You’re looking after your family responsibilities.
Maybe it’s ferrying your daughter to a lacrosse game, attending a family wedding; or meeting your spouse for an overdue ‘date night’.
They are indeed duties. Do you treat them as such? Or are you emotionally-invested? Are you a dutiful servant or is your heart in gear?
With some mental reframing, we can generate emotional engagement in our tasks. For example, we can rise above the ‘chauffeur drudgery’ by focusing on the relationship-building that comes with driving a precious child to her game. Think about how you’re contributing to her healthy childhood, and how one day you’ll be wistfully longing for the simple moments of parent-child bonding. The simple ‘chauffeuring’ comes to life.
Meaningful relationships have a built-in emotional connection, waiting to be revealed. Our effort needs to focus on dispelling the mental distractedness, and allowing the emotions to flow; if you find yourself feeling functional, dig a little deeper and tap your natural geyser of emotion.
So we’ve identified two levels of function: Dry task and emotional engagement.
But we can do even better. Emotional engagement will do wonders for our relationships, but what if the emotions themselves are lacking? What if I’m naturally reserved and a particular setting calls for passion? What if I’m naturally excitable and the situation calls for calm?
Chassidic thought teaches that we can actually mold our internal processes. With focused mental concentration, we can fashion for ourselves a more productive emotional profile. It isn’t easy. But it’s possible.
These three approaches also apply to our relationship with the Divine:
I can do a Mitzvah because that’s the way I was raised. Someone else might perform a Mitzvah because “it can’t hurt” or because he’s afraid of what might happen if he doesn’t. Those are functional Mitzvos without a positive emotional connection.
A person can dig a little deeper to find the natural joy in doing a Mitzvah and forging a deeper relationship with G-d.
Even more, a person can mold his/her own processes, engendering a new emotional connection.
There’s a large scale of possibilities. The question is: are you committed to the work of doing better?
Let the relationships value loom large in your mind, and you’ll slowly climb the scale. Where you end up is between you and G-d.
Just give it all you’ve got.