I've started to loathe work. My work.
Walking home I passed a salesman making a business call, and in the few pacing moments I watched him do the things I too do all day, it hit me - the way we have to eviscerate ourselves, our own character, for this thing called "work."
The guy, the salesman, wore an off the rack suit designed to look good if you're not really looking at it - it was one of those suits that can only inspire "I'm a professional" fire for the first few wears; successive dry-cleanings suck the life out of it until, wearing it, you feel as smothered as every other office man with creases on the back of his knees, and a mock Zero Halliburton. But you swallow it.
I know as he pulls this suit on everyday, he readies his can-do demeanor - which is just a don't-do discipline of the ego, a superego for work. Controlling his voice, his words, his attitude, his humor; doing this because it's how work is done. This is what it is. Be adult. Just swallow it.
He laughed a well rehearsed "really?" at something said, and while the pedestrian contents of some story emerged from the phone he fixed on me passing him by. He couldn't give two fucks who I am, nor me him; both just one in the endless procession of faces you walk past everyday in the city. And that's where the empathy hit me.
Not some warm human empathy, it was more a cold solidarity - here were are, putting on our suits, putting on ourselves for the day, and swallowing personal pride one professional gulp after the other.
It's not that hard. If it was, the world wouldn't be like it is. What's hard is not doing it, not swapping your self for money. Because we all know we might not be worth as much in any other currency.
Doesn't mean you can't loathe it though...
