Surviving the Workday

The Way is Limitless

The Way is a limitless vessel;
Used by the self, it is not filled by the world;
It cannot be cut, knotted, dimmed or stilled;
Its depths are hidden, ubiquitous and eternal;
I don’t know where it comes from;
It comes before nature.

From the Tao De Ching by Lao Tze

Click here to find out more about Taoism.

A Father’s Prayer
This is the best dowry of hopes, wishes and prayers I would be able to offer:

May God give you the grace of wit and wisdom to understand that rainbows are only the result of showers, dust, and hope.

May you always have joy in the morning and trust in the evening and may your sorrows be short and without scars.

May your lives have a spirit neither bent by belligerence nor broken by failure; may you simply love each other.

May you share with each other spring flowers, dirty dishes, music, rain, death, mushrooms, a measure of boredom, strawberries, and God.

May that God never make you immune to the wonderful afflictions of real love, making you instead farsighted to each other’s faults, tongue-tied to criticism, and short of memory to petty hurts and slights.

May God provide the confidence and serenity that comes only from the assurance of each other’s fidelity and the tolerance, as years go by, of wrinkles and gray hairs, short tempers, curlers, and Monday mornings.

May no one steal from you laughter at the top of the stairs or giggles and whispers in a dark room.

May you keep a hunger for each other, the appetite to taste tomorrow, and deep knowledge of and devotion to your past, heritage and families.

May you perpetuate trust, the radiation of vitality, kind answers to sharp questions and sharp humor to unkind attitudes.

May your fights be fierce and short, and may each truce be warm and long and held in each other’s arms before the sun comes up.

May you walk with wise men, sing loud songs at late hours, share secrets, have healthy children, and provide smiles for lonesome strangers and prayers for those without hope.

May you never forget small things; smiles, birthdays, holding hands, family, old friends, the neglected, and the simplicity of saying please and thank you.

- Author Unknown (and edited by Ms. Theologian)

If the woman is pregnant, they pull the baby outside and then, they kill the baby; they throw it in the fire. This is the government we have in Sudan; they do those kinds of things.”

Excerpted from Out of Africa, Jewish-Muslim Friendship on Beliefnet

What can you do?

Raise Awareness.
Attend an event.
Write to your leaders. Send a postcard to the White House.
Join Save Darfur

I believe that work should be fun and fulfilling and satisfying at a deep level.

More recently, especially in the past couple of months, I’ve felt this way:

B L A H.

That’s a technical term (from the DSM IV, no?) describing a spiritual crisis. It’s not a work crisis, there’s no shortage of work. It’s not a financial crisis; that’s fine too. It’s a crisis in terms of being able to find meaning in daily life. Which is not to say I think life is meaningless. I just wanted more.

I’ve made some changes, and some changes have been made for me:

more business travel to see the world and to meet my colleagues face to face ;

less time at the computer (sure, that’s easy enough because it’s broken — HP, I’m talking straight to you, your tech support leaves a lot to be desired);

hiring an assistant in the late afternoons to help with some of the gruntier aspects of having my own business;

doing my own work first rather than other folk’s;

planning a vacation; and

starting a new business idea.

“Living systems never really settle down.”

-John Holland

What changes are you having difficulty accepting at this time?

What steps could you take today to help you accept that change is a natural part of life?

from Spirituality at Work

Yes, he sure is.

Apparently many of our favorite superheroes have a religious affiliation.

It seems to me that one of the habits I’ve never grown out of was a fascination with deconstructing elements of popular culture. Don’t even get me started on the Smurfs. Anyhoo, the backstory to many superheroes provided a religious affiliation, which can be illuminating in understanding the superhero.

Click here to find out more about Superman, Wonderwoman, Captain America, and much much more.

How does that help you at work? Superheroes are created by our culture and usually embody values that we find important. Picture yourself as your own superhero and I guarantee you’ll act honorably.

Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer.
From the end of the earth will I call unto Thee, when my heart fainteth; lead me to a rock that is too high for me.
For Thou hast been a refuge for me, a tower of strength in the face of the enemy.
I will dwell in Thy Tent for ever; I will take refuge in the covert of Thy wings. Selah

- Psalms 61: 2-5

Is housecleaning spiritual? Absolutely. It involves organizing, prioritizing, and categorizing. At best, our outer worlds are mirrors to our inner worlds. So organize, prioritize, and categorize to your heart’s content. It will straighten both your inside and your outside.*

Periodically, I re-discover my slovenly nature and try to make amends. At that point, I join FlyLady to learn the tricks of the trade.

Here are some tips (and some humor) from Cleaning with Meaning that one writer, Jana Reiss, took from the FlyLady:

Five Things I’ve Learned from FlyLady

Here are some tips I’ve gleaned from my six months on FlyLady’s email list. Some of them may work for you too.

1. Do it now. Procrastination is a symptom of perfectionism and needs to be overcome. Do what you can, when you can, the best you can. Then let it go.

2. Set a timer for 15 minutes. Set your timer, work steadily at one task for 15 minutes, and then stop, even if you’re not completely finished. The next day, pick up where you left off and do another 15 minutes. Trying to tackle an entire room or project all at once can be overwhelming.

3. Go shine your sink. When FlyLady was moving from chaos to order, the first thing she did was shine her sink. Go ye and do likewise. It is amazing what a clean sink can do for your spirits. You’ll feel inspired to spread that sense of order throughout your home.

4. Clear your “hot spots” every day. You know what they are: the kitchen counter that collects all the mail and school flyers; the bedroom chair that would be great for reading in, if only it weren’t covered with laundry. Clutter always attracts more clutter.

5. Start where you are. We’re all going to have periods where we fall off the wagon. FlyLady wants us to just dive in wherever we are. Our houses did not get messy overnight, and they won’t be cleaned in just one day.

Three things FlyLady teaches that I will never, ever do:

1. Wear lace-up shoes every day. Not a snowball’s chance in hell, FlyLady, despite your promises that I’ll be more productive. Attractive shoes make me feel better.

2. Do at least one load of laundry a day. FlyLady wants us to keep the laundry moving, but I’ve found a twice-a-week schedule to be more efficient and environmentally friendly.

3. “Swish and swipe” the bathroom every morning. Let’s get real. I’ll feel great about myself if I scrub the toilet once a week.

*A note: If you are obsessive-compulsive, you may not want to do any FlyLady related behavior because it may make everything worse. Talk to your therapist first.

When was the last time you took an hour to eat lunch? What about a half hour?

These days most people scarf their lunches at their desks and use their lunch breaks for errands so they don’t have to do them after work.

From Lunch Break Becomes Briefer:

Executives, professionals and other non-hourly employees are generally not entitled under federal law to any break for lunch, according to Robin Bond, an employment lawyer in Wayne, Pa.

But employees who are paid hourly or who are covered under union collective bargaining agreements typically are supposed to get regular breaks, including a 30-minute lunch for five hours of work.

“I see more and more in our culture where being overworked is a badge of courage. It’s a major mistake to let work encroach even further on this time,” Bond says.

“People really need a break.”

May all beings everywhere plagued
with sufferings of body and mind
quickly be freed from their illnesses.
May those frightened cease to be afraid,
and may those bound be free.
May the powerless find power,
and may people think of befriending
one another.
May those who find themselves in trackless,
fearful wilderness–
the children, the aged, the unprotected–
be guarded by beneficent celestials,
and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood.

The Buddha

Have you ever thought that it wouldn’t happen to you?

From what I’ve read about how our brains work, most of us have this thought frequently: I won’t be the one in the car accident, I won’t be the one whose identity is stolen, I won’t be the one who’s raped….

And in the business world, I won’t be the one whose hard drive dies. That sort of thing happens to someone else.

Somehow I thought that the hard drive on my laptop was invincible, but it died, shortly after returning home from my trip to Austin. It did happen to me. And it wasn’t the first time I had a hard drive die.

I live in a small house and don’t have a lot of possessions, so there’s a sense of purging here with the lost hard drive. Most of the important files were backed up, though perhaps not in the last week.

What do you do to backup your files? Do you use another external drive? Send the files from yourself? Hope for the best?

A business trip to Austin seems like a good place to gain some perspective. As soon as I have some, I’ll let y’all know.

