Two arborist brothers performed a marvelous feat in our yard today. They cut down, and into stove-length logs, two dying white pines and a diseased oak tree. Afterwards, they trimmed a second oak. The trees measured over a foot thick and seventy feet tall, but the brothers finished all four in an hour and a half.

Without a bucket-lift, the younger of the two strapped on lumberjack gaffs and climbed all over the trees, thirty and more feet from the ground, with the grace and finesse of a high-wire acrobat. He was risking his life, as he does every working day. I watched with fascination, awe, and not a little anxiety.

When he was done, he looked around at his work filling my yard and said, "You see why I don't charge by the hour, when I can do all of this in an hour and a half." He paused and added, "I'd never be able to do it if I didn't love my work."

I told him his love for it was obvious, that he'd treated me to a fine aerial act as he moved about and limbs and trunks fell exactly where he pointed.

"A year ago," he continued, "I broke my neck. I was as good as dead for five days. They put a rod in my neck to join the vertebrae, and I had to learn to walk all over again. Would you believe it?"

I shook my head.

"The doctors said I'd never climb again, but I knew I would, because I love it."

I knew I'd witnessed an aerial act as courageous as it was beautiful. No least motion of the man revealed the accident—or painful recovery—he'd suffered a year earlier. The doctors had done a superb job, he said, and that was obvious too. Only a thin scar showed where his neck had been rebuilt.

If we are fortunate enough to do work we love, we will do it better—perhaps faster, or slower—than the average. Time won't matter to us as we enter the charmed circle of those absorbed in their work. We will work for the sake of the work itself, for the simple joy of it, focusing not on results but on each moment of the process. Occasionally, we may enter what athletes call the "zone," that enchanted place where everything we do touches perfection.

Fortunately, writing does not demand the physical courage of the arborist, but another kind. At times I feel stuck or bored or weighed down by the drudgery that is part of any job. Continuing at these times demands the ordinary courage of persistence. Like other forms of courage, it is in short supply, but easier to find if we love our work.

Writing, like any work, has its difficult hours. But when it's going well, I feel such joy I must stop and savor it. For a while the world is whole, I lack nothing, and live and move at the center of things, as if I'm finally doing what I was made to do.

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might."
- St. Paul

Questions for discussion:
• What is it about my work that I love? Or—if love is too strong—like?
• Is there anything I can do to make the unpleasant tasks more enjoyable?