Just This

Ms. Stein, my career counselor/life coach, wants me to be like the Energizer Bunny. This is an hysterical joke to anyone who has ever known me, yet Julia Stein persists. My meditation teacher, Lung Ta, wants me to be the cat on its window sill, just being the cat. The fact that I have never liked cats very much has made no impression on the Tibetan Rinpoche.


Just Do It.

Just Don't.

I can get revved up big time and do it: send out the letters, emails, and make follow-up calls. What happens? All of the HR folks and so-called hiring managers are acting like the cat on their sills. Nothing, no movement, not a word. Bunch of Just Don'ts.

Just wait.

This "outcome" is, naturally, grist for my Rinpoche's mill: that is, if he had a mill. Tibetan teachers do not have mills, just sills, as it happens. "As long as you are waiting for an outcome," Lung Ta tells me, "you are lost." Evidently, this is the kind of thing that passes for great wisdom in Tibet. No wonder the Chinese want to crush it.

Just sit.

I've almost forgotten a time when, according to the evidence, I had many actual outcomes. I sit in a big house, pay big tuition, have big debt, and, once, I had a big job. Or, maybe not so big according to certain annoying relatives. But, where did that career go?

I wonder in a David Byrne-sian kind of way, "This is not my house. This is not my car. How did I get here?" Yet, here I sit, if not exactly on my sill, at least gazing out the window with absolutely no real job outcomes having occurred in some time.

Just gaze.

"We must not waste precious Bunny-time feeling sorry for ourselves," says Stein.

"One feeling just as good as another: worthless," says Rinpoche.

Just go away.

There is a nice man who will go nameless here, who moderated a forum I attended in lower Manhattan in late fall. I was impressed with the way he handled himself and later heartened by the fact that his consulting firm happened to be in my former line of business.

I wrote to him, proposing a meeting. He accepted. ( "Big deal," said Stein, "One big meeting. Ho-hum.").  I prepared for days: had my pitch ready. We met in Starbuck's, of course, near City Hall and things went very well. At the end he asked whether I'd like to be get contract assignments or be hired. Yes, he actually used the H-word, and I don't mean, hypothetical.

Hired, I answered (duh). He invited me to make a proposal and we agreed on a one week delivery date.

I made my proposal. Then, by pure chance a friend, the President of a company I'd done business with for years, called. Proposal Man's wife worked for him. Would I like him to make a call? Can't hurt we agreed. Perhaps the stars were aligning at last ("Stars don't align," said Ta, "they just orbit round and round." Oy).

Just wait.

Finally, an email, saying how busy Proposal Man had been and he hadn't yet read the proposal. Then another week. I called and left a message. Ten more days have passed. Nothing. Not a word.

Just a minute!

This process repeats itself millions of times a day. We Seekers begin to ask ourselves, "Did I imagine the forum, the man, the meeting, the proposal, the h-word?" Was the proposal truly so bad or unclear that it actually insulted the reader? Just remind me, why do we keep keep knocking on these firmly-closed and sound-proofed walls?

Just cram it.

"Fine," says counselor Stein, "so starve."

"Still looking for outcomes," opines Lung Ta Rinpoche.

Just-ifiable double homicide?