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Owning Your Job In these persistently difficult financial times, would you believe that there is a forgotten truth that could heal the damage both to our economies and to the weary souls who propel our economic engines? What forgotten truth could carry that kind of magical horsepower? Like all truths, they must be first observed, chewed on and finally absorbed. So, I bring to you a parable. Please travel back with me to a village only 200 years ago. The village is composed of approximately 500 people or about 125 households. Our village has a single baker and he meets the baking needs of all 500 people 365 days a year. Very few villagers do any baking at home because their time and resources are otherwise engaged to perform their own service or produce their own product for the village. The model I’ve described accurately reflects every indigenous society. Our baker, Markus, learned his craft from his mother and father who were a stellar team. Markus wanted to be a hunter since childhood, but he never had the instinct to readily find game and because of his physical stature, he couldn’t muster the endurance required. After two years of failing miserably as a hunter, he returned to the family bakery attached to their home where his parents were simultaneously, and rapidly, physically failing. Within a year, they were both gone. In his grief, he threw himself into his work. The written to-do list for each day was daunting, but he did manage to fill nearly every order on time. However, almost as if an evil gremlin was hovering about to vex him, every order seemed to conflict with the next. Nothing flowed. Late one evening, deep into his fifth ale, he realized that he wasn’t receiving the thanks, handshakes and hugs his parents used to receive for doing the same damn job. During his sixth ale he concluded that people of the village sucked. Although the money and bartering were fine, he worked far too hard to have so little satisfaction. Then on a sunny September morning, the big IT happened. A girl of five or six from a neighboring village had just bit into one of his cinnamon pretzels and she nearly screamed as she turned to her mom, “Mommy, this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted! Thank you!” Mom replied, “Thank the man who baked them.” The little girl’s eyes locked onto Markus’s and she simply oozed out, “Thanks . . .” Something snapped in him like a glass rod. He became The Baker in the beat of a hummingbird’s wings. And with a few splashes of water on his face (to erase the tears) he awoke to a world without to-do lists, deadlines and obligations, he awoke to a purpose. Markus discovered the monumental differences between DOING and BEING, although he had not yet even given BEING a try. Truths are like that: they require no experience or evidence, just discovery. By the end of that first day he noticed a purity in his smallest actions. Somehow the most intelligent portion of his brain was aligning what was the next most logical event that he must orchestrate. On that first day, he smiled and chuckled more than he’d emitted in the past year. Several people that day asked if he’d lost weight or had done something different with his appearance. By every measurable means, he was a bit younger. The exultant elation of the first day’s epiphany soon subsided, but the low, ever-hovering joy was rarely absent. He wondered how he’d ever performed the FUNCTIONS of a baker when he’d done them all blindfolded. It seemed like he noticed everything now, and he actually didn’t have time to absorb all the details. He noticed that there were two families of Armenian descent who recently joined the village and he created taste tests for them until he was confident he’d mastered the best single bread to offer them daily and make them feel more at home. People tasted the peace and joy within him, and they hungered to share it. (Actually, everyone said that even his products “tasted” better, although he hadn’t noticeably changed any of his family’s mainstay recipes.) Within a year he could have accepted a dinner or pub invitation every night of the week. Within two years, he was married to an angel and he discovered he had achieved a degree of reverent adoration from the villagers that even his parents never acquired. Because he wholly owned that portion of the 500 villager’s stomachs that craved his many forms of products, he was soon the first baker to ever be elected to town council. He never believed in miracles until he realized that he was working at least two more hours each day and yet he was only rarely exhausted, and almost never ill. He used the additional hours to experiment with the “art” of baking and to supply nightly deliveries to three smaller villages. Funny, somewhere within his soul, he now considered himself a gifted artist. He couldn’t imagine ever fully retiring. He had become addicted to the smiles and thanks of his fellow villagers. At times he prayed for a competitor just so he could truly prove his talent and worth, but of course, no one dared challenge his authority. But, it really wasn’t about him and his ego anymore. It was about being the baker for those he loved and those he served. When a stranger asked what he did, his reply was always, “I am a baker.” Indeed, he was the first baker in the village’s memory to simply be called Baker on the streets. Markus eventually lost his name to accept his life. For the last 30+ years, I’ve served as spiritual healer to clients throughout the world. For at least 15 years of those years the majority of my marketing and biography materials have began with a simple four-word declaration: I am a healer. My hometown of Cambridge, Minnesota taught me what it meant to BE. Cambridge remains a small, predominantly farming, predominantly Swedish community. It was there that I became aware that you could ask a farmer, “Exactly what do you do for a living?” and the reply would return, “I’m a farmer.” I think you now see that this is quite a different answer than, “I farm.” I can say from experience that BEING absorbs the labor of DOING. Joseph Campell, arguably the greatest comparative mythologist of all time, penned, “You must let go of the life you have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for you.” I hope you can see that Markus accepted a life that was waiting for him. Perhaps, your employment doesn’t quite have a bonafide ancient village cubbyhole like baker, healer and farmer to place it in. But, that doesn’t collapse the truth we are exploring. In regard to your employment, aren’t you looking for the very-best next turn? The best part of being the baker is that employee (you), employer, customer and village all win without caveat. In terms of job security, there is nothing of more visible and immediate benefit you can give your employer than to serve with authoritative ownership of your position. This truth is engaged by answering two questions: Why exactly am I doing this? For exactly whom am I doing this? No matter what your answers are to both of these questions they can combine to creating a new definition of yourself while you are in the workplace. Can you be the car washer while looking for a job as bartender while going to school do be a veterinarian? Absolutely. Can you imagine a marketplace where perfection actually mattered? Even I have difficulty grasping how radically different our world would be. I believe that our current economic crisis is solely a result of the magnitudes DOING instead of BEING. While you are doing it matters little if you fall asleep. While you are being you are awake. Is there any doubt why our communal daydream lead to dreamlike, unsubstantiated values? Is there any doubt why we communally fixated on the magical money-making machine’s ceaseless output when the machine’s engine had been visibly burning for years from greed-laden sabotage? Why do you serve? Who do you serve? As a social creature, you can only find true contentment in service (God placed that fact in your design). You can stomp grapes or you can dance on them, the result is the same. For all of us, insist on a higher order of existence as each moment passes. Do you recall that Markus surrendered to what was already there? Surrender to what service lies before you today, wrap your workplace identity around that service, and relax into the power of BEING.
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