We Could All Be Gods If We Could Rise Above All The Crap . . .
Just a thought. What if we could put all of the daily crap behind us and rise above it?
Imagine: No worrying about what people are thinking or saying about you. No obsessing about career, or salary or the bills that threaten to topple our bank accounts! No qualms about death or illness.
Where is this Utopia, and how do I sign up? Well, I’m increasingly starting to believe that Utopia exists only in the head, solely in each person’s mental state. I know this sounds crazy, but follow my thinking for a minute:
Confusion of the mind
A woman I work with asked for a pay rise recently. Her reasoning was that she had worked extremely hard in managing her department and covering for staff who were off, frequently using her personal time to keep the department up to date.
She heard through the grapevine (read Office Manager) that there had been no change to salary information this month, when it would have been due. Regardless of the fact that she hadn’t heard this directly from her superior (to whom she had made the request), she’s gone off steaming about what she’s going to do to get even! “I’m going to cut down my hours. Who cares if the work falls behind? They’ll just see how much they need me!”
I get the latest on this neurotic saga every morning. It’s amazing how people can blow a situation completely out of proportion without even querying the matter!
Peace And Harmony: Bring It On!
Regular readers will know that I’ve been reading into Buddhism recently. A major part of this is trying to put life in perspective, and I’ve been looking at the Buddhist methods of meditation as a means of looking more closely at what is important (or what should be).
Buddhists, for instance, believe that there are four main precepts in life: you are born, you grow old, you get sick, you die. The main aim (I think) is to be happy in your life, show love toward others and try not to cause harm. Your salary is irrelevant. Your job title is useless. How big is your house? How classy is the area where you live? Can I interest you in an expensive car, the latest mobile phone or any other mod cons?
Back to my colleague: what’s going on with this woman? Why the resentment? Why is she spending day and night formulating attack strategies she will never use? She’s not struggling for money, earns a good wage and her husband owns a successful business. A raise for this woman is not important - she’s craving something else.
Can I tell you something? On one day, while being relaged with the latest salary battle strategy, I suggested that a rise might not be important. Perhaps she should concentrate on reducing her hours and spending more time at home with her husband. “After all, ” I said, “after you’re gone, who’s going to care that you worked 12 hour days and gave everything to the firm?”
She stopped for a moment. I thought she was going to hit me.
The best bit is, this woman is more than twice my age - I thought this type of realisation was supposed to become clearer as you got older! It seems you’re never too old to blunder on regardless. . .
