Article December 2, 1991 Issue

Enjoying the process

What good does it do to achieve our goals if we don't enjoy ourselves reaching them? Isn't there a better way?

Nancy J. Jagel

I Had been cleaning the house for hours. As I came clumping and bumping up the stairs with the roaring vacuum cleaner, my husband greeted me with a big grin. "Having fun?" he asked.

I disentangled myself from the electric cord, and gave him my grim-determination look. "Not really," I replied.

That look and that answer—as he well knew after many years of being married to me—were precisely the problems that his smile and question were intended to dissolve. And I—after many years of being married to him—got the message, loud and clear. I knew that my husband was suggesting in a tender, roundabout way, that I had been cleaning with a tense doggedness that left no room for joy. He was reminding me that, while we may not be able to choose some of our daily assignments, we certainly can choose how we approach the accomplishing of them.

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