Our guest writer today is Paul Menn. Paul graduated Calvin in 2010.  He is currently living in Milwaukee, WI as he works towards obtaining his juris doctorate from Marquette University Law School.  He is engaged to be married next summer.  Follow his blog at http://sojournerscafe.wordpress.com/

 

We are moments

Have you ever had a perfect day?  I don’t mean a day that was good.  I don’t even mean a day that was great.  I mean a day that was simply transcendent.  A day where literally everything was perfect and you could think of nothing wrong with it.  Not even a perfect moment, but an entire day.  I can think of many perfect moments, but only one truly perfect day.

It was a day in late October or early November, and I was on a weekend long trip to Croatia with half of the students from the Hungary 2008 semester.  I tend to remember that we started the day with a feast of some hardened and salted bread…which everyone else seemed to hate, but I was on board with because my family makes something similar for Thanksgiving.  Then, we went to a nearby church to volunteer for the day.  Our mission—to dig deep enough holes so that we could place concrete poles in them, which would then be wrapped in barbed wire, keeping the wildlife away from the church’s garden.

It was hard, dirty work.  I come from the civilized half of Wisconsin, and I had never done a day of manual labor in my life.  Digging six foot holes, carting the dirt away in a wheelbarrow and repeating was not something I expected to enjoy, especially given that after all of that work, we still had to haul eighty pound concrete poles to those freshly dug holes (and given how I was wearing an expensive frock coat meant to be worn at the opera, not on what was basically a farm).

My body was used to wine, beer, and thinking about Shakespeare and Marx, not manual work.  But it was unexpectedly exhilarating and invigorating to get my hands raw and dirty.  Oh sure, I was winded often and tried to find any excuse to rest my body, but it was still perfect all the same.

After we had finished, the pastor showed us a room in the church that had a whole lot of bikes in it and said that we were welcome to use them.  So five or six of us took him up on his offer and grabbed a motley assortment of bikes to ride around on the surrounding country roads.

Have you ever been somewhere that is just perfectly still and free from the encroaches of humanity and technology?  That’s what this place was.  Six friends on bikes, riding down a deserted road in Croatia as the sun waned, no one to interrupt our bliss.  Our happiness was unrestrained as we biked past rivers and fields.  It was all laughter and camaraderie.  Unrestrained joy.  A moment of pure perfection shared between friends.

The thing is, the only reason that bike ride was so perfect was the fact that we had worked for it.  We had spent hours sweating while digging dirt and hauling concrete before we set off on it.  We were tired and sweaty when we set off.  I almost gave up before we reached the first turn because I was so exhausted and not that skilled of a bike rider (I didn’t learn until I was seventeen, and I was barely twenty at this point and still prone to crashing into trees), but the others encouraged me to continue.  So I did.  And it was worth it after a long day of hard work.

After all the work and the biking, when we finally went home, I fell asleep almost instantly.  Physical labor drains you, and it gave me a pure, restful sleep.  I awoke refreshed, renewed.  Getting my hands dirty had given me release.  Reinvigorated me.  Made me ready to face the struggles of the world again.

I am currently in law school, and I doubt I’ll ever have another day that involves me digging up dirt for concrete poles.  I doubt I’ll ever have another last autumn day riding a bike in the Croatian countryside.  But reflecting on that day of perfection, I see two things:

1) Happiness is more fulfilling when you work for it
2) Happiness is more fulfilling when you share it with someone(s)

[I’d love to hear your moments of perfection and beauty]

With your hands wide open/
Renew the days we all thought lost
Rosetta | “Release”