The work day requires me to sit—immobile as rock. My fingers do the walking, tapping their way across the computer keyboard, recording colorless data.
I’ve ‘occupied’ the job many years. My initial commitment was temporary (no way I’m gonna do this!) but fate has had its way with me.
Through cycles of resentment, hopelessness, humiliation and boredom, I slowly find ‘right relationship’ with the job.
I approach its demands as a spiritual discipline, a fierce yoga that lays bare my resistance (read: temper, arrogance, hubris, pride, laziness) for examination.
Similar to returning to the breath in meditation, countless repetitions of refusing to act out resistance diminishes its strength. A degree of spaciousness for less superficial experience opens.
Today, using headphones issued by the organization, I enter You Tube and encounter the honeyed sound of cello. As effortlessly as slipping into a still pond, the mundane falls away and I drop into a world of wonder and feeling.
The experience triggers an image of dappled landscape in which certain parts glisten in revelation while others remain in shadow.
For a shimmering moment I understand the unwelcome confines of my job—when well met—work to set me free.