Working with Delight
When Ray and I go for a visit with our son John, he usually tells us about the book he has been reading lately. The topic last weekend was The Americanization of Edward Bok, an autobiography of the man who served as editor of Ladies’ Home Journal from 1889 to 1919.
Like many residents of New York City in the late 1800s, Bok and his family were immigrants. Their means were meager. Edward began working as a young teenager to help support his family while he attended night school. One of his first jobs was as an office boy at Western Union Telegraph Company.
I asked John what he learned that might help us in our business. He replied by talking about Bok’s work ethic. He said that Bok decided early that he would work hard. Even then many people worked just enough to receive their paychecks, but Bok decided to rise above and to go beyond the minimal expectations. For a while he worked as a stenographer. When he took notes for one of his superiors, he tried to have the completed document on the man’s desk by the next morning.
John also mentioned Bok’s decision to live by principles. As a young reporter, Bok covered an event during the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes. Bok was the only person at the event who passed up an alcoholic drink. Hayes noticed this and invited Bok to visit with him privately. Though Bok was not personally opposed to drinking on moral grounds (as I am because of the destructiveness I have seen caused by this in the families of two of my great-grandfathers), he made the decision not to drink because he didn’t want that distraction from his life and career.
Many parents worry about whether their decision to homeschool will have a negative effect on the career success of their children without realizing the magnitude of the everyday lessons they are teaching their children by simply working hard themselves, requiring their children to work hard, living according to principles, and requiring that their children live that way, too.
The delight principle works here, too. Lessons about working hard and living by principle are much more likely to sink in deeply and stay if they have been demonstrated with delight. I never did learn how to whistle, so I haven’t been able to do what Jiminy Cricket used to teach us to do when I was a kid: “Whistle while you work . . .” but there are other ways to show delight! Proverbs 31 tells us this about the worthy woman:
She looks for wool and flax
And works with her hands in delight.
Proverbs 31:13