Recently, my friend Rachel came over to spend a Friday afternoon together. Half-way through spending time together, she pulled out a frame and handed it to me saying, “it’s your turn to keep the frame for a while.”
Inside the frame was a napkin with a list on it. This list was one we made with two of our closest friends our sophomore year of college, as we were ending a long weekend in the mountains together at a restaurant. Somehow at dinner we ended up creating a list of our “rules for life” together. This list has lived in different homes we’ve lived in ever since.
Flash-forward to now, five years have passed.
Rachel handed me the frame in a week where I felt my soul thawing—parts of myself were reawakening. The timing felt significant. I felt both in touch with how special the time was when we created this list and also how special it was for this friend to currently be standing in my kitchen.
After she handed me the frame, we made dinner with the vegetables I brought home from the farm that I had worked on that morning. Two of our other dear friends happened to be free and we last-minute had an evening of cooking, catching up, and sharing a meal together. Over dinner, we created our own list of “rules for life” on a new napkin. It led to rich conversations, reflection on all that has been, and encouragement for all that is unfolding currently (even in the midst of a lot of hard life happening).
One of my favorite rules we came up with at dinner was:
“Find a labor of love.”
If you had told me five years ago to find a labor of love, I would have overthought it. I would have thought that I’d need to invest my love and time and energy in a grand way. Nowadays though, I see that most of what we do in our day-to-day life can be a labor of love, from the ways that we intentionally care for the cash register in front of us to the ways we host people in our home. A labor of love can be a grand project we are working on for years and years or it can simply be in the cutting of vegetables and making a meal with or for people you care for.
Maybe for you, your job is a labor of love and it is something you delight in giving your time, energy, and attention to. Or, maybe your job is not that and instead your job doesn’t feel connected to what you love, but your marriage and your kids do or your friends do. Maybe for you, gardening is a labor of love. Maybe it is running. Or painting. Or getting your PhD.
In this season of my life, where I often feel limited with my energy, I’m finding my labor of love when I am in a room with people I love and in my writing here, to you. It’s not grand, but it’s significant.
Whatever it is for you, I hope the pressure of the work is small and the delight of what it is that you love is large.
Words That Are Leading Me Into Attention:
I recently just read Fredrik Backman’s novel Anxious People and since then I’ve pretty much told everyone I know to read it. It had been quite some time since I had read a story that felt so heart-warming and hitting at the core of humanity.
The last 3rd of the book had me constantly pausing to take in some really strong one-liners built out of various interactions between characters. One of those scenes I have been thinking about a lot is with a character named Zara and her psychologist. Zara is incredibly cynical, reserved, defensive, and scared. She has built up a lot of walls in her life and you can very clearly see them in her counseling sessions within the book. In the end though, some of her walls start coming down. After making a big decision, her and her psychologist have a brief discussion.
“What are you going to do from now on?”
“I don’t know.”
The psychologist finally has something important to say. Something she didn’t learn at college, but knows that everyone needs to hear, every so often.
/
“Not knowing is a good place to start.”
…
If you feel like you are in a place where you do not currently know what your labor of love is and/or how you really want to be investing your time and energy, not knowing is a good place to start.
Prompts/Questions:
At the end of every newsletter, I want to leave you all with some questions/prompts to think on. If you ever want a friend to hear your thoughts, feel free to share them back with me! I always love to read and to listen.
Questions:
What is or are your labor of loves right now? Spend some time journaling about them. Why is whatever it is that you love worth the investment, time, and energy? Discuss with a friend more of your thoughts.
Creative Prompts/Celebration Tasks:
Create your own napkin list of your “rules for life” either on your own or over dinner with some people that you love this week. See what conversations come out of it!
Letters:
Write a letter to one of your labors of love. What has it given to you as you’ve invested in it? Where do you want to continue to invest in this labor of love? Write it out. Dream it out!
Closing Words:
My hope for you this week is that there is an emphasis on the love, not on the work. Even more so, I hope that there is an emphasis on simply getting to enjoy the act of loving something. Love is a powerful force that we often do not take enough time to really recognize its role in our lives. May this be a week where we are attentive to its beauty and strength.
May it lead us to live a bit more patient, kind, and grateful this week.
…
As you carry on into this week, may your days ahead be filled with words that encourage you, laughter that heals you, and moments of beauty that pull your attention in and bring you to slow down.
May you know that you, yourself, are worth paying attention to.
About Tuesday’s Attention:
This Newsletter was born out of a desire to stay attentive to the world around me, to encourage others to create and to pay attention, and to connect more closely with a readership. If you enjoy these newsletters, you can also support my writing through becoming a part of my Patreon community to get access to more of my writing content. The writing that I do is 100% supported by readers and so any and all support— whether that is you reading this newsletter, sharing it with others, and/or being a part of my patreon means the absolute world to me. Thank you for being here. It is a joy to share this space with you all.
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