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I am unemployed and I hate it. I knew I disliked it a lot, but I recently missed getting a job I could do very well and my reaction showed me that I hate being unemployed. In fact, I think I hate it a little too much or at least in the wrong way. When I finally realized the potential employer was not going to call I felt like a desert wanderer who had been offered a compass and seen it snatched away. I felt completely lost, unable to make any contribution to the world, of no use to anyone. Obviously, I was trapped in the delusion that I am my work, that my work is my job and my worth is determined by that job and how other people value it. Now that is a spiritual train wreck.
One of my key character defects is confusing my job and my work and my work with my self. As a result, when I failed to get that job I experienced a true crisis because I felt I had no work and therefore no value. Baaad mistake. Once I define my work as limited to my job , the way I pay the bills, I'm sliding headlong into putting material values on top and that, as I well know, leads to a dry, unsatisfying life. "Work" should have a much broader, sacred sense. It is how I as a person contribute, materially and spiritually,to the world I am a part of. Work involves discovering that world and giving my heart to it. It is paying attention to what matters most. This sacred work is not identical with my job, though ideally the job will help make it possible for me to do my work - or at the very least not stand in its way.
The confusion goes farther. When, being without a job, I start projects to make good use of my time my ego manages to equate those projects with a job and thus my work. So in my mind, doing this little digital animation will somehow become my job, contribute to meeting my financial needs and according to my ego that means that it will be my work, my contribution to the building of our world. A small project thus becomes massively important to my ego and as a result scares the hell out of me so I constantly find reasons to avoid it. I am failing to see things in context. This particular project may be only a small part of my work, it may or may not lead to or influence a job, but the fact that it is small and unpaid does not mean it isn't worth doing.
The whole question of what I see as my work relates directly to the question of whether I will persist in trying to twist reality to build myself in my image, with my view of what I should be doing, or in God's image. My ego is certain it knows exactly what I should be and pressures me to follow its path, closing myself off to all other possibilities. When I succumb to this toxic self-reliance, which I so often do, I create my own narrow world and blind myself to a wealth of beautiful possibilities. The point is that I am not my ego, my false self. There is another, fundamental part of me: my true self, the self that seeks to unite in love with all that is. If I can learn to focus on the goals of my true self rather than my ego I will be all right and unemployment will be just that: lack of a job and a financial problem, not a spiritual one.
I get the financial insecurity of not having a job, that's a real problem and it impacts how we manage the physical realities of our life.
ReplyDeleteHowever, equating one of your roles in life (and your position at work is just one of many) with who you are isn't only a potentially dangerous in your overall identity it's dangerous in how you judge other people. If you think that you are your role at work, and your identity and personal worth is justified and affirmed simply by holding that role, you will undoubtedly do the same to others. You will judge other people by the role they have in their work. That simply is not fair.
When i came into AA i was warped in my thinking. I judged other people by what school they went to, what car they drove, what town they lived in, and of course what job they held. A massive lesson to me was how much crap that judgment is. I went to a meeting and heard a man who dug ditches for a municipal water department and heard him speak. He sounded a lot like Elmer Fudd. Then at some point someone pointed to him and said to me, listen to what he says. A novel sort of thought for me at the time, but i gave it a spin. Then i heard wisdom; not like some sage off the mountain, but real truth and wisdom about me. He had an insight about me and my life and i had never heard anyone actually say such things that made so much sense ever. It caused me to seriously reevaluate myself, and how i looked at people, and looked at myself.
A few years later i had the fortunate opportunity to visit the home of my partner's family in Matagalpa Nicaragua. There i saw some of this hemisphere's most poor people, and i didn't just see them as a tourist would see from afar, but rather my partner knew them and would visit them in their very humble homes. What i expected to see were hungry miserable people that were just existing. I could not have been more wrong. I saw happy people that were smiling over things that we would never even consider finding joy over. I saw happiness, real happiness amidst circumstances that would baffle us. I was truly humbled. Who am i to judge myself or another person over the most superficial aspects of who they are.