while to get the Egypt out of them.
Have you ever felt like you’re just going through the motions?
Like you can’t distinguish one day from the next?
Like you’re a number, a cog in a wheel, a slave to a machine?
Like your worth and self-esteem are way too caught up in how many bricks you’re producing?
Like how you think about yourself is inseparable from what you do?
Like you’re a slave to your cell phone, your to-do list, your job?
This story about Egypt is a story about us. I was deeply convinced that I had some Egypt in me, that I was a slave to my work, and I needed help.
So Kristen and I decided to start setting aside one day a week that would be different from the others. In the Jewish tradition, this one day that is not like the others is called the Sabbath. I worked on Sundays at that time, so we decided that Saturday would be our Sabbath.
We asked ourselves: What would make this day different from the other six? What would make it unique?
For Kristen, most days she has a list of things she has to get done. For her, then, Sabbath would be the day without a to-do list.
For me, my work is creating things. So for my Sabbath, I wouldn’t make anything.
We decided that we would let the day be whatever it wanted to be. We’d go see friends or take the kids somewhere or relax around the house. We asked each other,
What feeds your soul?
And then we did that.
Which sounds great—but it was not great. In fact, it made us miserable. Literally, by early afternoon on those first Saturdays, we were depressed. Sluggish. Sad. Listening to Depeche Mode, wondering what the point of it all is.
What? This was supposed to be great! We had assumed that this day would be thrilling, like we’d tapped into the mother lode of energy. But it wasn’t. It’s been said that the Sabbath gives the universe the energy it needs to continue for another six days.
Where’s that energy?
Where’s that life?
What’s wrong with us?
What’s wrong with this day?
We couldn’t figure it out. Why is this day so difficult? Why are we barely able to stay awake by the end of lunch? Why is it so hard just being?
Gradually, over those first few months of trying to treat one day differently from the rest, we began to understand what was happening. Most of our days we wake up and we go. School, work, store, lists, projects, loose ends—we call people and attend meetings and answer phone calls. Sound familiar?
All this motion is an endless stimulus for our bodies. Like a hit, or a drug. You see that you’ve just gotten a text and it sends a little ripple of excitement through you.
It’s exciting to keep moving. If people are contacting you it means they’re thinking about you, you’re needed, you have a role to play, you matter—all of that affects us spiritually. It may be good, but it’s also very seductive because it’s easy to become addicted to the pace, to the hit.
It feels good to be needed by people.
Have you ever checked your phone and found no new calls or texts or emails and you felt a bit let down?
What Kristen and I discovered when we took a day and removed all of that constant stimulus is that our bodies fell into a state of shock, like our bodies were asking us,
What are you doing to me?
Where’s the hit, the excitement, the adrenaline spike?
What are we supposed to do—nothing?
And so we crashed. Sitting there on the couch at 2:19 on a Saturday afternoon, listless, wondering what’s wrong with us. The lack of speed and stimulus on this one day exposed the overload of stimulus and the insane pace of the other six days.
When we spent a day being fully present, we quickly discovered how much of the rest of our lives we weren’t fully present.
For many of us in the modern world, our understanding of time is based on what we can get out of it. Time has a uti
litarian function in our lives. We work X number of hours in order to get Y amount of money. We have twenty minutes left to get those three things done.
We relate to time on the basis of what we can produce within a certain amount of time.
How long it will take to do that.
How many hours of sleep we will get.
But when you begin practicing Sabbath, a day during which you don’t have a set schedule and you don’t have to be anywhere, you find yourself relating to time in a different way.
Think about some of the most favorite moments in your life. At those times, you might have said, I lost track of time. Or you looked at your watch and wondered, Where did those hours go? Or you remarked, That day just flew by.
In those moments time fades because you are nowhere else but in the present. Time isn’t being used to produce anything, it isn’t being measured for what you can get out of it. Spending one day a week relating to time in a different way gradually influences how you think about and relate to time during the other days of the week.
Sabbath leaks.
It spills over.
It changes how you live the other six days.
When you intentionally slow down, you instantly see how fast you’ve been moving the rest of the time.
When you stop to pay attention,
you learn how much you’ve been missing.
Sabbath is a day when you act like the work is done, even if it isn’t.
Sabbath is when you spend a day remembering that efficiency and production are not God’s highest goals for your life. Joy is.
Often on Sabbath I’d become aware that I was still carrying around wounds and bruises I had sustained during the week. But I had kept moving, on to the next thing, and hadn’t slowed down enough to feel them.
Have you ever had an ugly confrontation or conversation with someone but when it was over you had to go to the next meeting or event or place and so you didn’t have time to process it? And then days later out of nowhere you realize that there’s all this tension and pain sitting just below the surface of your life, but you’ve been moving too fast to deal with it?
