We are not our jobs
We are not our jobs.
And you know how I know?
Because there have been times in my life when I either didn’t have a job or I didn’t have a job in my chosen field and I, the “I” I identify as “me”, endured.
Still existed.
“I” am still here.
So trust me. “You” are not your job either.
This Covid19 season has seen lots of us lose our jobs or have our jobs change so much they no longer resemble our old job. A young fellow I met yesterday graduated as a Physiotherapist in December 2019, worked for two weeks in his new job and chosen profession and is now unemployed and interviewing for casual work as a temperature checker. Quite the underutilisation of his long, demanding and expensive tertiary education… or is it?
During the depths of the isolation period, the activity of my two start ups contracted with the shock of the whole situation and the uncertainty of our financial future. Superman’s company was facing a different set of challenges; how to provide their newly minted pivoted services – like yesterday! They had more new jobs than they had people to staff them!
Essential services, like Coles and meat works who were flat chat due to our embarrassing and panic driven consumer demand needed to stay open 24/7. One positive Covid19 case meant a very costly shutdown period and massive staffing issues. So “temp checking” became a household word around home here and still is.
Superman was working from home, frantically redeploying his currently workless, not jobless Physio staff and also recruiting more health professionals to provide frontline temperature checking.
If you thought the supermarket was flat chat, you should have seen our spare room here!
Because I noticed my man pushing hard each day and I have his back, I decided the best way of showing my LOVE to him was to serve him.
Work is LOVE made real anyway right?
Work = LOVE made real
I kept him fed and watered all day, working my jobs in and around being there for him.
He’d call me his little fairy, sprinkling my magic cake, coffee, tea, nut and dried fruit dust about him.
It was his work prospering right now and I felt gratitude for the security that provided me in uncertain times.
So I served him.
With honour.
And THAT makes all the difference.
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
~
Whatever we do, whether it is the job we LOVE, the job we just do to get by or for many women out there, the unpaid job of caring for children and keeping house and home. To whatever we turn our minds and hands, let us also turn our hearts and spirit.
For it is honour in service that makes any job we do a truly magnificent and beautiful thing.
Honour in service of our loved ones especially, but also of our community and the perfect strangers within it, gives all we do a bright and shiny dignity when we do it with this blessed intention. For me, I felt like I had a vital role, a joyous purpose. I felt connected, appreciated, respected, adored, loved. And all I did was live the reality of the LOVE I tell Superman I have for him. What’s the use in saying it, if I am not living it daily?
The point I really want you to get here, is that by giving with honour, I received with honour.
The point I really want you to get here is, honour in service is a gift to the server because it reminds them very poignantly, that they are the served.
I am always so grateful when life offers opportunity to stop the mouse wheel for a moment, long enough to realise that I am not separate from what I see; I am not separate from others.
I am them and they are me.
And that young fellow, the newly minted Physiotherapist interviewing for the newly minted role as a temperature checker? Just imagine the gift his knowledge about health and his aptitude and experience for caring for people and communicating with them – just imagine the gift he gives each returning worker? Returning to work for the first time, some of them very anxious about that prospect too. In delivering a service with honour, a service some may falsely assume is below his pay grade and education, it is he who receives.
He receives paid work right now.
He receives the joy of being part of the solution to a problem.
He receives an important role in an individual workplace.
He receives the vital role of being an educator, communicator, source of assurance for worried workers.
He receives the knowledge that what he is doing is helping our economy get going again.
He receives the wonderful feeling of belonging, of being valued, helpful; the joy of utilising his skills.
He receives gratitude, perhaps unspoken but present and passed on nonetheless, from worried workers.
A small job.
A job that didn’t even exist a month ago.
Done with honour, what makes this job not the most important job he’s ever done?
We are not our jobs.
We are infinitely much more than that!
LOVE Rachel x
Your Life Changing Coach
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