Thoughts on a Job Well Done [enough]

I used to have this argument with my father about taking care of the yard of the house where I grew up. He would ask me to “do the yard,” and I would sigh, put down my book, and go gas up the old red mower. I’d prime the little rubber bulb, jerk the ripcord until the machine roared to life, and then shove it up and down around the yard for the better part of an hour, blaring tunes on my huge yellow Walkman Sport the whole time. And then, just as I was jostling the mower back into its place beneath the stairs of the side porch, my dad would come out and say, “Hey, what’s up?”

“What’ya mean, what’s up?” I’d retort, wittily.

“Well… you’re not telling me you’re done, are you?”

“Dad, I did the lawn, like you said. What are you talking about?”

He would slowly survey our yard, with its one huge oak tree smack in the middle, the shrubs along the fence, the little flower bed off to the side. He’d say, “Well, yes, you cut the grass. But I don’t think you can honestly say the yard is done.”

Whatever my verbal response to this was, it would have been a revised version of what I was thinking. We would go back and forth for a bit, but eventually I would give up and pull the dumb old mower back out again. The next task I would begrudgingly undertake was to mow beneath the bushes; I’d unintentionally left a small strip of uncut grass along the bottom edge, because I hated how they scraped my hands and sometimes snatched my headphones off my head. By purposefully steering the mower head-first under the bushes, pulling back, shifting over, pushing in, pulling back, etc., it was possible to clean that up in a matter of minutes. But that was just the beginning. Only after an hour of ‘extra’ work — after weeding the flower bed, bagging the grass and leaf clippings, pulling errant plants out of the fence, and more — could I finally call it quits, and a job well done. Or at least, “well done” enough that my old man would leave me alone.

This wasn’t the only thing my father and I argued about, not by a long shot. But looking back now, I think most of our disagreements had mostly to do with that same sense of ownership and pride in hard work for its own value. I think I led him to believe that I didn’t care about much. Which wasn’t true, of course — it was just that the things I poured my most focused effort into weren’t physical or tangible in the same way that his were. He was a master of physical construction, weaving intricate webs of electrical wiring and erecting structures of pragmatic function. I was a self-styled teenage student of literature and music, sweating the subtle nuances of wordplay, line breaks, and chord progressions. We both understood what it meant to expend sustained and intense effort to bring about a specific desired result, yet we were operating in completely different — at the time, seemingly mutually exclusive — worlds.

Then somewhere along the line, sometime after I moved out of my parents’ house, the rigidity of our disparate worlds began slowly to collapse. We each started to see more clearly what the other valued, and for me that shift in perspective has helped me appreciate so much more of the world around me. I guess it’s part of everyone’s experience, moving out of their parent’s sphere of control and starting to see things from a more adult viewpoint… but that old argument about the yard represents a fundamental truth my dad managed to teach me, whether he saw me learn it or not.

I now own a house and a yard of my own, and taking care of it is not a chore, but a source of pride. I tend to it not when I’m forced to, but whenever I have time and it’s even the least bit warranted. I scour the field for landmines (as a teen I felt no compunction smashing them flat, watching then stick in the mower’s tiny plastic treads), large sticks, and bits of newspaper. I mow in methodical lines that echo the house’s geometry, doubling back to cut each track both ways. I power-trim under the fence (both sides), beside the house, under the rain-gutter trays, along the outer sidewalk — even past our house to our second neighbor’s yard, so as not to ruin the line. And I know I’m done, not when I’m exhausted, not when it’s “well done” enough to justify calling it quits, but when it looks amazing.

That’s my personal standard. Amazing. Because in my mind, I see how great it can be — should be — and I feel compelled to make it happen. Michelangelo said he saw the angel in the marble, and carved until he set it free… well, I know it’s just a lawn, but I believe it’s the same impulse. It’s that drive my dad was trying to instill in me, the compulsion to do every job as thoroughly as I possibly can, because that is its own reward. Because God is in the details.

I see potential everywhere now, and I feel compelled to play my best part in bringing those potentialities to life. In my professional work, in the stories I make up with my kids, in the things I craft out of wood, words, and music — it’s the potential of amazing that drives me. And while I may never make anything perfect, I chase the satisfaction that comes from knowing I’ve done my very best. I hope I can help my own children continue to reach for that sense of satisfaction as they grow — to reach always beyond just “well done” and stretch toward their absolute best.