I walk around and look at stuff a lot. It's sort of my job, I think, and I'm a pretty lazy person so walking around staring suits me just fine. Today, on my way back from a healthy hike I saw a bunch of men from the phone company putting up a telephone pole. Haven't you ever wondered how they do that, especially in the middle of a city? Well, it's a very cool process let me tell you and I watched in awe of these guys, the guys who make everything run and work.
Thank God for them. Some days it amazes me that I wake up and there's electricity, running water, and heat. Think about everything it takes to provide these creature comforts! Years of thought, labor, fixing, and planning go into all the things we take for granted. If everyone wasn't out and about, doing their thing, the world would grind to a halt. Frankly, if everyone was like me, content to just wander around, we'd be back in the Stone Age. Not that there's anything wrong with "primitive" living, it's just not modern American culture.
I am grateful to architects, construction workers, engineers, electricians and most of all - God, most of all - plumbers. Raising three young men you can bet that well-functioning plumbing was a high priority and for the most part, everything has worked. I do sometimes have the occasional "disaster dream" where toilets are overflowing and roofs leaking like mad but in my waking state, 99% of the time it's all good.
We all need to do something. We need to stay busy and feel productive. Understand that productivity in and of itself is of no value. "Hard work" - which we idolize like a god - is just that, hard work; nothing more, nothing less. For some reason, we seem to believe that working hard to earn a paycheck is a good thing. For those of us who have worked hard let me speak up loud and clear, right now: there's nothing good about hard work, except how it feels when it's over. Once again the adage is true that the best thing about banging your head against a brick wall is how good it feels when you stop.
The Buddhists refer to our work in the world as "chop wood, carry water" - that routine work we do daily to sustain ourselves. They do not invest the work itself with any inherent value, except that the very act puts them exactly where they are at the moment. They do one thing at a time. It's a beautiful, peaceful philosophy about work. The value is not in the end result necessarily, but in the process.
My telephone guys were very focused in getting this huge tree-pole into a tiny round hole in the ground. They worked slowly and together and because of them, phones will continue to work. Apparently, to keep things running smoothly we all need each other. Telephone guys do good work, friends - both necessary and, in its way, important. Much of what we do in our work lives is meaningless. Is your job meaningless?
Once or twice a week I take a boxing lesson/workout with a guy named Rocky. No kidding, his name is Rocky and you can't even tell what that thing is in the middle of his face, it's been broken so many times. Rocky speaks real softly and is a funny guy but he kicks your ass for .00. He never inquires about things like your last name or health insurance. You never fill out a form or sign a waiver.
"Hey, you get hurt," he shrugs, "You were never here."
Rocky's job is to help people feel strong. That's good, and important. Some nights in his class there might be a nurse, a Navy Seal, a plumber, a detective, a teacher. We all come to learn from Rocky, and to laugh. This Navy Seal is built like the proverbial brick house and one night he was getting ready to leave for another training camp.
"You going to go to the war?" I asked innocently. He looked at me, not in a mean way but just quizzically. "War is my job," he said simply.
Everyone has to do something. Some people fight our wars, others unstop our toilets, clean the laundry, invest our money, teach the kids, file paperwork, make French fries. Some of us must love our work, feel it as our devotion and others just don't mind doing anything. I don't think it really matters so much what you do externally, but how you approach it and what your internal framework is as you go about your business. If you are working for the wrong reasons, or you act in ways that are destructive, you wear away at the fabric we are weaving. On the other hand, if you work with patience and virtue (yes, virtue) you make this stinky world a more tolerable place to hang out, whether you're an investment banker or a garbage collector.
As an attorney, I had a very hard time finding what the Buddhists call "right work." There was something about the judicial system that demanded incivility, harshness, fear, and often violence of words. The litigation process seemed built on a secret code of undermining the "enemy," hiding relevant information, and endless bureaucracy. Honestly? I didn't really like lawyers very much at all. And yes, I was one of them.
I left law several times. The first time was after twelve years of practice. I had developed some expertise in employment law and was hired by a fairly large corporation to work as a VP of human resources. Within three months I realized that although the corporate culture might be more civilized, it was just as vicious as the legal system. Also, I was like a babe in the woods in that climate. I couldn't understand the code words in meetings and who you were and were not supposed to talk to and why. This whole "chain of command" thing was enforced like the military and it seemed to me the CEO never knew what was really happening. I went to an awful lot of meetings. We met a lot. There were memos generated about the meetings and "mission statements" created. Fortunately, the institution was purchased, I was "downsized" (the opposite of super-sized) and I left wondering how anything gets accomplished in corporate America.
