What We Have To Do

We do what we have to do so we can do what we want to do.

I heard this phrase some time ago, and it continues to return to my thoughts. At the end of one of my classes, I longed to be at home with my family, or to have them with me instead of walking across a beautiful campus alone. Pop! The phrase came again.

We do what we have to do so we can do what we want to do.

I thought of the many answers I had given over the childhood years to the "What do you want to be when you grow up" question. I could remember some of my aspirations, so I thought I would compare them to where I am now. I may not have imagined being a graduate student at thirty, but I imagine I must have realized some aspects of my childhood goals—I don't think I knew what a civil engineer was as a child, so the current me doesn't exactly fit into the future projection of the past me.

Not satisfied, I tried turning the question around by asking what I want to do now. As expected, I would much rather be doing something else much of the time. I guess that's a logical extension of the original phrase: I am doing what I have to do so I can do what I want to do. But what do I want to do?

As I think of the "when you grow up" answers, I don't remember if I explicitly stated that I wanted to be a loving husband and father when I grew up. However, that is all I want to be, and all I want to do all the time. No offense to my colleagues, but they don't compare to my family.

If what I want to do is be a loving husband and father, then I guess I will have to find a way to support my family. Hence, school and work. Apparently my life is the realization of that phrase. I do what I have to do so I can do what I want to do.

Now, some will say that if I spent all my time with my family, then I would get sick of them (or, more likely, they would get sick of me). While I don't know if this is true, I do know that I love coming home after a long day of doing what I have to do to receive the big hugs and loving play (what I want to do).


There is an eternal application of this principle. If I do what I have to do to have a happy family now and in the future, then I will have a celestial family now and in the future. This is only possible, though, because Christ did what he had to do so he could do what he wanted to do, "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39), which allows us to do what we want to do, and ultimately be where and what we want to be.