In the blink of an eye I went from a blissful four months of enjoy the perfect job, to having a new boss, thereby threatening to change both the security and freedom that I’ve grown to love. I’ve been dreading this moment because I knew I was so happy having reached the perfect place for myself, that any change would surely bring disappointment.
I moped around the office yesterday, scared that this change would mean being locked down and pushed back into a tactical role. So I took all of my anxiety home with me and opened up Pema Chodron’s “'The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times' (a gift from my own personal Little Buddha) and began reading. Almost immediately Pema spelled out how imperanance is the only permanent thing and that when we have a fixed identity it just makes us miserable. Going so far as to say that it makes us feel self important and even wronged when someone or something threatrens that self-importance. Well….how could she say….wait...she’s right! I was so wrapped up in the fixed idea of me as being the head of a marketing department in all of my creative glory, that I was resisting natural change….and a change that may bring even great opportunity.
Pema related a story of a man who thought his son was killed at war. He locked himself in his house to greive and refused visitors. A year later his son returned home, unharmed by the war. He repeatedly knocked on his father’s door and let him know he was alive but his father say sent the son away and said to leave him alone because he was grieving! He was so set on his identity as a grieving father that he missed the fact he was still be a father.
I don’t want to miss something new that may come because I’m so set on who I think I am. I wrote this down to re-read to myself during this time of transition:
“(Buddhist teachings) encourage us to relax gradually and whole heartedly into the ordinary and obvious truth of change.”
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