I returned to private practice in a particularly gruesome firm where there were ethics charges pending against several senior partners. When interviewing me, of course, they strenuously denied any wrongdoing. Two years later, the place fell apart - Peter and Paul robbing each other blind. Fortunately I saw the handwriting on the wall six months before the Blow Up, and had taken a job teaching high school English. When the Board of Education inquired why I would want to leave the practice of law to teach, the answer was easy:
"Take your worst teenagers," I said, "put them in suits. Give them power. Tell them whoever argues the loudest and longest wins. That's what it's like to practice law."
I taught for about two years and found it gratifying but exhausting. I never worked so hard in my life, and for so little money. I resigned, dedicated myself to my writing, and set up a solo part time practice to pay the bills. I've had several "careers" and this much I know: Working with people is really hard.
In the summer of 2004, I took what I thought would be a stupid, mindless position as a hostess in an upscale restaurant because I wanted to see what it felt like to have a job that didn't require intense intellectual energy. I had always embroiled myself in deep stuff - I was a high school teacher, a litigator, an author. It was like I craved a challenge, like I needed to show how smart and capable I was all the time, a pattern that took its toll on me eventually. So, the job at The Boathouse seemed perfect: I could dress up in little skirts, show my legs but not my brains, walk people around, listen to music and not have to impress anyone with my smarts. Little did I know that lawyers, teenagers, and restaurateurs are equally miserable.
Marcus rolled his baby blue eyes and looked at me with disgust because I had mixed up a seating arrangement in his restaurant.
"Do I have to spoon feed this to you Phyllis or do you think you'll eventually get it?"
The question about spoon feeding was far from the most demeaning thing Marcus said to someone within the last hour. Apparently, the owners of this joint studied Management by Degradation and they employed this stellar method ruthlessly. The first time Marcus spoke to me this way, I was dumbfounded. If I thought lawyers were uncivilized and mean, Marcus was about to make them look like a bunch of old ladies.
A restaurant is a microcosm of the universe, or more accurately, Dante's inferno. It's just various levels of Hell. The kitchen is definitely the Ninth Circle of Hell, the deepest and ugliest part in the bowels of the building. It's hot. There are screaming tortured souls hustling about in fear. Danger lurks everywhere - fire, scalding water, knives, blood, disease. Yuck.
The next level of Restaurant Hell is the galley/pantry. This is where the indentured servants (or the more politically correct term "wait staff") come to interact with the screaming souls in the kitchen, as well as each other. It's generally a long narrow space where people are forced to smash into each other while in a hurry to wait on obnoxious people in the lovely dining room. There is little light, space, or air here because the key is economic efficiency. The slaves have to work fast and hard to get the food from the Ninth Circle to the next level, which is the Dining Room.
Amidst the linen and heavy silverware, nicely dressed souls eat ravenously. It costs a lot of money to sit on this side of Hell and mostly white people are surely willing to pay, happy that they are not the "wait staff." While jazz plays lightly in the background, they are served by the slaves who will be screamed at as soon as they pass the boundary from Dining Room to Galley to Kitchen. If a customer complains or food is dropped or something breaks, the slaves will get a verbal whipping but never (or rarely) in front of the Customers.
So my meaningless summer fling job where I get to flirt and look cute turns into a hellish nightmare within three weeks. Gradually, I don't like anyone I work for or with. The other hosts annoy the hell out of me. They don't work hard or fast enough. They talk too much. One has this awful nervous habit of pulling at her clothing all the time. Get me out of here.
After one of Marcus' tirades I turned to a co-worker and said "I don't really need this for .00 an hour." Then I remembered that senior partners in law firms had abused me in the same way for a lot more money. I mean, I was making them 0 an hour (I received a fraction of that) and getting yelled at and it felt exactly the same. Did I have a particular hourly rate whereby it would be okay to take a verbal whipping? No amount of money could make it worthwhile to me.
