I have just started an improvisation
group with some friends and new friends. We had just had our first
meeting and it had gone very well, but as I was on my way home I was
struck by guilt. “How can you be doing something as useless as this
when there's actual work to be done?”
As I started to write more specifically
about what I was experiencing, I noticed that what it came down to
was my relationship to work, leisure and responsibility, and also how
I had viewed my father as a child – I was feeling guilty for doing
something “useless”. I will now go through some dimensions of
these issues.
- Workaholism
- What is “enough”
-- Workaholism --
My father is/was a “workaholic”,
meaning a person addicted to working. Throughout my life I have
witnessed him abuse himself with excess work with the justification
that it's a man's “duty” to work and that one simply “has to”
work, that there is no way out of this paid slavery. We have been in
a lot of debt since the depression of the early 1990's and so he had
a reason to work a lot, because he had a family of 6 to provide for –
all the more justifications to work oneself to death, especially as
he saw our situation to be his fault and tried to make amends by
guaranteeing survival for his children. He worked 10-15-hour days and
we only saw him late in the evenings and during holidays. I learned
that my father was always working and that it was an honorable and a
necessary thing, although we missed him a lot.
What I now see is the satisfaction one
gets out of pushing oneself to one's limits – enjoying your own
suffering because you're fulfilling your self-image as “the one who
suffers for greater good”, or even “the one who suffers because
he deserves it”. So it's not even perceived to be suffering but
self-fulfillment. It's fair, it's just.
With our father there was always also a
sense of “being wronged by the world”, as he demonized the
officials that he was indebted to, and it felt like we as a family
were in a battle of us vs. the world, the world being all the nasty
authorities that just wanted to bully us. So the fact that he worked
his ass off to “win” in the game with the authorities was cheered
on – the more he worked, the more he was “winning”. What none
of us realized (except maybe for him) is that the system would never
allow him to win. That option was simply never realistically
achievable. But we believed there was a way out of misery, and that
it was to either work really hard or win at the lottery (be saved),
and that working hard was the best and the only thing you could do to
beat the “enemies”.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe it is admirable/honorable to abuse
oneself with too much work and too little rest because of how I
perceived my father as a child, not realizing I was buying into the
survival mechanisms the rest of my family - who also saw the
self-abuse my father was going through - were utilizing as
justifications, excuses, abdicating responsibility and defending
oneselves from the fact that another was sacrificing himself because
of “duties” he had imagined to belong only to him.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to adopt / create my family's belief that our parents should earn our living by themselves.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to adopt / create my family's belief that because my mother had a steady paid job, my father as an entrepreneur had to earn all the extra money by taking on more and more assignments.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to adopt / create my family's belief that there is nothing the children can do to assist the family financially.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to adopt / create my family's belief that children need toys and that it is justifiable to spend money on toys even when were on a really tight budget.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to adopt / create my family's belief that it is justifiable to buy extra luxuries - such as toys, make-up, video games, entertainment technology, fancy clothes – even though we were struggling with every day necessities, because “everybody needs something fun every now and then” - not realizing that this form of “fun” was buying an escape from our misery as material stuff with money and that we were just bullshitting ourselves instead of actually living, and that with the material escapism we actually made our financial situation harder when we were trying to make it seem easier – and that with this escapism justified by “needs” we gave our father more work load and saw ourselves to be free of responsibility.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself as a child to not question my fathers working
hours even though I saw he was exhausted, because he showed us
children he was alright and I chose to trust him.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe it is “natural” that my father is always working even though he seemed to dislike it, thus adapting to believe that it is “natural” (= how one should be) to work a lot even though it's unpleasant.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to thus adopt a belief that it is “natural” to work so much or work so “hard” (pushing oneself to keep on working) that one gets extremely tired.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to glorify working so much / hard that one gets extremely tired because I glorified my father and everything he did.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe it is my father's duty / responsibility
to work a lot.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe it is a parents duty / responsibility to provide a living for his/her children by working a lot, not realizing how much the way they had to earn their living in this society took away from the actual responsibilities of the parent, which are teaching and supporting the child in his/her process to humanity and life. [Man, am I grateful my mother worked at home.]
