the burden and beauty of maintenance

I laugh a bit at the title of this blog. Years ago I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was definitely a late 20th century spiritual classic, though at the time I could never quite enter its world. What did tending a motorcycle have to do with me living my best life?? Taoism was much the same. Perhaps I simply wasn't ready to believe that a good life could unfold without constantly striving toward the next goal.

Today, though, the word maintenance has found its way back to me like that box of unfinished business you tucked deep in a closet long ago, hoping it will never resurface.

It isn't a word I've ever loved. It sounds ordinary, almost dreary—an endless string of chores standing between us and the life we'd rather be living. If only a house never needed cleaning! If only gardens tended themselves. At times the quiet labor of caring for my nearly hundred-year-old home has seemed to crowd out the very peace and beauty I hoped the home would give me.

I bought my home because it seemed enchantingly beautiful - wood floors, lots of light, thoughtful design and details, set in a lovely, quintessentially Americana neighborhood. But as I've lived here, I've realized how much maintenance it requires. Some days the list feels endless. Sweep, trim, weed, scrub, paint, straighten, repair, and on and on.

The burden of maintenance has become so heavy that I have started fantasizing about finding a new house that would be pristine and oh so easy to maintain. Yes, I dream, all I would have to do is sweep and vacuum a bit and the beauty would remain forever . . . .

But, of course, when I face reality, I see that it isn't true. Nothing in life is static. Everything requires . . . maintenance. And in that moment I realize I am facing one of the key teachings of Lao Tzu: life is difficult, life requires work, and once we accept this, we free ourselves from the weight of it.

When I think of having a beautiful home, I often see in my mind an elderly person gently sweeping their porch or weeding the garden. It looks so beautiful and effortless! But - I believe it only looks that way because these people have given themselves to the maintenance. They have stopped fighting it, and in the tending they have found peace and perhaps gratitude and joy. I think of my life and realize I have often tried to sidestep the daily work - the often hot, sweaty and never-ending work - part of living.

But back to my habit of looking for a shortcut. As I think about all the things in my life I believe need to change in order for me to be happy, I realize that almost all of them involve my desire to sidestep the sacrifice and toil required to get what I really want. I want a job that is easy for me to do, that I am already prepared to do, but that pays well and oh by the way is also remote. I want to create art that is beautiful without requiring years of practice and training I want someone in my life that gets me on a deep level fromn other words, I am always looking for a shortcut, and now I am finally realizing that orientation has left me to some degree with fists full of sand rather than the peace and joy I really wanted.

Fortunately for me I was putting the real work and time required in some of my life, and fate has blessed me often in spite of impatience and selfishness. But now, as I dig deeper and want to experience that daily feeling that all is well and life is beautiful, I am trying to head down the slow road of daily toil and sacrifice, or better said, of paying attention to the beauty and reality right in front of me this day.

Dismal as that sounds, as I think about it more I realize perhaps the problem wasn't the maintenance. Perhaps my suffering came from believing there shouldn't be any maintenance. I had quietly divided life into two categories: the meaningful things I wanted to do, and the tedious work that stood in the way. But what if maintenance was never the interruption? What if it was part of the life itself?

Every act of care says, This matters.

When we water a plant, mend a shirt, listen patiently to a friend, repair a fence, or sweep a floor, we are quietly declaring that something has value. Maintenance is love expressed through repetition. It is respect made visible. Without that care, even beautiful things slowly disappear—not because beauty failed us, but because beauty always asks something in return. A correlate to this is that while we believe we want one thing in life, if we are putting our time and effort into something else (like perhaps entertainment or even nothing), how can we expect to get what we really want?

But there is something else about those older people quietly tending their homes: they are living in the present. Their present is the home as it is, and all the maintenance it requires, and then it only makes sense to do what is needed each day to maintain the home. I believe a large reason I resist maintenance is because I am firmly rooted not in the present but in the future. To have big dreams and aspirations is good unless it takes us away from living our lives in the here and now. Half of the time I realize I don't even think about putting away a glass or vacuuming because my mind is focused on what I will be doing later, what I am preparing for. And then the tasks requiring my attention, along with the moments of my life, slip away.

When someone is in a suicidal state, one of the things they recommend the person do is engage with their environment. See, touch, smell or listen to something actually happening in the here and now. It's as if they've forgotten what it feels like to be alive. Once reminded that they are alive and not simply a mind that endlessly cycles through regrets and dashed dreams, life begins to make sense again. Maintenance helps keep us in today. Perhaps it actually makes life more meaningful because we are interacting with what is real, with life itself.

Part of my resistance to maintenance is that it seems so trivial, so UNimportant. I want to do something great with my life and my days! I can't waste my life cleaning a garage or pulling weeds. But in verse 63, Lao Tzu reminds us of the importance of paying attention to the little, seemingly unimportant things:

Act without forcing.

Work without struggling.

Taste what has no flavor.

Regard the small as great and the few as many.

Meet difficulty while it is still easy;

accomplish the great while it is still small.

We often imagine that meaning arrives through dramatic moments. Lao Tzu points us in the opposite direction. Great things are not built through occasional bursts of inspiration but through countless small acts of faithful attention. A beautiful garden is nothing more than years of watering, weeding, pruning, and waiting. A beautiful life may be built the same way. In the end, we realize we've become what we repeatedly care for.

Lao Tzu adds an important bit of advice in that verse, as well. He reminds us to "meet the difficult while it is still easy." Maintenance of anything is much easier if we take care of things as soon as they arise. The image of the peaceful elderly person sweeping the walk comes back to me. The home looks tidy because small things are tended to immediately. Messes are not left to grow untended until they weigh heavy on the owner's heart. But it applies to not just houses, but to ourselves and our behavior, our work life, our relationships. If we make small corrections, small acts of maintenance, when we see the need, we keep things on track with very little effort and discomfort. I think about my house when I bought it. Everything actually was neat and tidy and clearly well tended. My years of delaying maintenance and cleaning had accumulated into a house and yard that now look a bit unkempt. If I had simply started earlier to tend things regularly, my house might still look like it did when I bought it. It's the same with everything else. If we make small adjustments when we see the need, the good life is almost effortless.

Everything that lives asks something of us. A home asks to be cleaned. A friendship asks to be tended. A child asks for patience. A garden asks for water. Even a favorite sweater asks to be mended now and then. Care is simply the language of love made visible.

Perhaps this is part of wu wei. The leaves fall, so we sweep them. The weeds grow, so we pull them. A friend needs listening, so we listen. Something breaks, so we repair it. The mind is quiet because it is no longer arguing with reality. We feel content not because we love every task, but because we love what the task allows to flourish.

So much of our unhappiness comes from imagining there must be another life somewhere else—a different house, a different job, a different future where maintenance finally disappears. But tomorrow is only another string of todays, another collection of ordinary moments asking for our attention.

Perhaps the sacred has been hiding there all along. In tending what has been placed in our hands. In quietly caring for what is already here.