So Much of Myself

The view from my classroom window

Have you ever really wanted to see a project you were involved with fail? 

Me too. 

Recently, at work, there's been this project that I don't like very much. To of my daughters are also involved in it, and they also don't particularly care for it. There's a part of me that would secretly love it if this project ended up being one of the worst such projects I've ever been involved with. Not because I want the people involved to fail, but I don't want to see something I object to but am professionally obligated to support, become a wild success. 

The thing is, no matter how much you don't like something you have to do, if you are competent at it, it's hard (at least for me), to intentionally do a poor job. I do a bad job at things accidentally, or because I'm genuinely bad at them, all the time. I also cut corners all the time when there are constraints on time and other resources. But I'm always trying to do the best I can with what I have. 

Lately, I've been tempted to do otherwise, and it feels wrong. I can't bring myself to care so little that I don't try. I can procrastinate. I can equivocate. I can even state my objections and try to make changes. But when everything has been decided and the chips are down, I'm going to follow through, and I'm going to try to do as good a job as I can. I can't help myself. 

It turns out that my daughters suffer from the same affliction. We were talking the other day, and one of them said, to paraphrase: sometimes I feel excited because we've worked hard and done a great job, but then I stop and wonder, why did I put so much of myself into... this?

I can relate. I don't know if this quality is a virtue or not. Is it virtuous to diligently support with your labor things you don't support with your heart? If supporting the thing does harm, but neglecting it would cause a different kind of harm, where is the right path? 

Come to think of it, doesn't that describe many things in this world? We work at them, and we accomplish a mixture of both good and evil, but neglecting to work would cause a different mixture. For example, I've many times had to rush coldly away from the tearstained faces of my children who just want some time with their daddy, because I needed to work as much as possible in order to keep a roof over their heads. I was racing out the door, half-ignoring their cries, to get to a job I didn't like doing things I wished I weren't, but all because if I didn't, the consequences for those children would be even more severe. But wait, more severe than growing up with a constantly absent father? Maybe. I don't know. That's always the question that plagued me. 

That's just an easy example, and it's not a perfect corollary to the recent situation. Still, maybe it underscores one of the fundamental inequalities of this life. Or perhaps one of its great dilemmas. In a world such as ours, acting according to conscience in one aspect seems to be directly at odds with following that same conscience in another. Doing what is truly "good" seems impossible. All we can get is good enough. 

Why do we work and sweat and bleed ourselves dry in the service of something we don't really endorse, simply because we're assigned to. If that is professional integrity, is it at odds with personal integrity, or do the moral and philosophical hoops we jump through to comfort ourselves really justify such behavior? At what point do we cross the line from that into the "just following orders" method of committing evil? Why do we give so much of ourselves to that which does not bring light, even if it does bring opportunity, acclaim, or money? Should we stop doing it?

If so, will someone please tell me how?