A Working Definition of Insanity

At the risk of ranting and raving, I’m being driven near the brink of insanity.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have far to go to start with. I had a friend once that said, “you don’t have to drive me crazy, I’m close enough to walk,” and that’s probably me, especially as I near the end of my master’s degree. But right now I can actually articulate what is driving me crazy.

Part of it is my job. I had a professor that deliniated a difference between your job, your career, and your vocation. The job is the least of the three, it’s what earns your paycheck, and ultimately is very different (usually) from your vocation, which is your calling, what makes you tick. Well, I suppose, at it’s core, I’m merely struggling with what every creative person struggles with, balancing paying the bills with creating what you want to create, and wondering why what you want to create can’t pay the bills. I feel so much of the time that work and school just suck out my soul.

It occurred to me that work was originally a curse, right? I mean, Adam and Eve were told that they would have to work because of the Fall. Up until then, nobody had to work. So my conclusion is that my inner being rebels against the concept of having to work because having to work is not the way God intended it to be.

Right?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. At least I’m not doing that, because I know that this curse of working and finishing school is temporary, and that, in a few months, what I create will (hopefully) pay the bills.

Wow, that would be euphoria.

6 Comments

  1. Hi Dave,
    Since you asked the question, “right?”, I’m assuming you are welcoming other people’s thoughts. I believe work existed before the Fall. First we find God engaging in the “work” of creation and then resting. And in Genesis 1 or 2 doesn’t God place Adam in the Garden to “work and tend” it. All of this is pre-Fall correct? So, it would seem the original concept of work was God-ordained. Maybe work, though in and of itself not a curse, is in some way under the curse just as the rest of creation since the Fall.
    Thoughts?

  2. But I wonder if maybe work was a completely different concept then. God does imply that work for survival is God’s consequence for the Fall in Genesis 3:17-19. Maybe work was an enjoyable thing then? A privelage instead of necessity?

  3. Could be. I guess everything pre-Fall would be better. Everything in the Garden living in perfect harmony would have made Adam and Eve’s chores less labor intensive.

    Had to be a sad day when they looked back at the Garden and knew they could never enter it again.

  4. Yet we ‘work’ at our relationship with God, ‘work’ at our relationships with other people, and ‘work’ at other things. it may depend on your definition [or connotation] of the word work. I can understand how work became a completely different concept after the Fall, but in some ways, work was a necessity in life before the Fall, too, right? Was it work for Adam to name the animals, all hundreds of thousands of them? Did he grow tired or lose interest in his task? Was that, then, work? I understand your idea, but struggle with the implications.

  5. I think what’s at issue here is the semantics. What takes effort is (i.e.: relationships, raising children) is a different idea to me. When I say “work,” I mean specifically employment. Having to be employed somewhere to earn money and make a living has to be a side-effect of the Fall, with American culture’s specific perverted twist.

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