Losing my job: salvaging the pieces

In my introductory bibliography I wrote about how I was looking forward to what my unknown future had in store for me. I also mentioned T’ai Chi, artwork, and Japanese. But even though this current essay is a bit personal, I feel it is an important addition to what I initially submitted. It gives a more complete picture of who I am. And hopefully, what I am experiencing and learning will be of benefit to others in similar situations.

When I was a child, I remember watching a movie in which a wild bird was shot. It was flying overhead so beautifully, so free. But suddenly a man took a musket, aimed, and hit the bird right in the heart. I remember the horror I felt as I watched feathers fly in all directions and the bird spiral downward, landing on the ground with disturbing finality.

I pretty much forgot that incident, at least the emotional impact of it, until quite recently. I have been working in a college at a job that until recently I really adored. It was a very creative job, allowing me to bring all of my past experiences together into a harmonious thread, which I used as a base for further imaginative ideas. I loved my students, my courses, my research, the campus, and the wonderful opportunity to utilize all of my experiences in service of life. I was accepted, appreciated, and respected. I was definitely on a crest and part of a team.

But a new administration came in and wanted to revamp the school according to their vision. Fair enough, but that included making room for friends of those newly in power. Some people had to go. I was evaluated using incorrect criteria. So, Bang! Without warning and in mid-flight I was shot directly in the heart. The shock almost killed me. I watched as all that I had built over those happy years spewed forth into a million pieces. I felt myself spiraling downward faster and faster until I landed with a mighty thud on a very hard, unyielding earth.

That seemed to be the start of an ongoing cycle of loss. In the few months left at the job, things have gone from bad to worse with one insult after another. In other areas of my life, too, people have severed ties that I thought were solid. Others who meant well gave simplistic, one-size-fits all tidbits of truths, so typical of pop-spirituality. “No matter what happens, you have to choice of how to react.” In other words, “Overwhelming pain is bad. Feeling deeply and intensely reacting to injustices done to you show you are out of control. That is bad. You are wrong because you are weak.”

Equally insulting, although also well intended, were those who jumped in with quick fixes. “Just get another job. Why not go to another university? Can’ t you go back to your old job?” That is to say, “Jump to another situation and everything will be fine. Get a quick answer. Avoid the pain. Don’t go into things too deeply.”

Because all these things, I have felt layer after layer of my life, my beliefs, and my trust peeling away. I have been feeling shimmeringly insecure.

Long ago a much older friend wisely told me, “Hindsight is a wonderful thing.” That is, with time every event in our lives becomes meaningful, and we understand the perfect timing of everything. I am not yet distant enough from this trauma in my life for that global perspective to arrive. But with tremendous effort, I have finally managed to separate myself an inkling from my intense feelings. Only an inkling, but enough to begin to look around and to think, “OK. Where do I go from here? How do collect myself and start again? Or should I even try to collect my ‘old’ self at all?”

I am not sure how to answer those questions yet. But I do know that as I sift through the rubble, I wish to salvage a few crucial things. Hope is one. So are determination, expectations for opportunities to come, gratitude for those few who did support me, and, I am still working on this one, the ability to completely forgive the ones who hurt me the most.

I have learned a lot. I know much more about people and power. I have awakened and developed parts of myself I never knew I had. I know I have a heart cracked open wide, and so I feel more deeply. I seem to look into the hearts of others who are suffering in sadness and be able to sincerely say, “I know. I am there, too.”

I am ready to open myself even wider to the beauty and suffering around me, and to see that no matter what, they are, and always have been, twins and an integral part of life and of who I am to become.