Maybe the world is just a place where people yell at each other, or maybe I unconsciously desire abuse. Both are equally plausible. The world is a rotten place, no doubt. But if I'm writing this script, well that's a horse of a different color wouldn't you say? Could it be that I WANT to be yelled at so that I can be the noble victim? Then, I look like the long-suffering good one while everyone around me is vilified. This takes the heat off me. I'm good; they're bad. As an added bonus, I get to look courageous and noble by quitting! Works for me.
This world really is just like the kitchen, we simply manage to contain our rage and hatred and express it in different ways. There's almost something admirable about the outright hatred in a kitchen - the "f" word flies freely and people scream mortifying insults at each other. It's uncontained human rage. The pecking order from Executive Chef to Dishwasher is strictly enforced. Step outside the tiles and ovens and we do all the same things, only more nice-nice. Recognizing this, I know that quitting The Boathouse won't do much for me. I have to learn to find peace here. If I can learn to see things differently in this hell, then like the song says, "If I can make it there, I'll make it ANYWHERE..."
After years of hard work as a good citizen and soccer mom I eventually moved to Colorado, spending my days riding horses and skiing; at night I huddle on the couch and read. I am a recluse. After five decades of trying to be happy I'm began to see - with amazement and great humor - what a horrible ass my ego makes me. So I know that escaping to Colorado won't do much. Eventually, I have to interact with people again. As she dragged on a cigarette and tossed her bleach-blonde hair around, my best friend's mother used to say "you take your head with you everywhere."
After a hard day at the office, the school, the restaurant or wherever else I've encountered noise I have attempted to "peacify" my environment with silence, soft music, bells, whale sounds and organic food. All this new age stuff rarely works because eventually I sit next to some jack ass on the bus. It's pretty easy to be peaceful where the exterior world is gorgeous and you don't really have to talk to anyone. No wonder those Zen monks in the Tibetan hills are so....Zen-like. Okay, maybe they don't have many creature comforts (like running water or electricity) but they don't have to deal with humans, traffic, chefs, or people who pull at their clothing constantly. In my never-ending attempt to create challenges, this is how The Boathouse becomes a means for achieving inner peace. I'm sick of challenges, but here we go.
When Marcus yells at me I feel hurt and offended. This garners sympathy from everyone. Feeling victimized, I can repeat his outrageous remarks over and over and folks will tsk tsk and shake their heads and offer me support. What a long-suffering wonderful person I am, and that Marcus - a cad! A horror show! Being "hurt and offended" is great for me; it feels good to be kicked around. Why would I truly want love, peace, and acceptance when pity, scorn, rage, and chaos seem so much more comfortable? I keep finding myself in situations where I am abused because that's what I think I deserve and in fact what I want. If I truly wanted inner peace, I would find a way to create it and my external circumstances would reflect and manifest that desire. No kidding, this is how it works. Don't ask me why; I didn't create this ego thought system (or maybe I did).
People are enormously annoying because they don't do what I want them to do, which is to act and think exactly like me. Granted, if that really happened I'd be bored out of my skull and I'd find another way to create trouble but for now this is the facile scenario: you are different than me, therefore I don't really like you at all. Perceived differences create trouble and discomfort. I wonder if I can see Marcus as my brother - truly the same as me. Though he looks like a homosexual restaurateur with a rage problem, maybe we are the same. My co-worker with the nervous clothes-pulling habit? My sister.
In order to find peace in the Zen Restaurant I have to remove all barriers between me and everyone else. If no one is truly fat, loud, abusive, arrogant, obnoxious, crippled, humble, meek, strange, aloof, smelly, wrong-headed, black, gay or old then we are all the same. Do I want to remove all specialness? Doesn't the fact that I'm an old gay black man define me? Who am I if not that humble servant Mother-Teresa Type or the arrogant Jewish princess? Wow, stripped of our specialness and differences we are all Me.
I hate the people I work with because I can't stand myself. There is something deep inside me that has convinced me that I've done a very bad thing very early on, perhaps before I had any consciousness at all. The Catholics brand this uncomfortable guilty feeling "original sin" and then create a patriarchal system of "forgiveness" based on fear of retribution. It works well if you're into spiritual slavery but I was never simpatico with the idea of God as Ass Kicker. Really, who wants a God who demands sacrifice, appears to love random pain and requires learning only through a never-ending series of bad happenings? You can have Him.
