Religion

EIGHT Go Eat Your Bread

in Gladness

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Yu may remember the Hassidic tale men t ioned in chapter 2, abo ut the man who was lost in the forest and met another wanderer who told him, " I am lost too. But we can tell each other which paths we have already t ried and been disappointed in. That will help us find the one which leads out. "

That was where we began. We accompanied Ecclesias- tes on five well-traveled paths that turned out to be dead ends, the way of selfish ness and self- interest, the way of renouncing a ll bodil y pleasures, the way of wisdom, the path of avoiding all feeling in an effort to avoid pain, and the path of piety and religious sur render. The wise old man who wro te the Book of Ecclesiastes began by telli ng us of his disappointments. Neither wealt h nor learning nor pi ety gave him the sa tisfaction of knowi ng that his life would mean something, not in his lifet ime nor be- yond it . But he did not write his book only to share his fru stration wi th us no r was it included in the Bible to persuade us tha t life is in fact pointless. Ult imately, Ecc lesias tes has an answer and he shares it with us in these words :

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Go, eat your bread in gladness and drink your wine in joy, for your action was long ago approved by Goct Let your clothes always be freshly washed and you · head never lack ointment. Enjoy h a ppiness with r woman you love all the flee ting days of life that hav: been granted you under the sun. Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might. For there is no doing, no learning, no wisdom in the grave where you are going. (9:7-10)

It is a strange answer, not one we would have expected from him. Has he given up? Is he reduced to saying to us, " Eat, drink, and be merry for who knows how long you will live? Go have a good time since nothing lasts and nothing matters anyhow." I don't think he is. "Eat your bread in gladness and drink your wine in joy" may sound a lot like "Eat, drink , and be merry" but coming from Ecclesiastes, I suspect that it means something very differ- ent. I suspect that he is saying something like this: I have examined all the evidence and come to the conclusion that nothing endures and nothing makes a difference. Every- thing is vanity. Human beings are born and die like flowers or insects and that is all there is to it. The evidence leads me to conclude that life has no meaning. But there is so mething inside me which will not permit me to accept that conclusion. My mind tells me that the arguments for the meaninglessness of life are overwhelming: injustice and illness and suffering and sudden death, criminals getting away with murder while good people die in shame and poverty. My mind tells me to give up my quest form~- ing because there isn't any , All of my experience points m the same direction. But something from deeper ins_ide me wells up and overrules my mind , dismissing the evidence,

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d insists that in spite of all, a human life has to mean ::mething. And t hat feeli ng, sa~s Ecclesiastes, is why I am

human being and not an animal. a A friend of mine once t ried to persuade me that t he issue of God' s permitting evil was irrelevant because we define evil from a human point of view, not from God's vantage point. He said to m e, " If fro gs wrote theology, they would ask why an all -powerful, loving God did not create more swamps and more mosquitoes." I answered him, "Yes, but you're missing the essential point. Frogs don't write theology but people do . Frogs don't question the meaning of life bu t people do, because there is a divine dimension, a bit of God' s image in every one of us, which moves us to ask questions like, Why are we alive? That is why the death of a child is a tragedy while the death of a tadpole is not."

If logic tells us that life is a meaningless accident, says Ecclesiastes at the end of his journey, d on't give up on life. Give up on logic. Listen to that voice inside you which prompted you to ask the question in the first place. If logic tells you t hat in the long run, nothing makes a difference because we all die and disappear, then don 't live in the long run. Instead of brooding over the fact that nothing lasts, accept that as one of the truths of life, and learn to fin d meaning and purpose in the transitory, in the joys that fade. Learn to savor the moment, even if it does not last forever. In fact , learn to savor it because it is only a moment and will not las t. Moments of our lives can be eternal without being ever lasting. Can you stop and close your eyes and remember something that happened for only a moment or two many years ago? It may have been a view of a spectacular landscape, or a conver~tio~ that made you feel loved and appreciated. In a sense 1t did not

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last very long at .all, _but i? anothTerhset~seh 1't has lasted all those years and 1s still going on. a 1s t e only kind of eternity this world grants us. Can you clo~e your eyes and conjure up the memory of someon~ who 1s n_ow dead but once meant a lot to you? Can yo~, m your mmd, hear her voice and feel her touch? There 1s proof that a person b learning how to live, can cheat death and live on bey~n~ her allotted years.

