… continued from “Rethinking 1” which I finished writing just a minute ago.
The other thing I thought about was this question of finding “more interesting and meaningful work”. I’m pretty sure I’ve whined about this before. But during this evening’s Dharma Talk, the speaker casually remarked that of course Buddhism teaches there is no happiness to be gained in running after things Out There, in clinging to or grasping for things in the World. Happiness, so says the Dharma, comes from cultivating your inner attitude. And of course I know this. It’s a commonplace that Buddhism teaches exactly this. No big surprise there.
Only in that case … why should I expect it to make the slightest difference to my happiness if I find another job? If suffering is constant so long as we don’t change our internal attitudes, shouldn’t I actually expect to feel the very same level of dissatisfaction in my next job as in this one?
Of course that’s just a theoretical point. It might be wrong. Maybe the Buddha Dharma isn’t right about everything. But consider a few data points:
1. I have been puzzling over this issue of feeling mis-employed as long as I have been employed. The question is an old friend, of sorts. I have puzzled over it for years. Decades. And I have gotten nowhere, really.
But on the whole I’m usually pretty good at solving puzzles. I did well in school. I’m good at Sudoku. So if I’ve been puzzling over a question for decades and still don’t have an answer, is it possible that maybe the question just doesn’t have an answer? Maybe the problem isn’t with the jobs I’ve held, but with my expectations for how rewarding a job ought to be.
Talking back, I could answer that I puzzled over my marriage for almost as long before I started getting answers. Maybe I’m just looking for these answers in the wrong places. At the same time I have to admit that, when it comes to the questions about my marriage, I already knew some of the answers right at the beginning. I just didn’t want to admit them to myself.
2. And really, my job isn’t so bad. It’s something I know how to do. It’s something a lot of other people don’t know how to do, and don’t even want to know how to do … but the Company needs it done. They pay me more than I’m probably worth … not that I’m complaining. It’s not great wealth, but so far it has kept my kids in private schools. So yeah, sure, it has its boring days … what job doesn’t?
3. It also has its fun days. I wrote my post “Not at ease” after a string of boring and unproductive days – days when I had stuff to do and it was overwhelmingly difficult to get myself to do any of it. But then the next day I was bright and chipper. I found out that in three weeks I’m going to have to fly to Europe for a one-week project with Hil, and I spent the morning on travel plans. For a while I even thought I might be able to stop off en route and visit Elly as well. Turns out I won’t be able to see Elly this trip, but still it’s going to be fun: I’ll be up and out of my normal routine, and I’ll be travelling abroad again. The last time work sent me abroad was 2011. I’m pretty sure the only international travel I’ve done since then was the trip to Peru last February. So yes, I was in a good mood all day.
4. I also remember the company where I worked before this job. I was managing a department whose role was even more boring than my current one: a dull, routine clerical function which had over time become the designated whipping-boy for the entire company. If anything went wrong anywhere, it was our fault: that’s how things stood when I took over. It was a situation tailor-made for me to moan and whine that I wanted something more interesting and meaningful. What was different was – yes – my internal attitude.
Right from the beginning, my first challenge was to get people to stop blaming us for shit, which in turn meant that we had to stop screwing up. So for a while I had to work on that.
Then people resented having to deal with us, because the way we worked was so painful for them. That was the next thing I had to fix.
By the time I had gotten us over those two hurdles, I had come to see that we played, or had it in our power to play, an essential role in the company … unsung and unglamorous but absolutely critical, a role without which nothing else could work unless someone else picked up the ball. And yes, in other companies someone else did. But honestly, no-one was better qualified than we were. So I concentrated our efforts on that role. In time other departments began to see how essential we really were. We ended up with a status in the company that no other department named the same thing in any other company could match. Topics that normally belonged in any number of other places were all referred to us because “That’s what Hosea’s people do.”
But you know … our core work never changed in all that time. The fundamental stuff we had to do every day, the sine qua non that they paid us for, was still the same dull, routine, clerical function it had always been. In all this time I hadn’t been given a more glamorous job. All I had done was to think about the job differently from my predecessor. Everything else proceeded from that.
So maybe it’s not just a theoretical point. Maybe the Buddha Dharma isn’t full of hot air. Maybe it’s onto something. Maybe I should stop whining about my job and just change my way of thinking.
Or maybe I should stop drinking and go to bed. Sweet dreams, all.
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