Former General Relief Society counselor Chieko Okazaki shared five principles that lend eternal perspective to our daily work efforts, in the final BYU-Hawaii devotional for the 2002-03 school year on Aug. 7.
BYU-Hawaii President Eric B. Shumway described Okazaki as a "consummate teacher" and a woman with a "powerful personal ministry...who is determined to wear out her life in God's service and to her children."
Originally from Maui, Okazaki greeted the audience with a warm "aloha," and then told the story of a Sunday School boy who asked his teacher, since the "children of Israel" were always doing bad things in the wilderness, "didn't the grownups ever do anything?"
Okazaki urged everyone to "stop being children and start being grownups" when it comes to the strong connection between our self-esteem and work.
To further illustrate, she told the story of a boy who watched a large gypsy man drink from a well in their village, and then peer into the darkness. Curious, the boy climbed up beside him and asked him what he was looking at: "God lives there," the man responded. When the child looked, he replied, "But that's me."
"Ah," the gypsy said, "now you know where God lives."
"This life is a gift from God, so that we might live to see what God sees in us," Okazaki said, quoting the Apostle Paul: For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1 Cor. 13:12)
"What we work at is very important, and how we work at it is very important and has a direct impact on eternity," Okazaki said.
She then outlined five principles to guide our working lives:
"Find work that you can love with your heart," she said, relating how at one point in her teaching career a colleague asked her to run for the local board of education. She turned down the opportunity, knowing her heart wouldn't be in it like teaching.
"In keeping yourself in labor, you are loving life," Okazaki said. "When you work with love, you bind yourself one to another.
"Set goals and work very hard to achieve them," she continued, telling how she decided early to become a teacher; but she also followed the essence of an old German proverb: "God gives the birds food, but he does not throw it into their midst."
"I was willing to work very hard to achieve that goal," Okazaki said, recounting how she rode a cattle boat from Maui to Honolulu to live alone while attending the University of Hawaii.
"They didn't have a BYU-Hawaii then," she added, and there were "many opportunities to get discouraged. Fortunately, the power of my goal and the support of my family helped me."
She explained the English word "opportunity" derived from boats which would wait for the right moment to ride the tide into port. Or, quoting Shakespeare, she said: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."
"Someone once said, the biggest mistake you can make is to think you are working for someone else," Okazaki said, pointing out that as she pursued her education, she wasn't working for grades. "I was working for my dream."
"Strive to do your job with excellence," Okazaki continued, quoting Martin Luther King Jr., who noted: "If you are called to be a street sweeper, sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted."
"This means we cannot get away with cutting corners or doing shoddy work," she said. "Don't make excuses. Make good."
"Be honest in your work" is the fourth principle.
Okazaki recognized that honesty is not always prized on the job. "People cut corners, lie, cheat, steal and seem to get promoted for it."
She explained, "If you construct a shoddy life using dishonest tactics, you have permanently affected your eternal life."
"The covenants of consecration apply to our daily jobs, so be aware of the eternal consequences," Okazaki said.
"All of us who have been to the temple have made covenants of consecration. To me, that includes the eight hours or more that we are doing our work," Okazaki said.
She illustrated this principle with the story of a former temple president who served a humanitarian mission where he was assigned to assemble hygiene kits. He said when people found out who he was, they sometimes wanted to treat him differently; but, Okazaki stressed, "he said he felt the exact same spirit folding towels for the kits as he felt in the temple."
"We may never know the significance of the things we do in our daily work," she added. "You are giving your life to your work. Is your life going to be beautiful at the end?"
"What we do with our hands shapes our hearts and minds," Okazaki said.