When we stop searching for the Great Answer, th Immortal Deed which will give our lives ongoing mean~ ing, and instead concent~ate on filling our_individual days with moments that gratify u~, then we _w1U find the only possible answer to the question, What 1s hfe about? It is not about writing great books, amassing great wealth achieving great power. It is about loving and being loved'. It is about enjoying your food and sitting in the sun rather than rushing through lunch and hurrying back to the office. It is about savoring the beauty of moments that don't last , the sunsets, the leaves turning color, the rare moments of true human communication. It is about savor- ing them rather than missing out on them because we are so busy and they will not hold still until we get around to them . The author of Ecclesiastes spent most of his life looking for the Grand Solution, the Big Answer to the Big Question, only to learn after wasting many years that trying to find one Big Answer to the problem of living is like trying to cat one Big Meal so that you will never have to worry about being hungry again . There is no Answer, but there are answers: love and the joy of working, and the simple pleasures of food and fresh clothes, the little things that tend to get lost and trampled in the search for the Grand Solution to the Problem of Life and emerge, ltke

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the proverbial bluebird of happiness, only when we have stopped searching. When we come to that stage in our lives when we are less able to accomplish but more able to enjoy, we will have attained the wisdom that Ecclesias- tes finally found after so many false starts and disappoin t- ments.

Corita Kent, the former nun turned graphic artist, says in one of her posters, "Life is a series of moments/to live each one is to succeed." We misunderstand what it really means to be alive if we think that we can solve the problem of living once and for all by acquiring wealth, acquirin g an education, acquiring a suitable husband or wife. We never solve the problem of living once and fo r all. We can only deal with it day by day, a constant struggle to fill each day with one day's wo rth of meaning. This, ultimately, is Ecclesiastes' insight and advice to us. Our author looked in vain for the key to the meaning oflife. T ry as he migh t, he could never find it. But despite his repeated failures, he could not bring himself to conclude that life was meaning- less. He saw and felt t he futility, the injustice of so muc h that happens to us on earth. But at the same time, he sensed that life, however muddled and frustrating, was too sacred, too special, too fu ll of possibilities to be meaning- less, even though he could never find that meaning. At last, he found it not in a few great deeds but in thousands of little ones.

A star football player interviewed on the eve of the Super Bowl was quoted as saying, " If this is the Ultimate Game, how come they're going to play another one next year?" We could similarly say, If we could do something today which would permanently and finally answer the problem of living, what would we need tomorrow for?

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Why would God have to cre~te. a tomor_ro".'? Life is not a problem to be solved once; 1t 1~ a contmu1ng challenge to be lived day by day. Our quest 1_s not_to find the Answer but to fi nd ways of making each md1v1dual day a hurnan experience.

When the children of Israel left Egypt, God sought to impress them with a miracle so spectacular that no one who experienced it would ever doubt His power or His providence again . He caused the waters of t~e Red Sea to part, letting the Israelites pass through m safety and releasing the waters to drown the Egyptian pursuers. Safely across the sea, the people were suitably imprCSScd and sang God's praise, pledging Him their undying loy. alty: "The Lord will be our King forever and ever." God's plan worked- for about forty -eight hours. By the third day after the crossing, the people were hot, tired, and thirsty. They complained to Moses about the lack of fOOd and water and wondered why they ever let themselves in fo r this in the first place. God realized that no matter how impressive a miracle might be, it does not solve the prob- lem of faith for more than a day or two, any more than the finest meal solves the problem of being hungry for very long. So God changed His tactics. Instead of a spectacular miracle once a generation, He provided the Israelites with water to drink, manna to cat, and shade to rest in every day. As the people "ate their bread in gladness," they experienced the goodness of God and the fu llness of life in the everyday, unspectacular miracles which made their lives bearable. In the same way that a half-hour of exercise every day does more to keep us fit than six hours of exertion once a month, a few small experiences of the meaningfulness of life every day will do more fo r our souls than a single overwhelming religious experience. 144

