Finding peace at the end of the day

By Archdeacon Rhonda Waters

Many years ago, a wise person shared an observation that continues to resonate with me: You can only do a day’s work in a day. It was a gift of freedom and perspective that I desperately needed at the time (and still do today!). It names the truth that, at the end of the day, whatever has happened and whatever I had hoped might happen or whatever needed to happen, a day’s work has been done. It is, by definition, impossible for it to be anything other than that.

So many of us end our day burdened by the things we didn’t get done and go off to bed with minds full of what is waiting for us in the morning—because there is always more waiting. More work at the office, more work at home, more work on our bodies and souls, more work on our relationships, more work for our communities. No matter how much is done, there is always more. And, in the good moments, I am glad of that work (well, maybe not the dishes).  I’m glad to be busy and challenged and growing and learning. I will always choose busy over bored—but there is a difference between busy and burdened. Feeling burdened leads to feeling guilty and resentful and burnt-out, none of which increases productivity or health or faith. Busy turns into burdened when I forget two important truths.  First, everything doesn’t need to happen ASAP. Tomorrow will come, and it will have its own day’s work. Second, if I let something drop, the whole structure won’t come crashing down because I am not the only one holding it up.

You can only do a day’s work in a day invites us to pause in our rush to assume that we should have done more. It invites us to notice what we accomplished rather than what is still waiting for us. It invites us to remember that we are only human and that being human is all we need to be. That can be a surprisingly hard thing to remember, given that we have no alternative. And yet, even in the months of lock-down, the pressure to be productive and be successful and be on the go (even if the going was all online) can become pressure to somehow be more than human—to somehow do more than a day’s work in a day, which would require the ability to bend time itself!

When I was in university, I attended a Wednesday night Eucharist at the McGill Ecumenical Chaplaincy. Most weeks, we ended our service with a prayer that has become well-known around the Communion. It comes from Night Prayer in the New Zealand Prayer Book. It’s a beautiful prayer, but the part I always needed the most is this: It is night after a long day. What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done; let it be. That prayer was a balm for my weary student soul, giving me permission to put the books away for the night, release the guilt accumulated during the many minutes (hours) of procrastination and simply be held in God’s night, a beloved human child in need of rest.

You can only do a day’s work in a day. So, I do a day’s work each day (with an eye on the calendar so I know which work to do on which day) and, each night, I try to allow that to be enough. There is, after all, no real alternative.