HONESTY MONTH: DAY 23: “Showing your true self sometimes don’t give you any benefit, but at least you do honor to yourself and God.”― Olivia Sinaga
So many of us were taught to sell our souls for a job, a relationship, for our families, etc. It is the last thing anyone should ever do.
I finally got this on a deep level at a time I was terribly job insecure and needed to work. I went on a job interview with an agency that was a great fit for me, working with parolees as a therapist. I would have loved to do this work. But the agency contracted with the State and during the interview, the prospective supervisor asked me how I would fit 60 hours of work each week into 40. I told him that I had taken jobs like that in the past and found that they were “not good for my emotional, spiritual, mental or physical health. It is just plain abuse to even ask that question. I have learned I will not thrive in a setting where that is the expectation and my clients will suffer as well.”
Then I terminated the interview and walked away. I don’t know who took that job, but I did not hear from the agency again. I don’t sell myself any more. That is a form of prostitution I place myself above. I will eat a great deal less and live a great deal more frugally before I will work myself to death for the benefit of any agency or person. I did it for too many years. And I may love the work, but I no longer put myself in those agencies. I have learned.
This is another form of social codependency we have been taught to practice. It is that idea that we must sacrifice our lives for a paycheck. It is the worship of money over ourselves that so many people practice. And it kills them! They die shortly after retirement if they ever lived at all. Most don’t know how to live without work because it was their everything. That is not living in honesty.
It is not what we are here to do. Workaholism is as much an addiction as any. And it is just as great a way of escaping our lives as any drug or alcohol. I want more…I want to be authentically present to my life and myself and my relationship with everyone…especially me and God.
Dolphin Hug 