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• • • b r reading an interview once with an eighty-! remem e · f K k

• ld woman from the hill cou ntry o ent uc y, fiv e-year

O ked to look back over her life and reflec t on

who was as · f 1 h h h d learned. With that touch of wist u ness t at

what s e a b · · "If I h d . evitably accompa nies any statement egmnmg . a in d over " she said, "If I had my hfe to hve over, It tO O · · · ' I would dare to make more mistakes next time._ I wou l~ relax. I would be sillier, I would take fewer thmgs seri- ously . . . I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual t roubles but fewer im_agi- nary ones. You see, I'm one of those people who hved seriously and sanely hour after hour, day after day . I' ve been one of those persons who never went anyplace without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat, and a pa rachute. If I had it to do again, I'd travel lighter."

"Go eat your bread in gladness." " More ice cream and less beans. " Less wealthy and less well educated than the author of Ecclesiastes, the woman from Kentucky feels, like him, that she has wasted too much of her life follo w- ing the wrong advice and wants to keep us fro m ma king the same mistake. She has come to understand how easily the pleasures ofli fe today are spoiled by worry about what might happen tomorrow. She has learned how fea r can banish joy, making us tense with apprehension, and how lau ghter can chase fear and set us free. And she wants to pass those lessons on to us.

"Go eat your bread in gladness and drink your wine in joy, for your action was long ago approved by God." In a world where not everyone will do great deeds or achieve great success, God has given us the capacity to find great- ness in the everyday. Lunch can be a hurried refueli ng, the

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. 1 nt of an auto racer's pit stop, or it can be an equ1va e . 1 h t d' . opportunity to savor the muac e t a 1rt, ram, seeds, and human imagination can work on our taste buds. We iust have to be wise enough to know how _to recognize the miracle, and not rush headlong past_ 1t tn our search for "something important." We can_ smile at the adolescent girl mooning over her ~cw_ boyfnend. ~he may think that the most wonderful thmg m _human history has just hap. pcncd to her, while we know 1t 1s Just another set of glands ripening on schedule and in six months she will wonder what she ever saw in him. Yet there is something touching about being able to be made so happy by a letter, a phone call, or a smile. There is a capacity for finding joy in the ordinary which we might well envy. The good life, the truly human life is based not on a few great moments but on many, many little ones. It asks of us that we relax in our quest long enough to let those moments accumulate and add up to something.

A rabbi once asked a prominent member of his congre- gation , "Whenever I see you, you're always in a hurry. Tell me, where are you running all the time?" The man answered, "I'm running after success, I'm running after fulfillment, I'm running after the reward for all my hard work." The rabbi responded, "That's a good answer if you assume that all those blessings are somewhere ahead of you, trying to elude you and if you run fast enough, you may catch up with them. But isn't it possible that those blessings are behind you, that they are looking for you, and the more you run, the harder you make it for them to find you?" Isn' t it possible indeed that God has all sorts of wonderful presents for us- good food and beautiful sunsets and flowers budding in the spring and leaves t urn· mg m the fall and quiet moments of sharing-but we in 146

Go Ea t You r Brea d in Gladness

pursuit of happiness are so constantly on the go that ~r can't find us at home to deliver them?

eEcclesiastes' advice to look for lots of small answers in the middle of life rather than One Big One leads him to point us toward another source of potential fulfillment, our work. " Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might." Work hard, not solely because it will bring you rewards and promotions but because it will give you the sense of being a competent person. Something corrosive happens to the souls of people who stop carmg about the quality of thei r wo rk, whatever tha t work may be, and begin to go through the motions. Some jobs can afford to be done poorly and no one will be h urt , but none of us can afford the internal spiritual cost of bein g sloppy in our work. It teaches us contempt for ourselves and our skills.

