When I read the Dr. Seuss book Oh the Places You'll Go! I celebrated that it was full of encouragement for young people as they dreamt the places they would go. I never dreamt of course of the roller coaster ride called “Looking-for-work”. It is a challenge to plump one’s ego sufficiently before leaving the house for an interview, if you’re lucky enough to get one. Only to nurse that ego along with creative reasoning as you wait to hear if you can move on to the next step in screening boot camp, jump the next hurtle that could move you closer to being hired. All the while trying to dream up plan M or T if this position doesn’t work out.
It’s an atmosphere where dependable allegiances are rare because the people I know and would call to make connection for possible employment worry about losing their jobs too. It’s hard not to take it personally and feel like I’m poison. When in actuality the atmosphere is poisoned. There seems to me to be a fear in the workplace—all workplaces that is more pervasive than the expansive dreams that Dr. Seuss encouraged us to dream. In my experience pastoring local churches, when finances and future are threatened people do not turn to expansiveness and creativity. They, instead, try to invent the wheel again and again. They turn to what used to work; what used to make sense when they were doing and growing and all was right with the world. Fitting the corporate culture and following the rules institutions have targeted as keys to their survival are keys to getting the job. Thinking outside of the box may be completely passé unless; of course that is the true corporate culture and not just lip service.
To dream of a place to go and work, I find myself needing to practice increasing clarity about who I am as a human being and where my true value lies It’s a much different me than the woman who first picked up and read Oh the Places You'll Go!. I also need to be savvy or at least knowledgeable about .not only the institutions/corporation where I dream of working, I also need awareness of our current cultural climate which creates an un/underemployed class to survive. The dreams of surviving that sustain the un/underemployed are the same dreams that sustain big corporations in their practices. It’s going to take people who can dream creatively to break up this road block. .
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
"best & brightest"
I recently heard news reports about many school systems that are in financial trouble. So much so they are planning to lay off thousands of teachers and increase class sizes. Of course these municipalities are also planning on balancing their budgets by cutting their arts and sports programs. Music, drama and art have often been the first thing to go in schools when budgets are undernourished. Most people in these fields know and have testified to long stretches of unemployment and working in transition jobs just to keep food on the table. My daughter and I went to a restaurant in New York city where all the wait staff were aspiring young actors who would sing show tunes to the customers between taking orders and serving food. In a conversation about pastoral compensation I had some times ago with a parishioner, she told me that I went into the wrong profession if I wanted to make a living.
Why is it that people gifted in some professions are valued with compensations beyond my dreams and with job security and huge severance packages, while people gifted in other professions worry about having work at all? When I hear in news reports espousing reasoning for big financial field bonuses--"We need to pay this to keep the best and the brightest,” I get infuriated. There are “best and brightest” in all fields and our current system of compensation and reward does not acknowledge that. The current supply of workers is reaching toward outstripping the demand for workers, the number of jobs available. Is the mass of workers so large and the jobs so few that this argument of “the best and brightest” bubbles to the top to justify business practices without responsibility and without recognition that all human beings are of value and deserving of recognition for their gifts.
Compensation as a means of valuing what a person offers is out of balance in our culture. It seems to me that happiness and well being, not compensation, should be the means of valuing all gifts, talents, skills. Why is it we can not make it possible for all workers to offer their gifts and find happiness and satisfaction as well as a living? It’s the pursuit of happiness that we are guaranteed in our constitution, not the happiness itself. Does that mean that we are free to pursue work all we want only to find our gifts unappreciated and undervalued and our happiness illusive because we aren't compensated for them? One clear path to happiness for me is to offer my gifts in service to healing and health. A musician offers her gifts in service to her music and a poet to his poetry. Why should a banker’s gift of making money be of more value than these? What is a true sign of the happiness we pursue?
I like the egalitarian view that the writer of I Corinthians proposes for the faith community. The same could bring healing to our current economic culture. Here’s a peek…
If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?.... If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. (I Corinthians 12:15-18,20-24)
It seems to me that our economic body needs to live this lesson. Mutual respect and contribution to the betterment of the whole globe will make us stronger human beings and a body that values all healthy pursuits and happiness.
