Possum Meatloaf

I spoke to a friend of mine today who, while grateful for employment, is burnt out on the job. After years of working at her company, she is being asked to do much more for less. She is tired and discouraged - with no end in sight. She is making a good salary with all the benefits I am so wanting to recapture, yet I felt very badly for her.

I know that dreams are only really interesting to the person having them. I try to tell my husband my dreams and after 18 years of this he sits patiently and nods his head but I know his mind is in search of a hiding place. Still, I am going to share the dream I had last night - in a nutshell.

Typical of most dreams, I was in and out of different and unrelated environments but the theme was my job. Or my former job. I was smoking again - a lot. I worried about running out of matches. In my office building, the elevators only moved sideways or down. I'm not a professional, but the meaning behind those images is fairly textbook, I think.

I knew I was in trouble of losing my job and felt fairly helpless about it. I was trying to close business but things out of my control kept happening to it and while I worked hard to save whatever I could, I did not believe I would be successful. My boss (whom I didn't recognize) came in to see me.

Okay now, hold the thought because the next part doesn't really have anything to do with the story - but it was my favorite part of the dream: my boss arrogantly walked into my office and sat himself down in the chair across from my desk. He was eating frozen possum meatloaf straight from the microwave and commented what excellent possum it was considering it was a frozen dinner. He offered me some. I declined stating that I was not a fan of marsupials, but at the same time I realized that the possum meatloaf he was eating had been given to me as a gift and what was he doing eating it without even asking me? I mean really, what a pig! Don't you just love dreams??

Anyway, during the course of this meeting I learned that my boss didn't like me, that he never had, that he thought I was untalented, that he had been giving my good accounts to a rep he had hired without my knowledge and that I was being let go the following week. I felt panicked, insecure, and ashamed. And my feelings were hurt.

When I woke up, I was so relieved to already be unemployed!

There are over 14 million unemployed people in this country today. We NEVER WERE our jobs. Our value is not based on how much money we do or don't make, our benefit packages, the perks we get, or even our ability to support our families. Our value is in who we are as individuals. And in a world that has shifted from "living to work" to "working to live", where multi-multi-tasking is not a skill but a way of life, where companies offer virtual "cities" on their campuses - grocery stores, gyms, day care, dry cleaners and more to make staying at the office late more convenient, where office/residential buildings are springing up everywhere so that you can literally live where you work, we have systematically been transformed to believe that we are our jobs. And you know what? I was right there living it. I loved my job but it I know that over time, I had allowed it to defined me. It made me "valuable". And that is a crock.

Losing a job is difficult (and in many cases catastrophic). But equally devastating to many of us has been the loss of our identity. The feeling after months of looking for work that we are not viable. That we are not valuable. That we do not belong. In my dream, the stress I felt was not just about the loss of the paycheck - it was how losing my job made me feel about myself. And in what they are now calling a "jobless economic recovery" (whatever that means), we need to be mindful of that.

Gratefully, while we have tightened our belts and altered our lifestyle considerably, we are not facing financial catastrophe. So with that said, I am feeling that I have been given a terrific opportunity. To have continued to feel, as I did when I was initially laid off, that after 15 years I was "disposable" would have done me in. I have, instead, learned that I have much more to offer the world and my family than a 40+ hour work week. I bring more to the table than a big annual summer vacation and lots of expensive presents under the tree to my family. And while I continue to search for a job, I have gained patience, compassion, insight during this season. My faith in God has grown. My faith in job diminished. So when I do find new work, I will enter the job with a clear mind. Who I am will never again be what I do or who I work for. The culture of "live to work" will not be adopted. I can be successful but I do not have to drink the Kool-aid.

Or in my case, eat the frozen possum meatloaf.