When we take our newfound enthusiasm for findi ng pleasure in the moment, and apply it not only to our leisure time and vacations but to our work as well , we find yet another important area of giving fullness and meani ng to the way we spend our time. Novelis t Wallace Stegner has written that from t he Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve were punished with hard labor, condemned to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows fo r their disobedience, to the gates of Auschwitz wh ich we re in- scribed Arbeit mac ht frei, " Work sets one free, " work has gotten a bad press . Yet, he goes on to say, " More people than would probably admit it find in work the scaffolding that holds up their adult liv es." Freud identified love and work as the two thin gs t hat the mature person has to be able to do well. We work because we need the money. But we work for other reasons as well. How often have you read about the mail carrie r, truck driver, or secretary who

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wins the lottery and beco".1es an instant millionaire, but co ntinues to get up at six m the morning to go to wo k because work is what they do and who they are. Ask rd , "What do you do?" we invariably respond in terms of e ' . . . our work, not our hobbies or organizational commitment

I work because I have a family to support and bills\ pay. But I work also because it puts me in touch w·t~ people and helps me think of myself as a competent, c~n- tributing person. There have been times, all too often i my professional life as a clergyman, when in the course

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twenty-four hours I will offer an opening prayer at a senior citizens' program on Sunday afternoon, conduct a Wed- ding on Sunday night, meet with my staff or attend a professional meeting on Monday morning, and at noon on Monday officiate at the funeral of a young wife and mother who died of cancer, going on to spend much of t he after- noon with the bereaved family . The funeral is by far the least pleasant of all those activities, the one at which I feel the most inadequate. And yet in a strange way, I feel good when I am officiating at a funera l. For years, I never understood that feeling. I thought there might be some- thing perverse about me, to enjoy such moments. But I understand it now . At times like t hat, I feel alive and engaged. I know that I am not merely present but that I am making a difference. I do not like to officiate at funera ls of young people and I would prefer to do it less often, but there is something satisfying about being challenged to do something hard and then doing it. I think that must have been what Ecclesiastes had in mind when he said to us, in effec t, "If you are not going to win a Nobel Prize for yo ur work, if it is not going to make you rich and famous, it can still give meaning to your life if you take it seriously and do it with all your might. "

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e lucky we will find ourselves at a place in life If we ar , Can derive pleasure fro m ou r work. Some of us where we . .

.11 h e had a vision early m ou r hves of what we wanted w1 av . . h k d our energies doing, and 1t will ave wor ed out to spen h · ·r · for us. Being a doctor, a lawyer, a teac e~ 1s as gratl ymg

we dreamed it would be. Some of us, 1f we are lucky, asill see ourselves launched on new careers in mid-life which will give us that elusive feeling of pleasure: the :ollege-educated woman whose children are now old enough that she can go ou t and do what she always thought she would be good at; the middle-management executive who can let go of the dream of being rich and powerful, cash in his stock options, and earn a living using the gardening skills which had been h is hobby for years; the accountant who opens a restaurant and is happier getting up before dawn as his own boss than he ever was reporting to an office at nine o'clock. And most of us will continue to show up for work at t he same address day after day , year after year. But the key to o ur happiness, to our being able to find pleasure in our work , is th e sense that we are using our abilities, not wasting t hem, and t hat we are being appreciated for it. " Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might."

It is terribly frustr ating to know that you can do some- thing and not be called on to do it, or to believe tha t you can do it and never have t he chance to find ou t. So the track star takes two years off fro m work to train for the Olympics, not because it makes economic sense but be- cause he has to find out how good he is at the highest le:el of competition. The factory worker promoted to a desk Job takes off his jacket and fix es a broken mach ine because_ he is proud of t he fac t that he can do it, and can't sta_nd seemg less skilled people botch up the job. The fr ustration of the

WHEN All YOU'V E EVER WANT ED ISN'T ENOUGH

professional athlete with a lucrative contract but a seat on th e bench, like that of the surplus worker who knows she will get paid even if there is no work for her to do, testifies to the fact that we work for meaning as much as fo r money. We work so that our days will not be empty of meaning.

