Grandpa's Rule: Get Used to Unfinished Things

Life is never finished, and neither are we

I am sitting on the front porch this morning, enjoying the fact that I got the lawn mowed yesterday. But I didn’t get it completely finished; I have a couple of banks, along the street in front of the house, and the driveway on the side that are a pain to mow, so I leave them unmowed every other mowing. I am at peace with being 95% finished half of the time.

When I left my jobs as a principal of two high schools, I left many things undone. The same can be said for every job I have ever had. Moving on from tasks when they are incomplete reminds us that much of what we do, even most of it, gets left for the next person to do. In all but the rarest instances, we are part of a line of people, laborers who do their best to move the world forward, or at least their part of it. Life is essentially the job of coming to terms with the truth that, as much as we get done, we leave even more unfinished. Understanding that is a key to finding peace.

I know a great many people who have a hard time with that. I have never been a person you would call “task-oriented.” For one, I am too easily distracted by the variety of things I have to do, and I have always focused more on the people around me than I have on what I have to do. This is why I am thankful I was blessed to surround myself with less distractible people who were and are very competent. My sweet wife picks up an enormous amount of slack in our marriage, either reminding me to get projects done or, in many cases, simply doing the work herself. I handle most of our money tasks, paying the bills and managing investments, not because I have a particular genius for it, but because most of that work can be automated. Other jobs, like mowing the lawn or doing my laundry, are easy to do because I can see the grass grow and I run out of underwear, neither of which makes me happy. Some things, like removing wallpaper, vacuuming, or cleaning my office, fall neatly into my ability to procrastinate. I’m a really good procrastinator.

This creates some conflict, needless to say. Every time we have guests at the house, Anne flies into a fit of furious cleaning. I have repeatedly tried to persuade her that these efforts are unnecessary by asking, “Are these people coming to see us or the house?” As you may suppose, that question only fuels the tension between us, and I usually end up vacuuming with a begrudged spirit. It’s funny what lengths my spouse has to go to to motivate me into action.

I would much rather sit with Anne and talk about what we will have for dinner with our guests, or what her favorite thing is about them. But to have that discussion, I usually find myself drying dishes while she washes, or moving furniture while she tells me where to put it.

The thing my spirit rebels against is that all of these jobs need to be done repeatedly. I don’t have any particular hatred toward cleaning or other kinds of work; it is just that I would rather do work that can be done once and then finished, or at least put aside until a suitable pile of dust, clothes, or dishes arises to make the work feel worthwhile. My wife assures me that we must deep clean our home anytime we have someone who is not a family member over to the house. This may explain why I try to refer to my friends as “extended family;” I am hopeful that by including them in the family circle, I won’t have to clean so often when they visit.

It seems that we often get caught up in doing things because we think we ought to be busy, not because a thing needs to be done. There is a balance between pre-planned effort and spontaneity that is difficult to achieve. I consider myself blessed for many reasons in my marriage, not the least of which is our ability to create an even-handed approach to most things where I can provide the spontaneous, the surprising, and the unexpected, while Anne makes sure the lights bulbs work, the batteries are changed, and dinner reservations are made.

So I am writing this essay, less as a complaint about having to live an over-planned life, and more as a way to find peace in the repetitive and perpetual motion that life requires. If you are someone who, like me, enjoys being able to set aside tasks for a day at the zoo or a long talk on the porch, and can do these things without the least bit of guilt, you have to have compassion toward those who find value–maybe their value–in getting things done.

This is part of finding peace in the whirlwind of life; sharing that peace, even embodying it, with others. Anne is moving about me even as I write this, planting flowers and trimming unsightly weeds and giving me future tasks; I need to cut two small stumps down to the ground, even though no one is likely to stumble over them. What I bring to our partnership is a willingness, no matter how strained, to do these small tasks to grant peace to my partner; while I have learned to be at peace with the incomplete things in life, she loves to be able to make a list and check off the completed tasks. I do these tasks knowing I will have to do them again because life is perpetually unfinished. And so are we.