If God is All Love All The Time, (like He HAS to be in order to be God), then He would not have created a world where everything suffers and dies. I'm sorry, it's not logically consistent to believe that a Being who is All Powerful and All Love/Good would think childhood cancer is a "lesson." It's not a "lesson" to watch a kid die - or anyone for that matter - it's a freaking scourge and horror, period. How many times did I have Catholic priests and nuns try to convince me that tragedies are just something we "can't understand" because there's some Mysterious Plan my pea brain can't grasp and God knows better yadda yadda. It never made sense, yet we continue to lay all this bad crap at God's door.
Back to The Boathouse. What does all my metaphysical rambling have to do with Marcus and me? Everything. This cranky, mean-spirited Separate Self seems to cause me pain and anxiety. There must be another way of looking at this so that it doesn't hurt so damn much just to be around people. Here's the way we usually cope with this endless ache: we drink, shop, find "a soulmate," have sex a lot (because that makes us feel joined and not separate, at least for about 30 seconds), work too hard, take up hobbies, collect crap, worship money. The list is pretty endless and nothing works. Nothing outside of my self will ever, EVER bring me peace or happiness. No man, no dollar bill of any size, no plate of food or orgasm extraordinaire will ever ease the pain of separation from each other.
I look at Marcus and see that he's sweating as he yells at me; his hand trembles a little. This guy is terrified. Apparently, he believes there's a lot at stake in the success or failure of this restaurant and fear compels him to scream at me or whatever poor schumck underling happens to be on his radar screen. Seeing him as compelled by fear, I get to feeling a little bit of compassion because I know fear. In fact, I think I invented it. I have spent my whole life on the edge of fear, afraid of falling into it completely. Fear of pain, fear of love, lack of love, lack of money; fear my kids will die or I'll die; fear of being hit by a Mack truck or bitten by a snake. Yet another long list. No wonder my mind is so busy conjuring up ways of staying safe. There is no safe place here.
Marcus is afraid that he won't be able to meet his monthly payables and then he'll be out on the street, mocked and scorned and hungry and no one will love him. This is why he screams at me, at least on this level of form. On another level - my deep unconscious - I have invited him into my dream so that I can blame him for stuff to make me feel better. It helps a little bit to begin understanding this. Although I can chastise my ego for creating this mess, there's nothing I can do to make my ego disappear. But I don't need to pay it a lot of mind and I can try to find another way of looking at this man.
On a practical level I can afford to develop some compassion for Marcus because I don't need this stinking job. My server friends in the galley, however, see themselves as stuck and "having to take it." I have been in the same position. As a lawyer and single parent with bills to pay, I often had to "take it." Need creates prisons; as long as I need anything - a job, a person, a feeling, an orgasm - I'm screwed. My response has always been to leave the abusive situation and I will leave The Boathouse too but I have to develop compassion for my perceived abusers/oppressors because in reality, it's all in my head.
Having fearlessly examined the ego-ploy that got me into this mess in the first place, I am ready to make peace with myself and Marcus and move on. The Restaurant, it seems, will always be a place of drama and chaos. I'm told that Marcus and his partner create insanity wherever they go; maybe that is their comfort zone but it's no longer mine. There is no sense in suffering through this for any reason, now that I understand why I got there in the first place. I give my two-week's notice, do my job well and with relief, and leave on good terms and with peace in my heart. That's the only way to leave anything, from a job to a marriage, to a place.
Your workplace is a fabulous classroom. You are there to learn about Your Self. I am sure you work with people who rub you the wrong way; really annoying, self-centered or arrogant folks. Who is the lazy one who never pulls his weight? Who is the "brown noser?" The Gossip? Isn't it hard to go to work everyday knowing you will have to deal with people who push your buttons? Yet, thank goodness for them. They are great teachers. Pick any one of your co-workers and go through this simple system of thought and you will find peace, I promise. I'll walk you through another example from my life, and then you try it.
When I was a teacher, there were several people who annoyed the hell out of me but one guy in particular made me literally want to run screaming from the room. He was big, burly, bald, and so loud. He talked about money constantly and he was, as Seinfeld would say, a close-talker. Loud and close, in-your-face and all about money. His eyes would bug out and he'd often point his finger for emphasis. When he walked into the faculty room, the first thing he'd do after announcing his arrival (really loudly) is fix his privates. Right there, in front of everyone, especially all the young women.
