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Reflection 3 - The Workaholic in Me

8/25/2009 7:43:33 PM

REFLECTION 1

The Workaholic in Me

To be a workaholic is to lead an unbalanced life. A life can be balanced and fruitful, and very busy; it just takes a lot of soul work. When it’s driven, though, we need to ask ourselves why. Not ‘what am I trying to accomplish’, because that can easily be answered with the list of things such as: pay the mortgage, get ahead in my job, etc. And it sounds so reasonable and necessary, we accept those answers without question.

The real issue is ‘what am I trying to prove by working myself to exhaustion? What do I get out of being so driven? Why does the thought of doing something about it make me feel anxious and uncomfortable? What do I think I might lose?’

For many people, their work is who they are. That’s a natural thing; it’s part of a stage in human development. That means their sense of well-being is tied directly to what they accomplish through their work. That’s why a job loss can be so devastating. It’s more than just a matter of paying the bills. It has to do with how we value ourselves, and what gives us a sense of purpose and place in life. When what you do is also who you are, the loss of a job feels like death. And nothing—not even family—can compensate for that.

When I began to identify this in myself, I also became more aware of it in others and started listening closely to our conversations. So much of what we felt we needed to do in the church was based on an unquestioned image of what we thought a pastor should be. Our unconscious images are powerful because we accept them as universal truths and don’t usually question the toll they take on our lives. If we can’t live up to them, it’s somebody’s fault: either our own or the people around us.

Workaholism is a barrier to spiritual growing and human development. When we live as though life is an emergency, running from one fire to another, one task to the next, in an effort to keep life together and functioning, there’s little time for soul work. Prayers are done on the run, if at all. Quiet time is wasted time and usually produces feelings of guilt. There’s always this underlying sense of “I should be doing something.”

Maybe the word ‘control’ needs to be spoken here, for those who are in a mid-life transition and resisting it by pushing themselves to work or feeling pushed by work pressures, are really trying to maintain control of life. It’s the juggler and the puppeteer (see in Journal Entries: The Early Years – Part 1). If you stop for a moment to catch your breath, something terrible might happen: the organization could fall apart, someone could get ahead of you, you might not be on the top of the information you need for your job.

When our work life looms so large the spiritual dimension gets squeezed into a corner, we disregard an important piece of ourselves. That means we’re fragmented, and there’s no way we can feel whole. While we’re younger, being driven is exciting. We like the challenge, we like living on the edge, we like the sense of purpose it gives to our lives.

If we continue to grow, however, sooner or later we’ll begin to question if this is all there is to life. When work is our life, there may come a time when it is no longer enough. And that’s a signal: we’re ready to grow.