Are you possessed by your work?

Or, another way I’ve heard this asked lately – “are you a slave to your own internal Pharaoh (or master)?”  Obviously taken from a bit of Biblical reading.

But the question seems to come from a lot of different angles lately – not just ancient spiritual texts.

Are you consumed by your career, possessed by work, or a slave to your own internal master?

Are you avoiding other aspects of life in sacrifice to “work”?

It’s easy to let that happen – we live in a culture that constantly feeds us the idea that we can never have enough, that we will never BE enough.  But what is “enough”?

I’ve also seen people – usually us men – focus exclusively and intensely on work, both at our job and then in whatever we can find outside of that job that is away from home and family, because we feel masterful and competent in that work, but often struggle to feel that same sense of mastery in our own home parenting or being a partner to our spouse.  More simply stated, we often choose work over family because it’s “easier”.

Do we give ourselves over to work because we are afraid to be present in our lives? 

Richard Rohr, in Just This, says “Whenever your heart space, your mind space, and your body space are all present and accounted for at the same time, you can experience pure presence, a moment of deep inner connection with the pure, gratuitous Being of anything and everything.  It will often be experienced as a quite leap of joy in the heart.”

I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty near impossible most days…  but, I guess I can keep trying.  It does sound a little better than the “joy” of making another dollar, or buying another thing…

I don’t mean this writing to be convicting in any way – unless, maybe, I am convicting myself in some way, I know I find it easier to work sometimes.  But if you are reading this, and you’ve made it this far, maybe it’s something to think about – where do you find the balance between work and life?  What areas of life are you procrastinating or avoiding in the name of work?  What time are you trading away to make more money?

Where do you need to choose more meaningfully?