Every Act a Self-Portrait

You know, I think it worked (no pun intended). I did some good work yesterday and this morning, and now I feel pretty good. Sweaty (already), but still good.

As I was looking at (Bishop?) Clarke's talk the other day, there was another quote that stood out to me that I didn't share yesterday: "Every piece of work we do is a portrait of the one who produced it."

He goes on to say that many workers produce low-quality work because they can get away with it and still get paid in full. Maybe they save themselves time, money, or energy that way, but it's not entirely honest. Even if they meet the required standard, intentionally doing poorer work than they could have done means that they're cheating themselves and their customers, and it casts a poor reflection on their overall character.

Do you remember several days ago when I randomly complimented Josh Groban before going on to talk about something completely unrelated? That morning, I had just heard several songs by Josh Groban on Youtube. One of them was Remember Me. In that song, he sings the line: "I'm with you whenever you tell my story, for I am all I've done." (Emphasis Added)

This thought, that our works are a reflection of who we are, lends credibility to a thought I explored while blogging about identity: I am the kind of person that does the things I do, meaning that if I read books in my free time, then I'm the kind of person who spends their free time reading books.

I believe that our actions, including both work and recreation, are reflections of who we really are. If a person produces high-quality work, even though he's not being paid extra for the higher-quality, then it may be that he's just a higher-quality person. Perhaps I should keep track of what I do and how well I try to do it, and why I do it, etc. because perhaps that will help me to have a better understanding of what kind of person I am.

Also, this method could be helpful in reverse. If I want to be a certain kind of person, such as a paladin or a disciple of Christ, all I have to do is think of what that kind of person would do, or try to do, then do my best to follow that example. If I do it consistently enough that it becomes a personal habit, than it can probably be said that I have become the kind of person that I set out to be. To be a disciple of Christ, I should do what a disciple of Christ would do, which is what Christ would do, which is what He did. So, if I follow His example faithfully, I will become a disciple of Christ. That's pretty cool.