I wrote this a while back, but I wasn't ready to post it until I put notice in to my employers that I was making an exit, so here we go...
I know a way to guarantee cognitive dissonance and stir up a lot of discomfort and maybe pain. Go to your corporate job by day and read Krishnamurti by night. Last night I read (over and over and over) that “Any time there is an issue of self-continuance, there is fear….”. And on my bicycle ride into work this morning, it became clear to me that the only thing that gets me out of bed at 4:30 am and to work by 5:30 is fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. If you know me, maybe you can guess what happened right after this realization. I cried. And pedaled and cried and pedaled. I already knew that I didn’t like going to work. I knew that I was only there for a paycheck. I knew I had no aspirations for growing in the firm. But, I didn’t realize that the foundation of it all was fear. Logical fear, yes. Fear that I won’t be able to pay my rent or feed my animals.
It’s shocking and amazing when you can take a new concept or even a sentence, as in this case, and layer it over your current knowledge of a situation to find that under its light, everything has changed. As of this morning it was no longer me working a job I wasn’t happy with, it became me living in fear. What? Me? ME! The one who knows from experience that a person manifests their own destiny. The one who believes in creative freedom and the shaking off of anything that feels like chains.
I look around my office and I don’t see my concerns mirrored in anyone else’s eye. They may have the fear, but they’re not facing it. Before you face it, you have to acknowledge it and it doesn’t feel good. Because when you acknowledge it, it won’t stop poking you in the forehead until you’ve done something to eradicate it. And eradicating it will likely disrupt the pattern of self-continuance that Krishnamurti refers to.
I know that the best stories are when the big mahatma – the one in the corner office with a view and a load of responsibilities – takes the leap and gets out of the business. He starts a charity or a rare plant nursery. He inevitably takes a 90% paycut, but finally learns what its like to put his own child down for a nap. That’s what makes everyone feel good. The light went on in his head and he broke free! Yay! But, no one really cares when an assistant does the same thing, because the assistant has like $1000 in her bank account and goes to work at the plant nursery that the bigwig started.
Often, after painful realizations, radical actions don’t happen. What can happen is that the dissonance of the reality and the desire to break out of the reality sit and stew uncomfortably together until it makes one ill or depressed or both. I know. The fear is strong. It is reinforced daily. For me, it is reinforced by the guarantee of a good paycheck combined with the uncertainty of ever finding what it is that will truly fulfill me. Walking off the job like the person in my fantasies does means leaping into a big black ocean holding nothing but my sewing machine and my weekend itineraries as life preservers.
I’m scared. I’m feeling too rational. And that feeling sucks.
