dys· phem· is· tic Sunday, March 21, 2004
That I Am Not Suited For Gainful Employment
Even in this relatively openminded age an aversion to work is still looked down on. But I am not a person that needs to work. There are old people that keep working when they could live a leisurely retirement. The world is run by people that live for their jobs, that are always thinking about work, that feel compelled to work.
I am not afraid to confess that I'd never work another day in my life if the opportunity presented itself. It's not effort I dislike though; it's effort that I have to do, that keeps me from what I ought to do, need to do. If I didn't have to concern myself with providing for life's necessities, there is still something that would inspire more labor than ever -- but from impulsion, not compulsion.
That thing is learning -- and then writing about it. It is traveling and studying and conversing and absorbing, and sharing and teaching and writing. But without a care (because never needing to care) for how it was received or whether it earned money. I believe in calling. Somewhere there is an audience for what I was called to learn and disseminate. The audience will find it or it will find them. That isn't really my concern. The tiny bit of light that my mind opens upon is all I need concern myself with. I will learn it and lay it out. Whoever needs that piece may have it and fit it into their own puzzle of insight. Would to God that I could spend my time finding and sowing my little patch of sky blue truth.
I fantasize that this could be a familiy affair. It is hard to express the happiness I would find in trotting the globe with Daisy, Brian, and Gwen, seeing Machu Pichu, visiting the Masai, spending days in the Cairo and British museums. I want them to see Paris and Angkor Wat, I want to watch the sun come up with them from the top of Sinai. Most of all, I want to break them out of the well-meaning but creativity-sapping public schools and tutor them in the school house of the wide open world. I hate and despise the "juicing" they go through everyday, leaching out a bit more of their wonderous individuality, replacing it with more stodgy, safe thoughts. I am not in the least bit concerned at their ability to handle university with an education tutored while on ship and plane -- not these two. I'm more afraid of the potential that might be lost with the crabbed, rote education they are getting.
I am not afraid to confess that I'd never work another day in my life if the opportunity presented itself. It's not effort I dislike though; it's effort that I have to do, that keeps me from what I ought to do, need to do. If I didn't have to concern myself with providing for life's necessities, there is still something that would inspire more labor than ever -- but from impulsion, not compulsion.
That thing is learning -- and then writing about it. It is traveling and studying and conversing and absorbing, and sharing and teaching and writing. But without a care (because never needing to care) for how it was received or whether it earned money. I believe in calling. Somewhere there is an audience for what I was called to learn and disseminate. The audience will find it or it will find them. That isn't really my concern. The tiny bit of light that my mind opens upon is all I need concern myself with. I will learn it and lay it out. Whoever needs that piece may have it and fit it into their own puzzle of insight. Would to God that I could spend my time finding and sowing my little patch of sky blue truth.
I fantasize that this could be a familiy affair. It is hard to express the happiness I would find in trotting the globe with Daisy, Brian, and Gwen, seeing Machu Pichu, visiting the Masai, spending days in the Cairo and British museums. I want them to see Paris and Angkor Wat, I want to watch the sun come up with them from the top of Sinai. Most of all, I want to break them out of the well-meaning but creativity-sapping public schools and tutor them in the school house of the wide open world. I hate and despise the "juicing" they go through everyday, leaching out a bit more of their wonderous individuality, replacing it with more stodgy, safe thoughts. I am not in the least bit concerned at their ability to handle university with an education tutored while on ship and plane -- not these two. I'm more afraid of the potential that might be lost with the crabbed, rote education they are getting.
