Meditation for March 14th
I’m Not The Boss
Even if we work for ourselves, there is always a boss. This is someone who is in charge of making sure we are doing our job, has the means to do it, and fills in when we can’t. When things get heavy at work, remember that you aren’t the boss.
Taking sole responsibility for things is not a good way to stay in mindfulness. You can alleviate your stress by placing the burden on a boss. That way, you don’t have to feel guilty, you don’t have to take all the blame, even if it is your fault, and you can promise that someone else will fix it: your boss!
Even if you aren’t at work, you can call your parents, spouse or partner, God, nature, Bruce Springsteen, or several other possibilities of someone or something more powerful than you. These are all bosses you can blame for life’s injustices and inconveniences.
If someone dies a horrible, unnatural death, you can sigh and say, “God has a plan”. No more responsibility to make the bereaved feel better because your boss, God, did this. If they are asking you to go out and socialize, you can say your partner won’t let you: “Sorry, guys, the old battle axe won’t let me.” And now you’re off the hook. Say you kill a school bus full of children, with a weed whacker, and the public cries why would you do such a horrible act, and you can shrug and say, “My parents suck.” There! No more responsibility!
Even if you have a position of authority, there is always someone or something more powerful than you. You are always beholden to somebody, so that somebody becomes the boss and your scapegoat for everything. And if you are already powerful, you can always blame God.
When it comes to mindfulness, this is a great way to keep your path to enlightenment clear by turning over your grosser handicaps on your boss. You are relieved of the things that were blocking you from Nirvana and from enjoying yoga and steam rooms, since you used to think about all the mistakes you had made. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and know that someone else is at fault.
Prayer
Vulcan,
As you hammer on your forge,
Please let me make more money,
With responsibilities, more responsibilities.
I still want other people to boss people so I can stay cool.
If something goes wrong at work,
I want to blame someone else who is tasked with fixing the problem.
I’m not the boss.
It’s not my responsibility.
I’m not in charge of that!
I don’t have the clearance to do that.
You’ll want to talk to my boss about the boss’s complaint.
The boss isn’t here today, so I can’t help you.
God did it to teach us a lesson.
That’s why Jesus died.
I don’t do anything because Buddhist teaching teaches me that nothing is real.
Muhammad meant it unless he was under the influence of Satan.
Science is pretty clear about that.
He’s done this longer than I have.
She’s been to more school than I have.
This isn’t a part of my department.
I guess the President knows what he is doing.
Why would a priest do anything wrong?
That’s just a free market economy.
They do it in Canada.
I need to have more things to place my inability to function well on,
So I don’t get fired.
Amen.
Craft
Neuro-Linguistic Programming is about hearing and seeing what someone might really mean when they communicate. Here are some ways we can see what someone is trying to say by where their eyes are when they speak to us.
When the person’s eye goes up to the left: constructed visual
Eye goes straight left: constructed auditory
Eye goes down to the left: Kinesthetic
Eye goes up to the right: remembered visual
Eye goes straight right: remembered auditory
Eye goes down to the right: auditory digital
Eye looks up and the straight back at you: Why is this person existing right now, why weren’t you an abortion?
Eye eyelids then eyelids close: I should not have told you that.
Eye a while down for a while: the perfect day was May 17th, 1995, and life has been a letdown since.
Eye looks upper left, then straight down, and the crosses: forgot to call the dentist again.
Eye crossed: I am a total idiot, kill me before I reproduce.
Eye stars unblinking at you: I am going to have sex in the near future. Then I’m eating nachos, and the chip crumbles will fall on my naked torso, my sex partner’s naked torso, and all over the sheets along with chunks of cheese, olives, peppers, and salsa.
Eye doesn’t quite make perfect eye contact: I am better than you.
Eye looks in the distance: Is there a point to this? We live. Then more of us and then we shrivel up to die, so we make up meanings like religion, youth cultures that we hang on later and later in life every generation and putting fake meaning into fashion, music, literature, art and other academic pursuits to fill in the time between teething and shitting ourselves in our homes which are just transfer stations we wait at before death makes us fuzzy memories to those that may still love us if we’re lucky. Sigh.
Goal
Always have someone que’d up to blame for our shortcomings. We have better things to worry about than always worrying about what is our fault and how to fix it. That is what bosses are for. God made all of this; it’s His mess, He can clean it up.