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question this belief even though I enjoyed my father's company as he assisted and supported me during those rare moments when he was not working and instead spending time with his children, not realizing we could have had more of his company and may have thus learned a lot more.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to not realize why my parents were there and what their actual responsibility was aside from taking care of my basic physical needs when I was unable to myself.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the amount this society demands parents to work and be away from their children - or to not have their children with them while they work – does not support any child's process of growth.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that it doesn't matter if it's the child's actual parents who raise him, but that any committed adults are fit for it.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe it is acceptable/admirable to work so
much that I get exhausted with the justification that I'm doing it
“for the greater good”, not realizing my exhaustion doesn't serve
the common good of all in any way and is in fact away from the common
good because I am a part of that “big picture” I'm trying to
“serve”.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I have worked for the common good and made myself suffer, I have actually done no good at all.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see my well-being as a part of the well-being of all as I have seen myself separate from the whole.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the whole by thinking I am a “savior” who will sacrifice herself for the sake of everyone else.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe “everyone else” is an entity separate from me and above me, seeing myself as “less than” others that ought to be sacrificed.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I am giving myself worth by sacrificing myself for “everyone else”.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to make myself “more” or “equal to” those I perceived to be “more than” me by punishing myself because I am “less”, believing that because I was “less” I deserved the suffering but that the suffering was also the way to become “more” or “enough”.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that with my suffering I “make amends” to being “less”.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to live as an ongoing apology as I have made myself suffer for those I had given the authority to and perceived to judge me as “less”, which was the entire world that I perceived separate from me.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to create a self-image that is admirable/honorable
because I work for “the greater good” and then live as the image
instead of seeing what actually needs to be done for that which is
best for all.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel satisfaction as I have fulfilled my self-image as a savior, believing I was now “of value”, not realizing I was limiting myself to live as an image as I was satisfied with it and did not want to expand beyond it.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even though I was satisfied with my self-image I was still dissatisfied with myself.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I can “fix” that which I am dissatisfied with in myself by creating an ideal image I want to live as and then live as a characterization of that ideal image, never addressing the actual reasons behind that which is “broken” and whether it's actually broken or am I just perceiving it to be broken.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to adopt / create my family's belief that the
authorities who my parents were indebted to were asking us for money
out of spite.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the authorities were simply doing the job they were assigned to do within this society and that it was nothing personal.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame the authorities we were indebted to for our hardships, not realizing it was the society we had created and were living as that caused our situation and that it was our responsibility to deal with the consequences – even though none of us had realized any of this.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to demonize the authorities we were indebted to and thus separate them from myself as I saw them to be an “enemy” that opposed us.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe my family was separate from the rest of the world, like a team of “good guys”, which created a kind of a unity but out of fear and separation, and so it wasn't really unity but holding on to others out of self-interest.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the authorities were people one and equal to us, and that as I demonized and separated them from myself I made them “more than” myself and saw myself as “less than” them because of their executive power which I was “powerless” against – not realizing we were all playing by the rules of the society instead of living as human beings and that none of us questioned any of that.
- And thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify my father's excess work by believing he could “win” the “enemy” by working a lot.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to perceive the officials who I have been indebted
to as intimidating.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the officials who I have been indebted to have been playing their “role” in this system of trying to bring about justice by exchanging money, their “role” being the one who executes justice by taking from those who have “done wrong” and have to “make amends” in the name of “justice”, and that the “role” they are living as is full of fear and that the fear is hidden and compensated by appearing as “harsh”.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to interpret this “harshness” as personal anger towards me and thus believe the other is my “enemy” as I don't believe the anger is justified and react to the “harshness” with aggression and thus separate us from each other.
- And thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I can “win” my “enemies” by working and achieving a lot.
As I now see, understand and realize
that to work so much that I as a physical being suffer is to
compromise and abuse myself, and that the suffering of any is the
suffering of all – I commit myself to no longer work so much that I
as a physical being suffer.
I commit myself, when and as I notice
physical symptoms of tiredness, exhaustion and weariness in myself,
to stop, breathe and re-assess what I'm doing in self-honesty.
I commit myself to investigate and let
go of the experiences of tiredness I create through my mind in order
to be able to tell them apart from actual physical exhaustion.
I commit myself to practice breathing
in order to be aware of my physical at all times, during all
activities.
--
I'll continue with the rest of the
dimensions in the days to come.
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