Among the strongest of my natural strengths according to an assessment DiamondBack was kind enough to pay for a year or two ago is what they call “responsibility,” meaning “taking psychological ownership of what you say you will do.” Moreover, for better and for worse, “what I say I will do” includes the tasks I put on my to-do list, which at the time of this writing numbers 175 if I count just those tasks I could theoretically start on immediately.
This is a problem, because neither discretionary social engagements, nor spontaneous recreation, nor rest—all of which seem self-evident goods—make it onto my to-do list, nor should they, as putting them on there casts a pall over them that drains them of much of their benefit. As a result, I don’t do them often (especially the last two), and when I do, I feel torn.
I’ve written about this many times before. For example, in a private journal entry almost exactly a year ago, I wrote of “failing, once again, to navigate between the Scylla of total control and loneliness on the one side and the Charybdis of irresponsibility in the name of togetherness, joy, and spontaneity.” At the time, I counseled myself to face the fact of the non-programmability of it all and simply choose togetherness, joy, and spontaneity more often.
Looking back, that counsel may have worked a little. Yet I still don’t rest or recreate very often, and when presented with social plans, I still regularly have to overcome internal resistance in the name of getting things done. Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the mind of this death?
The spirit of Jesus, I think, in a psychological move that geometrically resembles my hack against perfectionism: Embrace rest, spontaneous recreation, and (especially) the nurture of good social relationships as responsibilities. Not by adding them to the list—again, that doesn’t work—but by recognizing them as standing obligations that rightfully limit the jurisdiction of the list. “I have other sheep that are not of [the] fold” of my to-do list, “and I must bring them also.” There is no Charybdis; on the contrary, I must go with the flow.
Heck, Paul and the psalmists even command joy. I repeat: It is my biblical responsibility to feel joy.