Would I want to work with someone like me ?
I heard this question. For a moment I had this fear that karma is going to come back to kick me in my behind. How would anyone want to work with an apathetic freeloader who is always late with the admin? Will my future children be in unsafe hands because of my attitude towards my work? Recently, i had a momentary freeze-up When i had to deal with some notorious unreasonable, rude and apathetic students in a class. I told myself - karma has come to get me like my mom said it would, when I was behaving just like that in my teenage years. It is an incredibly toxic and helpless psyche and i psychologically doomed me to failure before I even needed to try. Why bother when this is my lot and my payback, my punishment for the wrong I had done - the same thought I had when I was so angry and disgusted with myself a few years back for a different reason.
Conditioned helplessness much? When i realised what had happened, I told myself I must never say that to my children. But being aware is only one part of the puzzle.
And then I realised that this is what I have believed about myself, that I am good for nothing and really not that outstanding of an employee. I could've done better - am capable of doing it if I could make myself choose to. My enthusiasm has been doused in cold water together with my desire for being useful, creative and productive.
I have been behaving like what Sensei observed of my kamae, I have been "fighting on the outside" - mentally saying "just get away from me" while sticking the tip of my shinai at my opponent like how one would stick a broomstick fearfully at a roach. But the issue is - unlike a shiai, I just didn't want to care about anything. I feel like when i don't know how to spring clean a corner and want to throw everything out and start over instead. I just want to get away and to start on a clean slate. Sensei also said if you can walk away from a training, you can walk away from anything. I'm not walking away yet, but I'm not doing anything productive either.
Honestly speaking this isn't a difficult work. The pay and benefit is good, and apart from sensibly dealing with some difficult people, I have quite a lot of control and say in how I want to work and plan my time. As long as i don't do something incredibly stupid, it is pretty stable and predictable work. and if I make good use of my stint here, perhaps I can even do something meaningful and with lasting impact. On the other hand, I caught sight of a lately: "don't stay where you are tolerated, go where you can be celebrated". Can I really be celebrated? After all, it is not where you are but when you make of it, right? my attitude will follow me and haunt me wherever I go, and I am really too apathetic to seem to want to change. Have I stepped on Chinese ghost paper money? Did my brilliant potential attract some sort of evil eye curse? Was it the mirror I broke?
Will I ever come out of this?