So it’s Labor Day weekend here in the
Right now the biggest obstacle I’m facing on my spiritual journey is my job. I dread it. I feel chained and trapped by it – it is feeding on me and dragging me down.
I won’t belabor why my job sucks. I will say only that it is as if I am a flute desiring nothing but to play my tune. But my job uses me as if I am a can opener. Dump trucks piled high with cans are unloaded in my cube each day and I am expected to have them all opened in a couple hours. Then I am expected to write reports about how many cans I opened, how many cans I farmed out to the Philippines to open, what categories of cans were opened, how many cans are left to open in each category, what is the rate of all the opening, what is the rate of the reporting on the opening, how many cans do I expect to come in for opening in the future. In between, I am responding to complaints about the contents of the cans.
To top off the absurdity, no one wants the cans – open or closed. The customers are demanding about them because they are paying my company a premium for its services. But they don’t really want the cans. They serve no useful purpose in the world.
Just as using a flute as a can opener day in day out would be damaging to the flute, my job is damaging to me.
When I was a manager, I took work home literally and figuratively. It took up residence in my head and pushed me out of my life. Now that I have a scaled down job, I no longer take work home. I think I am leaving it behind at the end of the workday, but I wake up in the night after a couple hours of sleep to find that my mind is caught in a loop of worry over what I have to do at work. This is now happening six out of seven days a week. My only night off is Friday.
So here I am back to square one. I left my managerial job to reclaim my life. I got a scaled down job thinking I could keep it in bounds. For a while it worked, but now it, too, is growing like a weed throughout my mind, choking out my own plantings.
Some people tell me I should not think twice about work – I should just come in, do what I can without stressing and, if it’s not enough, let management worry about it. These shoulds join the other shoulds in my head. The ones from childhood that tell me I should be a good worker and always meet or exceed expectations (even if wildly unreasonable). All this shoulding gangs up on me, telling me there is something wrong with the way I am and how I feel.
A part of me feels like a failure for not being able to keep my day job in its place, but another part of me will not relent: I am NOT a can opener! I refuse to spend most of my time and energy opening cans that no one wants or needs. I don’t want to separate myself from my work. I want to play my song. I want my work to be a true expression of me and what I came here to do. I want to work in alignment with my higher self and the evolution of the planet.
And maybe this is not a matter of dreamy escapist me being unable to settle down and get along in the world. Maybe this is the truer part of me pushing onward and outward into manifestation. And maybe if enough of us manage to manifest our truer parts, we will be the change we want to see in the world in sufficient numbers to change the world.
I’ve been thinking about Kingsley Dennis’s comment on my last post. He quoted the Persian poet Saadi: “If you wish to find the Truth, dive into the ocean. But if you prefer security, stay upon the shore.” Maybe I am trying to dive into the ocean while keeping a toe on the shore with a corporate ‘day job.’ An obvious contradiction – hence my discomfort in the pose. Something has got to give. I have to let go. Somehow.