Work Schmirk

13 Apr 2010 1 Comment

by Marian in LOA, musings

Lately I have been pondering an idea that seems rather against the grain of mainstream thought, but the more I think about it the more sense it makes to me.

I have lost faith in the value of hard work.   Hmm, let me put that in a stronger way:

I don’t believe in hard work.

*Gasp!* How anti-American! How sexy, how beatnik, how totally rebellious. But I don’t mean it in a rebellious sort of way. In fact, I do believe in a lot of other things. I believe in attention, I believe in focus, I believe in fascination, and cultivated awareness and consciousness and presence. I believe in flow. But here is what I do not believe in: I do not believe in self-flagellation, or noses to grindstones. Poor noses! I do not believe in making yourself do something against your own will. What is that, anyway? It undermines your self-esteem and makes you feel powerless. Worse, I think that we have developed this idea in our collective psyche that “moar werk = bettar”. All that stuff out there, all that stuff we want, if we deserved it we would already have it, so maybe if we work really really hard, we’ll deserve it. Guess what — doing something that you don’t want to do is a lot of freakin’ work!  And  then amazingly, we find that foom, our lives are a whole lot work and struggle. It’s difficult to admit it, but we totally asked for it. And the more we struggle, the more complicated it gets, and the more moving pieces we have to look out for and the more out of control we feel and we get overwhelmed with the feeling of Everything Out There and if it would only behave, and why do some people have it so easy and what did we do to deserve all of this and maybe if we just work harder…

Do you really think that that single mother of five, working from dawn to dusk to hold up the sky of her life and our world deserves less than the CEO of a fortune 500 company? Does she work any less? Most people don’t think so, but they feel bad when they think about it so they make up all sorts of stories to explain the disparity, most of which involve placing blame somewhere… on her, on society, on the currency system or the economy or the government.

I also don’t believe in blame, but  that’s a rant for another day.

So, Marian, miss know-it-all, if you know all the answers are wrong, what is the answer hmm?

The answer is 42.

Well, I’m just saying that work is an arbitrary, relative thing that we do and it’s correlated with our expectations and inner sense of worth. And when we relax our grip just a tiny bit, on trying to micromanage the details, and instead try to feel around for the place closer in proximity, or even *in* LOVE, then the work disappears and the we’re moving in a place of passion.

Have you ever been in love? Have you ever seen  how much in-love gets done? Have you driven four hours to have sex in the woods with your lover at 4am because you just couldn’t NOT do it? If you didn’t want to do it, it would be a lot of work!

That’s all I’m saying. More sex in the woods, less work.

Related: An Apology for Idlers by Robert Lewis Stevenson

The Quote of the Day for today, by Abraham-Hicks:

Most people have a hard time delegating, or even wanting to delegate, because you have been justifying your existence through your hard work, and you equate success with struggle; you equate results with struggle. And so, you sort of wear your struggle like a badge of honor. And all of that is opposite of allowing the Well-being. The only thing that ever matters in success or achievement is your achieving the things that you want to achieve. So if you are setting standards and you’re feeling uncomfortable about the standards that you’ve set, tweak the standards back a little bit. Ratchet it back a notch. Give yourself a break. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Lighten up. Be easier. Go slower. Take it easy. Have more fun. Love yourself more. Laugh more. Appreciate more. All is well. You can’t get it wrong. You never get it done.