What Do You Do?

Desire makes man forget his real nature and reduces him to be status of a beast. ~Sri Wathya Sai Baba

“And, what do you do?”

It is a question I hear a lot now. I just moved from Florida, to Oklahoma, and almost everyone I meet I’m meeting for the first time, and we don’t know each other and so the question is asked, “And what do you do?”

What is the right answer to this question? Is there a right answer. What I want to do is hang my head and mumble the word “Nothing.” I do nothing, and therefore I am nothing.

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!

They'd banish us, you know. ~Emily Dickenson

I know I shouldn’t make too much out of a chit-chat, get acquainted question, but my nature is to make too much out of not that much. The truth is that most of us make too much out of what we do or fail to do.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. ~Bertrand Russell

What do you do? is a difficult question for me right now because I am not employed, yet. It feels like, if I’m not working, if I have no job title, that I do nothing, and I am worth nothing. In the past I could say I was a school teacher, or a Liability Analyst, or a Children’s Social Services case manager, but what I have done, is not what I do. At one time I was an ordained Deacon in the Episcopal Church which was without pay, but it was something I did, and at least some folks thought it was important. I wish people would just ask, “What have you being doing lately?” In my mind that seems like I could answer without having to admit that I’m unemployed. “I cleaned out the litter box, walked the dog, loaded the dishwasher, worked on my blog, cared for my recuperating wife.

Do you have any problems, other than that you're unemployed, a moron, and a dork? ~John McEnroe

Why does it matter that I do anything? The question what do you do is not asking me about my activities. It is really a question about appearances. They want to know how I earn my keep. How do I pay my bills, feed my family. There is also an aspect of the question that is probing to see if I’m important or not. Do I have an impressive job. Do I have a job that makes me rich, or one that keeps me poor? What do you do is a question that is actually trying see if I measure up to some generally accepted standard of success. When you pull out a credit card is it an American Express Platinum card or one of those cards with a picture of a kitten on the front. (According to the world’s standards a kitten on the front of your credit card shouts Looooser.)

Pride attaches undue importance to the superiority of one's status in the eyes of others; and shame is fear of humiliation at one's inferior status in the estimation of others. When one sets his heart on being highly esteemed, and achieves such rating, then he is automatically involved in fear of losing his status. ~Lao Tzu

What do you do?

What I should answer is, “As little as possible…” This would fit with my tendency to be flippant and funny, but it is absolutely not true. I’m actually working on my P.H. B. I am Practicing to be a Human Being.

The question, what do you do? is connected to our desire for stuff, our desire to have what we don’t have.

In the end, what do I do? I’m interested in offering a different way of seeing and being. I’m dedicated to waking people up who want to be awake and to not disturbing those who prefer to stay asleep. I’m like the snooze button on your clock radio…relentless for about an hour…either you’ll wake up and get up, or go back to sleep and give up. To borrow a line from the poem in the post below:

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe–

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

~William Stafford