waking up: freeing ourselves from work

There was a certain symmetry about it. My friend and neighbor, A, had helped me break into the first level of the electrical trade, the apprenticeship, and here she was trying to help me break into the next: steady work. As we made our way, in her little truck, slowly, so I could follow and memorize the route, around the curves of the hills, past the Bevatron, past the Advanced Light Source, past the switching station, through the eucalyptus grove, and on to the dead-end at Building 69, I tried to summon the feelings of excitement and anticipation I could sense A was expecting me to have. Maybe even awe? Who knew? A and I have been cyphers to each other since just about always. Which never deterred her from wanting to shepherd me through, and over the humps, coursing along the general principle that women in the trades help their sisters.

We drove up and down the hill, twice. I assured her a third trip was unnecessary, and we exited the facility. It gave me the creeps, truth be told, this place, the trappings of privilege always have. It feels like this mountain of ego that must be leveled so we can reach hands across it and real life can resume. Someone pushed the ‘mute’ button some unknown millennia ago and we’ve been in suspended animation ever since.

But I would go to the interview on Monday. It was a ludicrous long shot, and I was ambivalent, but I would go. I had a dozen reasons why, and why not; but the ‘whys’ always win out – because the deck is stacked. At least, that’s my excuse. And like every incontrovertible truth, it’s also not.
“Things are not as they seem. Nor are they otherwise,” as the quote in Anne Lamott’s most recent book says.

Back in the flatlands, on the block where A used to live, and I live still, she pulled over and then got out with me. Walking around to my side of the car, she gave me a big smile and hug – her signature big smile and hug. A believes in projecting positive energy at all times, just to keep all of our flagging spirits up. It’s her particular gift.

So, on Monday around eleven, I tried to channel A as my guiding light as I turned onto Hearst Street and made my way up The Hill. Replicating all A’s moves from the Friday before, with only a few missteps, I made it to Building 69 with ten minutes to spare.

It was immediately obvious I was not the star of the candidate pool. In a dark, cluttered conference room for cast-offs I waited – feeling as superfluous as all the excess furniture, for the hiring committee to assemble.

Twenty minutes later we were finally underway.

It didn’t take long for the interview to begin skittering downhill.

“Tell us about your experience with switchgear.”
“What would you do if you felt your boss was wrong?”
“How do you handle a difficult customer?”

A written test might have leveled things a bit. A had told me to prepare for a written test. I was ready for a written test. Ask me to draw the low voltage wiring connections for a 9-lead motor, I thought, come on, ask me. Or how about a three-way switch? Ask me to draw that.

No written test – just the relentless questions.

“What experience have you had leading a team?”
“Describe any transformer experience you’ve had.”

Towards the end of the interview I learned that our Local’s photovoltaics teacher, a real gizmo-geek and totally brilliant person, was also being ‘considered.’ I couldn’t help but laugh when they told me that. What a no-brainer that was. You can bet he has a few motor / switchgear / transformer stories to tell, I thought. In contrast, my narrative to the group consisted of fairy tales and wish-lists.

“Well, clearly, I have no chance,” I said, laughing. (I’m finding it harder and harder, as my experience with our present reality deepens, to remember to censor myself with polite nothings, or, with institutions, to use bureaucratese. What I’m actually thinking tends to just bust on out.)

On it went:
“Tell us about your strengths and weaknesses.”
And then the inevitable: “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

By the time the grilling was over and I was headed back home I found myself inexplicably angry. Seething, in fact. I had no idea why.
Until later, when I wrote in my journal:

This has just gotten so old. Here I am, after all these years, still selling myself – and less and less successfully.

Still selling myself, after all these years.

Once, I had a job where I went into the public schools, along with my co-‘workshop leaders’, to deliver violence-prevention presentations to children and youth. We would tell them that they should never, ever, keep a bad secret, that if anyone hurts them, they should tell someone.

I have decided to break the silence.

How many nights of stomach-churning, head-burning anxiousness have I passed now in my life, anticipating the following day of work? How many times have I lain awake doubting my thin-skinnedness, beating myself up over my inability to wear the mask of invulnerability? And the worst part is, it gets molded despite myself. The skin hardens. But is that a good thing? Is that what we want for our children? For their tender souls?

Most of us don’t mind working, but we each of us know on some deep fundamental level that our little offering of work to the collectivity, to the general good, comes from only a very, very small part of us, we, whose spirits are so big and rambling and complex. To ask that some function we perform be allowed to overwhelm the ‘all’ of us, is inhuman. To require ‘the function’ to control us, rather than the other way around, is a form of abuse.

In the great scheme of things, what doesn’t tend toward joy and pleasure must surely be an aberration, a footnote in our long, circuitous human story. A thousand years hence (with the required added coda: “if we survive”), humans, once again a free species, will look back in horror upon the commercial imperative that briefly captured the energies of humankind, a brief but poignant aberration, the toll in human and other species life, and our quiescence in the face of it, awful to contemplate. Worldwide inequality deepens and we yawn. Poverty rates climb exponentially and we reach for the remote. Child homicide rates escalate and we but shake our heads in wonder.

My son once said that animals must find us odd in not being able to nurture our offspring. He said mothers of other species automatically know how to love their babies.

And I replied, yeah, well, except for the ones in zoos. They often turn on their own babies.

Our eyes met. We smiled grimly.

Is survival at a job the highest good? the goal, the objective? …to endure? …in a job? I don’t think so. If not, we as human beings in a society that does not value its people are faced with a dilemma: how to hang onto ourselves, and pay the bills – and how infinitely more agonizing the dilemma when a child, or children, enter the picture. The trapdoor really slams shut then. So, of course those who enjoy the illusion of rule don’t want parenting to be supported. Of course they don’t want us free of the worry about our health. They want us trapped, cornered and lifeless. Gotcha! Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do? Caged animals under stress – that’s us, folks. Is there really any wonder there’s so much violence?

That which makes the contribution that we currently call ‘work’ so unpleasant, that about it which makes us so unhappy – like those shallow symbols of status, like our total lack of agency in determining our conditions of work – will have to change. All the suffering of all our ancestors must mean something. Can we grow up now? Can we refuse to get drawn into those substance-reducing traps, refuse to be manipulated when they try to stuff our basic ideas for restoring health and spirit into pretend-Pandora-boxes with phony labels like “Socialist!” to disguise their contents?

The discussion that follows examines what holds us back, and why – and then suggests some possible ways out of the trap.

Continue to "Being Bossed"

Nascence to End Work

waking up: freeing ourselves from work

Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves From Work

Preface