I read something else thought-provoking in the Spring 2010 issue of Buddhadharma. This one’s by Andrew Olendzki and it’s an excerpt from Unlimiting Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism (try saying that thrice quickly). Reading it reminded me that the journey towards career nirvana is a continuous, never-ending process:

Of all the nouns we use to disguise the hollowness of the human condition, none is more influential than “myself.” It consists of a collage of still images — name, gender, nationality, profession, enthusiasms, relationships — which are renovated from time to time, but otherwise are a relic from one particular experience or another. The defining teaching of the Buddhist tradition, that of nonself, is merely pointing out the limitations of this reflexive view we hold of ourselves. It’s not that the self does not exist, but that it is as cobbled together and transient as everything else.

So what does this all mean?

I read it as suggesting that by holding on to these vintage labels — I am an American woman who pays her mortgage by working in marketing — I may also be holding myself back, by possibly engaging in activities that seem “appropriate” for female American marketers. For example, today I am wearing a custom-made suit skirt, a silk blouse, and knee-high leather boots. Maybe if I were back home in my basement right now assembling a zine with glue sticks and my typewriter I’d be sporting a more comfortable outfit involving warm and fuzzy socks. How much does my career label and the external expectations that come with it something that I have internalized, and thus, something that narrows my perception of what’s okay for me to do and wear?

Pushing this further, how much does our label love turn us each into “flat, appalling stereotypes”* by encouraging us to follow the script of a constricting self-narrative about who we believe ourselves to be? If I get into a funk I can tell myself that I am an idea monster with no attention span and zero ability to get anything meaningful done, which can then turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe I need to flip the script and be mindful of this flat stereotype that I keep accidentally trying to turn myself into.

Similarly: we are all dynamic beings. Our “self” — even if we try and hold it hostage to these “still images” — is always changing. And so, knowing our self (and thus knowing our bliss … and thus working our bliss … and thus achieving career nirvana) is a continuous, fluid experience. More like a spiral telephone cord than one flat triangle. We tunnel more deeply into newer versions of who we are, and thus what makes us happy continues to evolve, and thus the expression of that happiness in the form a livelihood also continues to evolve.

Does any of this make any kind of sense, or am I just talkin’ a bunch of blah blah blah?  (Possible!)

More from Olendzki:

Self is a process. Self is a verb.

Food for thought. Just don’t tell your grammar teacher!

* “Flat, appalling stereotypes” is how an angry reader responded to a closing line that she perceived as racist in a 2009 issue of Edible Manhattan. The word package has stayed with me since.