The work day requires me to sit—immobile as rock. My fingers do the walking, tapping their way across the computer keyboard to record colorless data. I’ve ‘occupied’ the job many years, now. Though my initial commitment was temporary (no way I’m gonna do this!) 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 (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 gradually 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. An image appears of dappled landscape in which some places glisten in revelation while others recede in shadow.
For a shimmering moment, I understand the unwelcome confines of my job—when well met—work to set me free.