A worker may be worth his pay, but an abundant harvest is still a blessing. As is the ability to work in the first place, if you ask me.
Yesterday was payday, for me as for hundreds of thousands of other Norwegians. It came a bit suddenly, was what I felt. Suddenly payday again! That is hardly a cause for complain, though. Well, it may be that I am just growing old and time is flying faster than it used to. But I think the reason why I did not notice payday approaching was that payday no longer makes a difference. The things I can do the week before payday are the same that I can do the week after payday. In fact, I paid most of the bills for April before payday. And that is definitely not a cause for complain.
That is not to say that I have enough money to do everything I want. In particular, I want a small house in the countryside, and I can’t afford that. But I have more money than I need, at least for now. And that’s what counts.
I have observed the human mind for many years, and I call it a “desire factory”. It will produce new wants, wishes, longings, attachments etc like some kind of automated assembly line. Normally it will not even wait until the existing wants are fulfilled before throwing up new ones. And you cannot stop it by giving it what it wants for a long time. If you lived for billions of years and ended up having the entire universe except for a single grain of sand, your mind would be sick with longing for that grain of sand. Or in the vivid imagery of the Jewish creation story, our ancestors had a literal paradise with everything they wanted for free – except the fruit of 1 tree. And of course they had to eat of that one tree, even though the Tree of Life stood right beside it and they could have eaten from that instead and lived forever. This is a poetic but quite exact report on the human mind even today.
Knowing this, I largely ignore any inconvenient wants. I am happy to oblige when my body wants yogurt or sleep, but I am in no particular hurry to chase the dream of the small red house in the countryside again. Perhaps in this life, perhaps not. I have food and clothes, and nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. An economic crash will come to Norway as well, unless some greater disaster befalls us. These things go in waves, and there is no wave crest that is not followed by a trough. But even I do not know when, how, and how deep. I know however that unless I suffer untimely death, I will be surrounded by fear and confusion, and I would rather not be in debt to above the chimney at the time.
Since I have the luxury of living and working in Norway, I consider myself blessed as is. In all my years of working, I have never been unionized, and never asked for a pay rise above the general adjustment for inflation. My pay has increased a bit over time, even so, but my coworkers who are all unionized earn quite a bit more even with half the experience I have. They may need it too, since they are either women or living with women, and in many cases have children as well. Women love money in a way that I will probably never be able to understand, having never been one.
When I mentioned to my then best friend (codename Superwoman) that I never asked for pay rises, she reacted with an immediate and probably automatic shock and revulsion, probably not unlike what a man will see if he tells a woman that he has decided to cut his gonads off. The idea of man as Provider is politically leprous, but it is still the unspoken assumption of women even here in Scandinavia. It is part of the “man image”, if you want. We don’t really have gender equality in economic matters, but rather gender balance: Women earn less than men, but spend substantially more. And not just on food and clothes for the family, but on travel, entertainment, clothes and jewelry for themselves etc. There is an unspoken assumption that “his money is our money, my money is my money.” Actions speak louder than words, although the words are quite loud in this matter.
I have a lesbian friend who is not crazy about using as much money as possible though, so it may not be entirely down to the ovaries. And there are certainly many men who are spendthrifts, to the point where they live in constant worry and suffering even though they have a high-income job. Being single does not help at all, because then you have to constantly impress new women. It is even worse than being married. Celibacy is the only safe refuge from economic worries, and I suspect that for most people this is pretty worrying in itself.
But for me, once I left the perpetuation of our family’s superior genes to my brothers, I have found that money here in Norway is plentiful indeed. When I think of the hard work of my grandparents, the small and drafty house they lived in, the simple food they ate and how they hardly ever could travel further than to the next village… My mind may come up with a thousand dreams, but I’ll eat my delicious food with gratitude and enjoyment. Since the days of our first ancestors, there has probably never been a better time and place than here and now. It is written in the Christian bible that “a worker is worth his wages”, but in my case I wonder if that can really be true. I think there may be some grace on top of the justice.
Can you ask God what I can do to get out of the rut I’m in and what I can do to break the bad habits that bind me?
I feel really stuck.
That is a heartbreaking request, old friend. I am not an angel, that I could bring you a direct message from God, word for word. I am not pure as a transparent crystal, so that an exact image can pass through me. Rather I see myself resembling a milky translucent quartz through which, I believe, some light can pass. I pray indeed that God may reward your humility.
The thing about ruts and habits is that they provide safety and refuge, or that seems to be what the Voice in my heart teaches me. They exist for a reason, and to break out from them means facing fear to some degree. Freedom is fearful at first, being new to us.
If you still wish to break out from the wheel, the least mystical and most modern way seems to be establishing “break points” in which you stop and observe yourself. You can use a simple countdown timer, or place some object that reminds you (for instance a post-it note) in a place you are sure to see during your habitual actions. When you meet this trigger, stop and observe yourself: What were you thinking at this moment, and what were you in the process of doing? Next look back: Do you remember how this chain of thought began? Do you remember what triggered the activity you were doing when interrupted by the signal? This is not a time to judge, but to observe as if you were a scientist simply taking notes.
In time, the habit of observing yourself and looking at the causes of your thoughts and actions will grow into a counter-habit, so to speak. But as you already know from experience, observing your “self” is a disturbing thing to do. At least in this way you are in control of the practice: If it is too much for you, you can simply remove the things that trigger your self-awareness, before it becomes an entrenched habit; and in time you will then gradually go back to the automated life.
I have talked about this repeatedly with the Voice in my heart today, and it is the best I can think of. But I pray that the light in your own heart will help you. Asking others for advice is helpful mainly because when we hear their answer, our own heart will accept or reject it because it already knows the truth. So what I say is not as important as your own reaction to it. Your heart will say “Yes” or “No” or “Not quite” because it already knows what it wants to hear.
I’m trying to give up using the computer. I’ve been playing video games since I was a small boy – so one would expect the habit would be hard to break.
I think a good place to start in regaining control over my mind would be to increase the amount of exercise I do.
I spend about an hour a day in moderate exercise, which I find to be good for both body and mind. I am sure it can be exaggerated, but unless you feel compulsive about it, it sounds like a wonderful idea.
I have found that my computer gaming gradually shrinks as more important things grow in my life, but I suppose the opposite might also happen. Certainly if you have something better to do in that time, you will be happier doing that instead.
How does one surrender a problem?
Do you mean like when you have a worry and you have concluded that there is nothing you can do about it either way? Worries are good. They make us cautious and make us put thoughts into how we can improve the chances of a good outcome. But at some point, if the thoughts just return to the same point in a circle, I guess I just find it counterproductive to continue. I know a lot of people pray to God and tell Him to look into it instead. For me there is not quite this clear difference between prayer and thinking, much of the time, so perhaps it is much of the same. I basically go “this is not something I can change”. Life is short enough without going in unpleasant circles.
Of course, one may also ask someone on Earth to look into one’s problems, which is probably a good idea to do first! I assume you have already tried that. As long as they are more competent with that problem, of course.