I just read this article and it seems helpful for the group so I am posting it.
Work should be considered as play, not as work. Work should be considered as play, just a game. You should not be serious about it; you should be just like children playing. It is meaningless, nothing is to be achieved; just the very activity is enjoyed. You can feel the distinction if you play sometimes. When you work it is different: you are serious, burdened, responsible, worried, anxious, because the result, the end-result, is the motive. The work itself is not worth enjoying. The real thing is just in the future, in the result. In play there is no result, really. The very process is blissful. And you are not worried, it is not a serious thing. Even if you look serious, it is just pretending. In play you enjoy the very process; in work the process is not being enjoyed -- the goal, the end, is important. The process has to be tolerated anyhow. It has to be done because the end has to be achieved. If you could achieve the end without this, you would drop activity and jump to the end. But in play you would not do that. The businessman is not playful. And if you are not playful, you cannot be meditative. Be more and more playful. Waste time in play. Just playing with children will do. Even if there is no one, you can jump and dance alone in the room and be playful. Enjoy. But your mind will go on insisting, "What are you doing, wasting time? You can earn something out of this time. You can do something, and you are just jumping, singing, and dancing. What are you doing? Have you gone mad? Try it. Snatch whatsoever time you can get out of your business, and be playful. Whatsoever. You can paint, you can play on a sitar, anything you like -- but be playful. Look for no profit out of it, see no future in it, just the present. And then, then you can be playful inside also. Then you can jump on your thoughts, play with them, throw them here and there, dance with them, but not be serious about them.
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I know you're used to my jocular pontificating about kicking Satan's ass and trying not to upset Max, but this really made me think about the past 72 hours at work.
I think I shared with some of you that I work for the Public Safety department at the University of St. Thomas. I'm an investigator, manage our public info, teach def. tactics & self-defense, blah blah blah...
Thursday I probably got a young man kicked out of the seminary. Over a year ago he had outstanding parking fines he never paid, and his car was immobilized as a result. He ended up forcibly removing and stealing the boot. A couple of months later, we figured out who he was. I called him on it, and he proceeded to attempt to lie, lie, lie his way out of it. Accept I was able to disprove his lies, which just lead to new lies. I let our Dean's Office and Father Baer, the rector of the Vianney (head of undergad seminary) know, and next thing I know kid's saying we're going to get our boot back, claiming a friend has it. We never got it back.
Skip ahead to this week, kid can't register because he has outstanding fines/fees related to this. He has to call me up to resolve it. I call him on all of his bullshit, make him cry, and he finally pays. I let Father Baer know, who flips and lets some pastoral council know, and then asks me to forward all of the documentation to the kid's arch-bishop at his home diocese. Not looking good. But he's a putz and deserves it.
A few hours after that, I probably got a young woman kicked out of school. She forged the signature of all of her profs on a registration form. I got her to admit it. Made her cry to. I felt very badly for her, because she's clearly experiencing other crisis that contributed to this.
A few hours after that, we received a report that a young black woman had a racial slur written on her desk in class (she wasn't in the desk when it occurred). Her mom flipped out. I met both of them later, and it was a very positive meeting, but upsetting because they were two really sweet women and the mom was worried about her daughter. We've had some hate/bias motivated incidents on campus over the last few years, and given current events, it makes me concerned some folks who aren't happy with the election (and not just because of politics) are going to be more emboldened.
Friday, I got to spend an hour with a kid who's defrauded the university out of several thousand dollars, and has been writing account closed checks left & right. It was cool because he was doing all of the textbook things liars do in interviews. He's probably going to get kicked out AND go to jail.
Friday night, a student reports his Obama posters were defaced, one with "Monkey" written on it. Yup, here we go. (This combined with the earlier incident made the ebonics portion of Languages really uncomfortable for me).
And then Saturday night I couldn't join you guys for cocktails, because it was the UST homecoming dance, which is one of the biggest events of the year. We had a few thousand drunk kids on campus, and I had to go write all of our intake reports about the ones we were dealing with. Luckily this year wasn't as bad as last year, but at about 3:30 AM, a pissed off boyfriend of a female student who was told that he couldn't stay in her room, decided to rip a stairway railing off a wall. I could have arrested him, but instead trespassed him from the property for a year, and almost made him cry. And then I got home around 5 am.
I guess my very long-winded point (if there is one) is that work doesn't often feel playful to me, especially given what I do. Yeah, I find opportunities to joke around and be goofy, and god knows i get great stories, but by and large not a lot of play. Yet plenty of stress. I think it's a reminder that I'm not where I'm supposed to be. Or perhaps more accurately where I want to be.
This made me connect even more with the feedback I got after the show, about play vs. work, and reflect on the things that for me play into that.
Anyway...
Sorry if that all got a bit self-absorbed. Again, not sure my point. Nonetheless, thanks for the opportunity to reflect out loud Vic.
If you can't play at work, play extra hard outside of work. Once I was complaining to my dad about a job I had. He told me that at some point everyone hates their job. You work to support the things you really want to do outside of work. When you work for someone it seems that your time becomes their time, but when you punch out it's all yours! Play, Play, Play! If you play hard outside of work then you can reclaim your time at work because you are working for your own play.
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