Last night, I went to bed at a reasonable time, wanting to get the early bus to work. That was not to happen. When I laid down, my chest began to hurt. Not heart hurt, but perhaps lung hurt: It was also harder to breathe, and my breathing out ended with a high, thin note. It reminded me of my asthma, and I found it impossible to sleep.

I got up and took some asthma medicine that I had bought earlier this year. I am not sure how much it helped, or that it was even necessary. I associate asthma with certain death, but actually many people have it for years or decades, although they do have shorter life expectancy. My pulse was in normal range, which it would presumably not have been if I actually was lacking oxygen. Still, one thing following another, I had bouts of pretty bad coughing, leaving my throat sore. Some three hours passed, though they were not wasted. Eventually I started playing my copy of The Laws of Eternity, the movie that had first introduced me to Happy Science. I got as far as to the Hell of the Bloody Pond before I became very sleepy. Stopping the movie, I fell asleep in my chair immediately. An hour or so later I woke up and went to bed, and slept without any further problems.

I took the later bus to work, but even then I had slept so little, I expected to have to nap repeatedly. That did not happen, however. I napped not once at all, and was not horribly sleepy either. Perhaps that will come tomorrow. I guess it depends on the work too.

***

I sometimes wonder whether working is really the best I can do for humankind. But in the end, I always decide that yes, it is. If not, someone else would have to do this work, and other people would have to give me money anyway. If there was a lot of unemployment in Norway, perhaps I would feel differently, but the opposite is true. We lack qualified workers still, even while the world is in a “shadow recession”, where the recession has ended but the jobs have not come back. So I am not taking the job of someone who needs it more than I do.

And I don’t have a very strong faith that I would do something more worthwhile if I were not at work. I don’t notice myself being awesome each weekend, for instance. My work is probably a better expression of love for mankind, for all its failing, than teaming up with other imaginary heroes in City of Heroes. Perhaps not better than keeping up my journal, but I don’t think it is the work that is the greatest threat to that…

***

On my way to work, I overheard a seemingly normal young man telling someone that he studied marketing. I was filled with pity for him. It must be terrible to get into such a demonic field at such a young age. There are of course forms of marketing that are simple and honest, but they are not common in this time and age, nor do I believe they require much education. The thrust of advertising is distinctly demonic, a work of tempting and manipulating people to inflame their greed and their desire, to divert their soul from the Infinite to an infinite number of finite things. Humans will do the heavy lifting themselves, due to our nature in this regard, but there is still a strong effort to inflame the delusions of the material world, to make people think that happiness comes from outside them.

Don’t try being demonic at home, kids!