I'd like to shoot him, but I don't want to go to jail. Honestly, sometimes I think that's my only deterrent. So I desperately need to find a way to accept him so I stop crawling out of my skin each time I see him. Here's the key: whatever annoys me deeply about him is something I hate about myself. I need to repeat that: whatever annoys me deeply about him is something I hate about myself.
So, I go through my list of questions:
Q. Why does his behavior drive me crazy?
A. Because he's loud and obnoxious
Q. Why is he loud and obnoxious?
A. Because he needs to be the center of attention.
Q. Sound familiar?
A. Ouch. Very much yes. How many times in my life have I wanted so much to be the focus of everything, to have everyone listening to me and paying attention? OK so maybe I don't fix my underwear in public or talk loudly about money but I have certainly worked hard, often, to make sure all eyes are on me. Often, I do it in "good" and deferential ways. By being a stellar little worker bee or a good little Mother Teresa but the goal is the same: look at me! Aren't I wonderful? That's all he's doing.
Q. That longing to be in the mix, to be focused on, can you give it up? Can you forgive it in yourself?
A. Maybe. I want to. I hope so. That's what really bugs me about Fred. If I can forgive myself for my own ugliness, I'll surely look softer on him.
Honestly, folks, this little paradigm works. It is the path towards peace. You can call it "forgiveness" if you want, but that too often conjures up images of benevolence and that is dangerous. If you think of "forgiveness" as you being gracious towards some evil lout, "opening your heart" as the New Agers would say, and bestowing some sort of artificial kindness on another poor slob human, you are kidding yourself. That kind of "forgiveness" is pure evil; it is illusion, self-deception, and shall we say plain old bullshit. If I see Fred as in need of my forgiveness I am casting him as a victim, I am making him less than me and - there we go - I am creating differences. The only way to find peace is to see how absolutely the same we are both in our perfect Selves and trapped in our earth suits.
I don't need to forgive Fred his transparent need for attention, I need to recognize it in me, and forgive myself. What do I think I have done, that I need this attention? I feel small and lost, just like Fred, just like everyone else on this silly sphere. No need to worry about Fred's problems, I just need to remember where I came from and where I'm going and then I won't crave attention and affection anymore. When I see it in Fred, it then evokes compassion in me because I remember how lousy it feels.
This is the only exercise you need to make a part of your life. Forget jogging, going to the gym, and eating right. Honestly, those things apparently help to rally your bag of bones but they do nothing for your inner state of peace. Forgiveness, however, is a slam dunk. The process of recognizing in others what I hate about myself is the only exercise that ever made me truly healthy. The ultimate question is always the same: what, exactly, do I think I did that makes me so desperate, sad, and wrong? This is the hardest measure of self examination you'll employ on your spiritual path: admitting you feel miserable, guilty, and lost. It is so hard that we can't look at it, so we project it out onto others, like Fred. It's so much easier to see someone else's misery, ego, and obnoxious personality than it is to admit our own sniveling fear.
When a co-worker presses your buttons, when another person aggravates the hell out of you don't think for one minute it is about that person. Whatever he or she is doing at the moment is simply a reflection of some misery in yourself about yourself, something you find repulsive and unforgivable. Resist the temptation to blame, or worse, "forgive" them in the traditional religious sense. Ask only: what do I see that I hate in myself, and then go to forgive that. It is much harder to forgive yourself than it is to bestow that artificial religious forgiveness on another.
Work is about chop wood, carry water of course. It is about putting up telephone poles and serving garlic mashed potatoes. More than anything, though, it is about interacting with people in an ostensible effort to get something done. In the course of these ventures, our fellow humans will drive us crazy. This is where the real work begins. From this day forward, see your job as that kind of classroom where you are the subject of today's lesson. Use the wonderful opportunities your co-workers will undoubtedly bestow on you to cultivate self love and compassion. Your paycheck is nice, but ultimately meaningless if the work you do cannot bring you peace.
If you work in a place of chaos and drama and this does not suit you, leave. If you can manage to find laughter in the midst of it all, you are just fine. In fact, either way you are just fine. What we "do" here ultimately does not matter. Our jobs are truly meaningless, though we invest the notion of work with so much emotion and meaning. It doesn't amount to a hill of beans, friends. Whatever you do and wherever you go to work, look only for the spiritual opportunities to learn to love your Self and others.
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