Article July 1, 1922 ISSUE

Work and Play

PAUL STARK SEELEY

What is work; and what is play? They are mental classifications of human life and action. Play usually has a sense of freedom, joy, and pleasure associated with it. In it there is a considerable absence of fear, burden, or stress; while there is much spontaneity, naturalness, and less self-consciousness. Work, on the other hand, often seems to carry with it a heavy sense of necessity and compulsion. We have to do it! Perhaps we are afraid not to; and we may fear we shall not do it well and will be accordingly penalized; or we may even rebel at having to do it at all. It may seem almost to bristle with unpleasantness and difficulties.

But why should this state of thought be? Is there any compelling reason? Surely such a mental state never originated with God, the source of all intelligence, the source of all true life and action. In such thinking is no expression of wisdom, intelligence, or love. Christian Science shows the difficulty to be simply a wrong sense of selfhood, which can be readily displaced by a truer and happier sense of life and our place in it. The worker, be his work mental or physical, is entitled to be as joyous about his daily tasks as is the little girl with her jumping rope or dolls, the boy absorbed with his marbles or baseball, or the adult freely enjoying his tennis or golf. This freedom from a sense of burden in our work can be accomplished simply by a change of our mental processes, which is the only method of salvation from any discordant condition.

Send a comment to the editors
NEXT IN THIS ISSUE
Article
Receiving Thy Sight
July 1, 1922
Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit