When it comes to fear and discomfort, contemplative teachers–even motivational speakers for that matter–describe various step-by-step processes of questioning, of breaking down the elements as one might do with a therapist, to reach some truer source of pain.
It isn’t bad advice, and I confess to being fond of listening to such advice like a favorite song, tucking away the ideas in my pocket for later, just in case someone else may benefit. After all, it does make sense that the deeper you go into a matter, the more layers you have a chance to clear up. Even productivity-wise you can’t go wrong!
“All feelings are positive”, says Jenn Lim, so why hesitate?
Still, for myself, step-by-step advice often seems quaint. By the time I even consider inquiry, fears and discomforts have whirled by feverishly and left a mess to attend to in their wake. The window in which to walk through anything systematically seems to have closed, and ‘starting fresh tomorrow’ seems the best course. But is it really?
Today went another way.
I left work feeling deflated. I’d been busy from start until just before finish, wrapping up a series of designs in what I felt was the most efficient way possible, only to be (albeit lightly) scolded just before I left, for taking too long. It had suddenly gotten quite busy just as I’d gone off floor to wrap details. Still, I knew I had balanced my time well, and that the other person was operating from a blind spot. If anything, they’d spent twice the time with their customers that I had with mine, after having come in hours later.
Mind you, I have a lot of respect for this other designer, and know the nature of things when there aren’t enough people to manage a rush. Everyone is handling more than they can, so it’s hard not to look left and right and think the next guy isn’t measuring up. The pattern isn’t new, and I’ve definitely fallen into it myself, but without scolding. Rather than feel put upon, it would have been better for this designer to ask me more detail about what I was working on to see if it could be approached differently. I’m fairly confident they would have comprehended the deadline more clearly. If not, at least I wouldn’t have felt so shot down in a flash after a long day.
Granted, there was a time I would have cried, and I didn’t, though I teared up a little writing it out here. And maybe therapy is finally clicking in, because a few hours after arriving home, after taking time for tea, I began to ask myself a few of those probing questions.
- What emotion were you actually feeling?
Disappointment.
Looked over.
Unsure whether it is worth trying to be heard. Why even try?
Sadness (I tried my best and still didn’t meet expectations)
Pride. **Don’t you know who I am?
This last one is funny, I guess. It’s the gist I boiled down from a longer rant about being taken for someone only capable of, or not even capable of, such a job. I realized how much I wish to be seen in more of a totality than a present body performing a task. When I feel reduced in such a moment, especially by someone I’ve worked with a while, I’m quite hurt. - Why is the discomfort so strong (disproportionate)?
Fear.
I fear this isn’t the right place for me / I’m not sure what else I’d do.
I fear that this could be the right place for me, but I’ll leave prematurely just before things get better. It’s always so close to being right.
There’s more, but you get the idea.
Hidden in the bundle there also arose what I’ll call spiritual perfectionism. When I look at the attachment I feel to my role there, not just as a ‘good designer’, but taking being an excellent ‘worker’ and colleague to be a fractal of mattering in the world on the whole, I feel shaky.
Something is not quite right.
The way I get through my day is by seeing my work as more than what it is a lot of the time, or by looking for opportunities to make it into more. I feel a lot of satisfaction while giving detailed attention, or even just having warm exchanges over trivial things. The trivial turns out not to be so trivial a lot of the time, as people are undergoing stressful transitions in life. I help smooth their paths.
But here’s something. Perhaps in seeing things this way, I’m not holding my role very lightly. Perhaps I’m even doing the opposite, by putting weight on it to be a vehicle of ‘more’ and reflection of practice instead of mere place of exchange. Am I using the company to play out my spiritual fantasies!?!
What a weird idea.
Something I’ll have to consider more.
Where are the lines, after all?
“For Hongzhi the whole purpose of practice is to “graciously share
yourself with the hundred grass tips [i.e., myriad beings] in the
busy marketplace.””
-from “Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi” by Taigen Dan Leighton, Yi Wu
“Looking back, I guess I used to play-act all the time. For one thing,
it meant I could live in a more interesting world than the one around me.”
― Marilyn Monroe
