A young Austrian bodybuilder arrives in America and starts looking for work.
He can find only menial labor that pays almost nothing. Cleaning up construction debris. Lifting crates onto trucks.
He does this work with a grim face and without complaint. His employer, a small, apprehensive man, sometimes apologizes when he asks the bodybuilder to do particularly unglamorous tasks.
When he’s asked to haul thirty splintery wooden crates up to the second floor:
“It is fine. I get to strengthen my biceps, and enjoy how strong they already are.”
When he’s asked to gather all the scrap iron from a factory floor and put it into a bin:
“It is good. I get to strengthen my back, and enjoy how strong it already is.”
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I'm David, and Raptitude is a blog about getting better at being human -- things we can do to improve our lives today.
This is a profound and beautiful exercise, which can in fact become a way of life. It resonates with the profoundest spiritual teachings--being in the world, but not of it. It initiates a detachment/separation from the world that paradoxically allows for more engagement with the world. But that engagement is...