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Do You Know What You Love?

Read Time 3 Minutes

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For Mother’s Day, I received this marvelous cast iron tea kettle. A favored color, and and ironware is also a favorite. The maker provided a pamphlet of explanation on the craftsmanship, use, and care of the kettle. It is a Japanese tetsubin, which literally means iron pot, and is a pot especially for boiling water for tea. Supposedly water boiled in the iron kettle makes the tea taste sweeter and more mellow.

The crafting of a tetsubin is considered an art form. The company that makes this particular tea kettle writes in their pamphlet: “We are doing what we love, there is much more success than being rich and famous.”

I think of that wisdom as I brew my tea in the kettle. Yes, I do believe that being rich and famous is overrated. Definitely preferable is doing what I love. Probably we all would agree that we do best what we love doing. We will persist in practicing to excel in doing that which we love doing. What we love doing is what we are designed to do, a natural talent that can be nurtured and polished and give satisfaction, make a life worth living.

The difficulty, at least for me, and I don’t believe I’m alone in this, is knowing what I actually love.

For instance, at one time years ago, I bought a dulcimer in a fit of belief that I would love to learn to play it. That I actually could learn to play it. That dulcimer sits in its case in the top shelf of my closet. I tried a bit and hated doing it. Still, I’m glad I did try, for that is how I learned that I don’t want to play it, but do love to watch and listen to someone else play it.

Often what I love doing entails much that I do not love. A lot of times I get caught up with my idea of what I think I love, only to find out, I don’t love the whole of it. In the first half of my writing career, I did believe I wanted to be a rich, famous, successful writer. I loved and still do love writing. Love the way the words sound put together, love making word pictures, and even love the challenge of making sense of the world through words. But I never could learn to love the business of publishing. Striving for the great success of a published writer stretched me out of shape of who I was.

I know these things now because of hard lessons. Yet, I still get caught up in much that I don’t love because I don’t fully know myself. I suppose that is the fact of being human on earth: we are always in the midst of becoming who we are.

A help to the difficulty of knowing what I love is to pay attention to myself—my own desires and my own opinions. When paying attention, I can distinguish what I truly love from what I think I love, which is often a fantasy, and from what I’ve been told I should love. When paying attention, I can see when I have changed and no longer love so much what I did yesterday. I can let go and let myself love something new.

Do you know what you love? It’s helpful to think about.

Grace and Peace,

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3 responses to “Do You Know What You Love?”

Thoughts? Don’t keep them to yourself. Love to hear!

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