It should be pointed out that "whatever it is in your power to do" does not refer only to the things we get paid for. We do many things on a volunteer basis because we want that feeling, which our nine-to-five jobs may not be giving us , of using our skills, making a difference, and being appreciated. So the assembly-line worker coaches a Little League team and knows the satisfaction of teaching, advising, and making decisions . The secretary sings in the church choir or staffs a crisis-center hot line, where she gains the feeling of being depended on and hav in g people look up to her. My synagogue, like churches, synagogues, lodges, and civic organizations across the country, offers opportunities for volunteers to plan programs, chair com- mittees, organize fund-raising even ts, speak in public, and enhance the fortunes of an organization they cherish , while at the same time gaining the feeling of putting thei r hidden talents to use.

Sometimes in life we have to become less to be more. We become whole people, not on the basis of what we accumu- late, but by getting rid of everything that is not really us, everything false and inauthentic. Sometimes to become whole, we have to give up the Dream.

The Dream is the vision we had when we were young -perhaps planted by parents or teachers, per haps flower- ing from within our own imaginations-that we would be somebody truly special. We dreamed that o ur names would be fam ous, that our work would be recognized, that

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our marriages would be perfect a nd our children exem - plary. When t~ings do not t urn ou t t.hat way, we feel like fa ilures. We will never be h appy unit! we stop measuring our real-life achievements agains t that Dream. We will never be comfortable with who we are un til we realize that who we are is special enough. If we have succeeded in becoming authentically human, eating our bread in glad- ness and enjoying life with people we love, then we do not have to become rich and famous . Being truly human is a much more impressive accompli shment. In Seasons of a Man 's Life, Dr. Daniel Levinson sees middle adu lthood as offering the opportunity to renounce the "tyranny of the Dream" and become successfu l on more realistic terms . He writes, " When a man no longer feels he must be re- markable, he is more free to be himself and work accord- ing to his own wishes and talents."

At one point, the sages of the Talmud say something remarkable. T hey say, "One hour in this world is better than all of eterni ty in the World to Come." What do they mean? I take that passage to mean t hat when we have tru ly learned how to live, we will not need to look for rewards in some other life. We will not ask what the point of righteous living is. Living humanly will be its own reward . The person who has discovered the pleasures of tru ly human living, the person whose life is rich in frien dships and cari ng people, the person who enjoys dai ly the plea- sures of good food and sunshine, will not need to wear herself out in pursuit of some other kind of success. No praise or promotion from stran gers, no fancy car or lofty title could ever match the happiness she already knows.

The story is told of the fac tory that had a problem of employee theft. Valuable item s were being stolen every day , So they hired a security firm to search every employee

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as he left at the end of the day. Most of the workers willingly went along with emptying their pockets and hav- ing their lunch boxes checked , But one man would go through the gate every day at closing time with a wheel- barrow full of trash, and the exasperated security guard would have to spend a half-hour, when everyone else was on his way home, digging through the food wrappers, cigarette butts, and Styrofoam cups to see if anything valuable was being smuggled out. He never found any- thing. Finally one day, the guard could no longer stand it. He said to the man, "Look, I know you're up to something but every day I check every last bit of trash in the wheel- barrow and I never find anything worth stealing. It's driv- ing me crazy. Tell me what you're up to and I promise not to report you." The man shrugged and said, "It's simple. I'm stealing wheelbarrows."

We totally misunderstand what it means to be alive when we think of our lives as time we can use in search of rewards and pleasure. Frantically and in growing frus- tration, we search through our days, our years, looking for the reward, for the success that will make our lives worth- while, like the security guard looking through the trash in the wheelbarrow for something of value and all the while missing the obvious answer.

When you have learned how to live, life itself is the reward.

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