Why is it that people gifted in some professions are valued with compensations beyond my dreams and with job security and huge severance packages, while people gifted in other professions worry about having work at all? When I hear in news reports espousing reasoning for big financial field bonuses--"We need to pay this to keep the best and the brightest,” I get infuriated. There are “best and brightest” in all fields and our current system of compensation and reward does not acknowledge that. The current supply of workers is reaching toward outstripping the demand for workers, the number of jobs available. Is the mass of workers so large and the jobs so few that this argument of “the best and brightest” bubbles to the top to justify business practices without responsibility and without recognition that all human beings are of value and deserving of recognition for their gifts.
Compensation as a means of valuing what a person offers is out of balance in our culture. It seems to me that happiness and well being, not compensation, should be the means of valuing all gifts, talents, skills. Why is it we can not make it possible for all workers to offer their gifts and find happiness and satisfaction as well as a living? It’s the pursuit of happiness that we are guaranteed in our constitution, not the happiness itself. Does that mean that we are free to pursue work all we want only to find our gifts unappreciated and undervalued and our happiness illusive because we aren't compensated for them? One clear path to happiness for me is to offer my gifts in service to healing and health. A musician offers her gifts in service to her music and a poet to his poetry. Why should a banker’s gift of making money be of more value than these? What is a true sign of the happiness we pursue?
I like the egalitarian view that the writer of I Corinthians proposes for the faith community. The same could bring healing to our current economic culture. Here’s a peek…
If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?.... If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. (I Corinthians 12:15-18,20-24)
It seems to me that our economic body needs to live this lesson. Mutual respect and contribution to the betterment of the whole globe will make us stronger human beings and a body that values all healthy pursuits and happiness.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
networking
Last week I went to a professional conference in the hopes of networking and finding some work possibilities. It was energizing to go to the many workshops and meet new people. At the same time, I had this niggling thought at the back of mind, “Why don’t you hire me at your facility?!” I know there is an irrational quality to that thought and I worked to keep it from robbing me of the enjoyment of being among colleagues.
I’ve heard from job-hunting specialists that making contacts and creating a network of people to call to put one in touch with job opportunities is important in finding a job. This is hard for me. I am a listener and yet I have made cold calls and reached out to people when my work has called for it. I am more motivated to do this networking and contacting when I consider this a spirit-building experience. By that I mean the kind of 6 degrees removed connection that puts all of us in the web of life.
In my first congregation there was an old fisherman that died. At his memorial service I reflected on the different ways networking was part of his life. As a fisherman he would spend many hours repairing the nets after a fishing run. Net-working was part of his livelihood. If the nets had holes in them he would lose fish and income. He also had a hobby as an avid short wave radio networker—a CB’er. I heard from his family about all of the friends he made talking to people on the short wave and how they became a community that would care for one another and check up on one another. I heard about the interesting and humorous handles they had for one another. This was a network full of love and life. This network of CB’ers became the old fisherman’s connection to the world—his life line when his health worsened. Perhaps the networking we do now when looking for work is a life line for us and reminds us that we are valued and valuable persons. If only 6 degrees separates me from the person I call about a job that’s a little less daunting than calling a stranger and I can have a conversation with my cousin twice removed.
I’ve heard from job-hunting specialists that making contacts and creating a network of people to call to put one in touch with job opportunities is important in finding a job. This is hard for me. I am a listener and yet I have made cold calls and reached out to people when my work has called for it. I am more motivated to do this networking and contacting when I consider this a spirit-building experience. By that I mean the kind of 6 degrees removed connection that puts all of us in the web of life.
In my first congregation there was an old fisherman that died. At his memorial service I reflected on the different ways networking was part of his life. As a fisherman he would spend many hours repairing the nets after a fishing run. Net-working was part of his livelihood. If the nets had holes in them he would lose fish and income. He also had a hobby as an avid short wave radio networker—a CB’er. I heard from his family about all of the friends he made talking to people on the short wave and how they became a community that would care for one another and check up on one another. I heard about the interesting and humorous handles they had for one another. This was a network full of love and life. This network of CB’ers became the old fisherman’s connection to the world—his life line when his health worsened. Perhaps the networking we do now when looking for work is a life line for us and reminds us that we are valued and valuable persons. If only 6 degrees separates me from the person I call about a job that’s a little less daunting than calling a stranger and I can have a conversation with my cousin twice removed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)