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Imagine two friends, Steve and Fred, chatting at a New Year’s party. Both of them resolve to abstain from alcohol for January, and attend the gym regularly. They shake on it.
They don’t want to let each other down, and they both fulfill their commitments. Afterward, Steve keeps up his routine, and Fred soon drifts back to too much beer and not enough exercise.
Even though they accomplished the same thing, an astute third-party observer might have noticed a difference in how each man went about his goal. It was definitely hard for both of them; they both woke up at dawn, drank club soda while others were having a beer, and did lunges and squats until their muscles burned. For Fred this work felt like a battle against gravity (although a worthy one) and for Steve the change seemed strangely freeing.
Fred saw his efforts as the price he had to pay to get the reward he wanted. He wanted to look and feel better, so he had to pay for that, in the form of intense manual labor, boring drinks, and early-morning wakeups. Fred was just as disciplined as Steve, doing all the agreed reps and sets, but he was always looking forward to the end of each workout, and felt deprived at the taste of club soda and lime.
Steve had a different attitude, and it led to a different experience of the whole thing. He didn’t see the lunges and club sodas and early mornings as constraints imposed on him by the agreement, but rather as a way of living that was always available to him, which he was now adopting voluntarily. He didn’t groan about leg day, or tell himself that he “can’t” have a beer right now. He knew he wasn’t actually bound to those sacrifices, but rather he was choosing them because they’re better. He didn’t have to fight with himself about how much effort was “good enough”, because he saw that the reward and the sacrifice are inextricable. If he wanted one, he must want the other, because they only ever showed up as one thing.
Driving With the Brakes On
When I read East of Eden by John Steinbeck a few years ago, there was one scene that seemed to be centerpiece of the book, just by the way it was written, although I didn’t get the point at the time. The characters were having tea while dissecting Bible passages. That not being an area of interest for me, I kind of glazed over.
Now I see it as a careful unpacking of one of the most useful insights our species ever had about effort and doing.
(If mention of the Bible makes you tired or bored, bear with me for a minute; it might just save you a huge amount of trouble.)
East of Eden (and also the above story of Steve and Fred) is a retelling of Cain and Abel, the two Biblical brothers who illustrate two different approaches to effort and sacrifice. In Steinbeck’s book, Cain and Abel are represented by two California farmers, brothers named Charles and Adam.
I always thought the Cain and Abel lesson was pretty basic: there was a lazy brother and a hardworking brother. You should be the hardworking brother, or else you miss out on the deeper rewards of life, and then you become resentful and treacherous.
The difference between them is more subtle than that though. Both brothers worked hard, and both understood that doing so was necessary to access a better life. But Abel (or Steve, or Adam) makes his sacrifices wholeheartedly, without complaint. Cain gets mad at God immediately when his sacrifices don’t pay off, revealing that he resents the work but covets the pay. Like many of us, he regards the reward and its price as separate things; the work is an obstacle to the thing he values, rather than part of it.
This more subtle interpretation resonated with me, whereas the basic admonishment to “just do it” never did anything for me. I realized I tend to take the Cain approach. I’m always trying to sacrifice just enough to get the reward, and I get mad at the world, or how things “are,” when that doesn’t work. I’m always holding something back, as though God might rip me off, so to speak, if I accidentally overpay.
Reading the Bible story again, it struck me that I really am Cain. I’ve mostly been doing the Cain thing on this earth, wondering why it’s never quite enough. Imagine the goosebumps when I remembered that Cain is literally my name. David Cain — beloved king and treacherous brother.
Sometimes you stumble across the better way, if only because the other way just never works. I don’t think anyone sustains a gym regimen, or anything similar, if they’re motivated only by the future rewards. Everybody who keeps at it past January resolution season finds something about the toil itself to embrace. It might be the “burn,” or the “pump,” or some other synergy between exertion and gratification. It might be the reassuring sense of self-discipline. It might be that they like who they are when they’re doing it. But it’s got to be something, because embracing the reward while resenting the price just isn’t a viable way to go about something for long. You’re always in inner conflict. You’re driving with the brakes on.
In that famous East of Eden scene, one of the characters shares a discovery about how not to drive with the brakes on. Lee, Adam’s servant, has been studying the Cain and Abel story closely, down to each word, in various translations. He says that in English versions, Cain is told some form of, “Thou shalt rule over sin” — in other words, you must, or you will, do the right thing. You have to.
This is a command, of the kind we give ourselves when we resolve to work out three days a week, stop eating junk food, or go to bed at 10 o’clock. You will do this thing, you! That’s how it’s going to be! You hear me?!
Whether or not these sorts of admonishments do motivate you to act, it doesn’t really work out in the long run. Work done this way never frees you; it makes life feel like a kind of grinding between opposing forces. It isn’t a way you’d want to live, if you had the choice.
Essentially, Lee suggests that there is a choice. He tells the others that the original Hebrew word in the passage — timshel — doesn’t mean “you must” but rather, “you may.”
This changes the proposition entirely. God isn’t telling Cain what he must do, but what he may do. You may triumph over temptation. You may sacrifice wholeheartedly, without inner conflict. It’s not a command, it’s good news: you can be Cain or Abel. This possibility exists in every moment, and it’s the greatest gift we’ve inherited as humans.
For whatever reason, our man Steve got this on some level. He didn’t regard his workout regimen as an obstacle he had to get past to get a desirable thing in return. He saw it as an entire path, a way of living, that he could embrace or reject.
The new regimen seemed to him to be a better path than the one he was on, so he took it, and life — or God, if you prefer — showed him beyond doubt that he was right.
Timshel!
***
Images by Joyful, Zeeboid, Nicole Wilcox, Titian.
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