In the meantime, I’ve gathered these observations together for y’all:

1. I can use y’all about once a sentence and not tire of it.

2. I like sweet tea, but it has caffeine. Lots of caffeine.

3. Austin really seems like the most fun of any town I’ve been to recently. Like sort of an adult playground, if Las Vegas hadn’t snagged the title.

4. As GhostGirl noted, vegetarianism may be a hanging offense in Texas, so I keep my mouth shut, bypass the barbecue, and eat the corn bread, which appears to be gathering in a roll around my stomach.

5. A business park in Austin looks a lot like a business park in Santa Clarita. And with your eyes closed on a hot June day, I don’t think anyone could tell the difference.

Breton Fisherman’s Prayer

Dear God, be good to me;
The sea is so wide,
And my boat is so small.

I look to Thee in every need, and never look in vain;
I feel Thy strong and tender love, and all is well again.
The thought of Thee is mightier far than sin and pain and sorrow are.

Discouraged in the work of life, disheartened by its load,
Shamed by its failures or its fears, I sink beside the road.
But let me only think of Thee and then new heart springs up in me.

Thy calmness bends serene above, my restlessness to still;
Around me flows Thy quickening life, to nerve my faltering will.
Thy presence fills my solitude, Thy providence turns all to good.

Enfolded deep in Thy dear love, held in Thy law, I stand;
Thy hand in all things I behold, and all things in Thy hand.
Thou leadest me by unsought ways, and turn my mourning into praise.

Samuel Longfellow Source: Hymns of the Spirit (1864) and Beliefnet

I find it helpful to question authority. So does Elie Wiesel.

In Sparring with the Almighty, we learn of Elie Wiesel’s habit of arguing of God.

But Wiesel was reborn the ancient–and lost–Jewish tradition of wrestling and sparring with G-d. When the Almighty told Abraham He would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham lifted his hands toward the heavens and proclaimed, “Shall the judge of the entire earth not practice justice?” And when Elie Wiesel watched six million innocents incinerated in Hitler’s ovens, it kindled his anger at G-d and he wrote haunting books and made daring speeches that shook the heavens in protest.

Buying flowers is a tricky business. I love flowers, but most often I cut my own because you never know where those flowers came from. Seriously.

In the Los Angeles Times Business Section, there’s a great story, Progress Blooms on Kenyan Soil, on Kenyan workers’ rights in the flower industry.

Summary: They had none, now they have slightly more.

Did you know that an average worker in a Kenyan greenhouse processes more than 2700 flowers a day earning $70 a month? That’s about minimum wage in Kenya.

Complaints from the workers range sexual harrassment to heavy exposure to pesticides (the type which are illegal in the U.S.), which can cause miscarriages and birth defects.

For a pretty product, it’s a very dirty business.

A Blessing for Many Occasions

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make his face shine upon thee,
and be gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee,
and give thee peace.

Numbers 6:24-26

From Beliefnet’s Prayer of the Day

We interupt our normal broadcasting of our own spiritual crisis to tell you about Misfortune 500, a parody of sorts of the Fortune 500.

Yes, we realize that in the following post we are engaging in “transference” of the classical variety, wherein annoyance at one corporation is transferred to another. We know this. And, still, unperturbed by our pop psychological analysis of ourselves, we continue.

In today’s story, we focus on Coke, dear dear Coca-Cola. Was there ever a good reason to drink this stuff? Possibly if you wanted to erode the enamel off your teeth just for kicks.

But get this story about a facility in India (my own summary):

Basically, Coke came in with a plant to make soda in 2000, extracted millions of liters of water illegally (1.5 million liters a day) until the surrounding community had no water, and then pumped their own solid waste back into the dry wells.

God bless you, Coke.

But here’s the good news. Large groups of women protested and then Dr. Vandana Shiva got involved. And you really don’t want to mess with her. And the plant was shut down.

Nice going, Vandana.

And if I have to say this every day for the rest of my life, I will:

Your money counts.

Don’t spend it on people and organizations who do this sort of thing. Regardless of how much you like the taste.

For the full story, click here. For Vandana’s report, click here.