Adam’s Peace

These past several months have been a whirlwind of activity. They have tried my patience, pushed my boundaries, and have combined to form one of the most satisfying periods of my life so far.

I had a terrible job which I enjoyed thoroughly. I had trouble with my relationship with my wife that led to deeper understandings of how we both think and work. I have hit bottom, which only opened up the way for me to come out on top. Everything has gone terribly well for me in these past few months, and only one thing has really changed about me that has enabled me to make the most of these bad times.

That one change is my attitude, and it has created an outlook which I am starting to call pragmatic peace.

So, what all has happened? Well, back in April, I started working at a grocery store after being unemployed for a couple of weeks. I walked into one of the worst situations that a person could… The bakery manager had recently quit, as well as a couple of the hourly workers. I showed up to work my first day to find that the current manager had never had manager experience, and had recently come from a completely different company. There were two people experienced with the bakery, one of which was transferring to a different department.

What did I do? Well, I could have easilly looked at the lack of experience as a burden to carry, and quickly become discouraged with my new job. The tasks, while individually easy, were quite numerous, with a lot of details to learn and remember quickly. There were many days where there was just too much to do, and too few people, especially experienced people, to handle it all on time. I often spent an extra hour or two working just so that we could get the bare minimum done that day.

How many people would say that this could be a rewarding job? Honestly? Now, if I said that I was earning less money working there than I had earned in the past few years, which could not, by any stretching or living check-to-check, pay my bills, would you say that it was a rewarding job?

I have to admit that it was a very, highly rewarding job. No, I didn’t earn a lot of money doing it. No, I did not make any lasting changes or even begin to create a legacy. Objectively speaking, that job was a complete dead-end, especially considering that, if I had stuck with it, I would have had my car repossessed, and would have trouble keeping up with my rent and utilities. It was rewarding because I chose to ignore my ego, which told me that applying for the job would be admitting failure. It was rewarding because, each day that I worked, I went in with a genuine smile on my face, anticipating both the familiar tasks of baking, packaging, and cleaning, as well as the ever-changing tasks of helping customers. My purpose at that job was to learn everything that I could, to help as many customers who needed help, and to be as useful to my co-workers as possible. I was focused on what I could give, not what I would receive, which made all of the difference. It was alright for me to work overtime hours, because I was making a real contribution. Through giving my time, I received greater pay. Seeking experiences, rather than ‘job experience,’ I impressed my managers and co-workers, earning a wonderful recommendation to future jobs.

I seem to have stumbled upon a very nice irony, here. I do enjoy irony quite a bit, especially when I recognize it working in my own life. The irony seems to be that, the harder you struggle for money, the more scarce it becomes, but when you concentrate on providing value, you receive far more value than you provide, both in the objective form of money, and in the subjective realms of your emotions and relationships with other people.

Now, it doesn’t work overnight. Only learning works overnight, or, more accurately, only while you’re asleep. The switch from providing value v.s. seeking value usually takes a long time, while you maintain your current value seeking and begin building value providing systems… The short cut here is to drop your value seeking behavior entirely so that you can concentrate entirely on providing value, but this path is full of danger, because it takes time, deep inner reflection, and the trust of others to find what you could provide the most value doing.

I tried to take this short cut, concentrating on providing value through my words on this blog. Yes, my advice can be valuable, but I hadn’t taken the time to perform the deep inner reflection to find out what it is about my words that are valuable. I have the trust of a few, but in order to make a living through advertising, I would have to gain the trust of a lot more people.

Well, I dropped my value-seeking activities one by one, concentrating more and more on this blog, and objectivity came crashing down around my head. I didn’t have the value that I thought I had, and the bills started to pile up. I was ignoring my wife, which led her to interrupt me more and more… When I’m interrupted for even a moment, it often takes me a long time to get back into the flow of writing, so these interruptions were very costly, even though they were very short.

Finally, it all came crashing down… My wife pointed out the impossibility of living a dream in an objective world without first laying down an objective foundation. Our bills were coming due, and our relationship was strained to the breaking point. Something had to give, and fortunately, it was my ego that gave out in the end.

I was vain enough to think that I could guide others to greater inner peace while my own world was in turmoil. My ego led me to believe that what little I was doing was enough to keep me fed and sheltered. I was simply wrong, and realizing that I was wrong led me to action.

I cut back on posting on my blog, instead concentrating on helping my wife. The wonderful irony here is, when I stopped worrying so much about the blog, I gained uninterrupted time, which allows me to complete more thorough posts. I concentrated on working on my present, and I gained first hand experience on how to build my future. Taking a step away from blogging has helped to ensure that, in the future, this blog will be even more valuable to its readers.

Taking that step back has also allowed me to identify what else helps me to achieve inner, pragmatic peace. There have been other blogs out there who have been closely mirroring my experiences, such as Slade’s post on The Art of Surrender, which was posted earlier in the day when I first hit rock-bottom, yet I didn’t read it until after I had surrendered to my situation’s currents. Albert’s series on the Ego also paralleled my own experiences, as I struggled to get my ego under control. (Read his many posts on Ego to see why struggling against the ego is counter-productive.)

Eventually, what I found was a method of using methods that work in order to find inner peace, what I call pragmatic peace. I’ll be expanding on the idea of pragmatic peace later in future posts, but I’ll say right now that pragmatic peace does not involve sitting peacefully while wishing your belly button would envelop your body, although you could still meditate that way from time to time.

Well, my current situation is, I have moved back in with my parents so that I can catch my financial breath. I am now living in Phoenix, Arizona, rather than in Logan, Utah, where I had spent the last three years. I am waiting for drug test results to come back so that I can start working at a grocery store again, which will give me more practice at helping others without direct rewards, as well as make certain that my car payments are made, and that I can pay my last energy bill from my apartment in Logan. I am also working on Placebo, my to-do list program, when I’m not running around visiting family that I haven’t seen for years.

My next step, which I am beginning tomorrow, is to look for a job that uses the skills I’ve gained while going to college. I would prefer to be a programmer, but I can just as easily work as a networker an “Information Technologies Technician,” especially given my background.

Well, here’s to change. May it never be the same again.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 11:26 am and is filed under Responsibility, Inner Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.