A way out

Nathen checked the time it was 12:20 PM. They still had 40 minutes left from their lunchbreak so he left his phone on the table and continued to explain:

“All of these office dwellers, from the office assistants to the CEO himself, have one thing in common. They are constantly looking for a way out”, Nathen paused as if the point he made was very important. To his disappointment, his colleagues were only partially attentive and more focused on their lunch.

“What do you mean they’re looking for a way out?” asked Jacob out of politeness. He wanted to keep the conversation going.

“Just that they want out”, Nathen took a quick bite from his steak, chewed in five or six times and continued, “You yourself have mentioned several times that you want to become a teacher in some small town school. And you Martha, you want to be a nutrition consultant right?”

“Yep, as soon as I finish a Master’s program on nutrition. Although I have to first enroll”.

“Yes, yes that is the thing I am saying. Everybody is looking for a way out. I have collected at least twenty stories from people about what they will do in the near or far future. None of them have anything to do with debt collection”.

All three of them worked in a debt collection firm, part of an international investment holding. Nathen was a business analyst, Martha was a deputy manager of the call center and Jacob was a lawyer. Nathen pulled out his notebook, opened it as if he had something important to show, but then closed it quickly and clumsily. He had gone too far. He became very self-conscientious and ashamed. He blushed and his gaze started to drift awkwardly along the walls of the restaurant in order to avoid the eyes of his colleagues.

Martha and Jacob did not mind the silence and continued eating, completely unaware that Nathan was indulging in mental self-flagellation. “What is wrong with me, why am I such a weirdo!” thought Nathen “They don’t care about these things. They will never admit it, that they too are seeking a way out”. While different thoughts were racing through his mind, Martha had started talking about her sister’s husband again. The conversation had taken a new topic. Nathen let out a sigh of relief and he continued to eat his lunch, biting of large chunks and chewing them quickly.

“It does not matter all that much,” he thought, “I’ll be leaving soon anyway”.

I am blessed to be here and now, to embrace with awareness the manifestations, which the Universe present to me. All that has happened, is happening and will happen is good and beneficial, although I am not always able to see it as such. I therefor am content with the way things are.

The above paragraph was fitted in a single cell from an Excel file that Nathen was working on. He had just finished writing this affirmation, slash prayer and then deleted it immediately as he had always done. However, this time it was different, he only thought he had deleted the cell’s content, but in actuality, it remained intact in the file.

For several months, this was Nathen’s form of prayer – in written form commonly somewhere in the Excel files he was working on. He had no single deity in mind when he wrote such things. His prayers arose from reading and listening to motivational experts, psychologist, philosophers and non-fiction writers. He thought of the activity as a form of spiritual tidiness.

 His manager Michael however did not know what to think about it when he saw it in the file. So, he asked Nathen on their work chat, since both men were working from home that day:

“What’s this nonsense in the file?”

What followed was a screenshot of the cell that Nathen was so convinced he had deleted earlier. Then the chat continued:

“Are you some sort of a cultist?”

Now one might think Nathen was utterly humiliated by this unpleasant incident and indeed, he was. However, as he was feeling horribly awkward and inadequate, Nathen could at the same time watch and observe himself in this position with absolute calm and equanimity. Nathen was panicking and walking franticly in his small kitchen, around the table, while his work laptop rested and waited for an answer. The poor man was panicking yes, but soon he got a hold of himself and wrote a short, but very earnest explanation and apology, saying that the words in question were to be deleted and should not have been seen by anyone but himself. Then he changed the topic to something work related and that was that.

After that, Nathen again found himself pacing in the rooms of his house from the kitchen to the bedroom, from the bedroom to the living room and back in the kitchen. “I now really have no choice I have to leave, there is no other way,” he affirmed to himself, “Now that Mike knows I have to get out this damn firm”. He would not admit it, but he did not believe his own thoughts. The fact of the matter was that ever since his former academic supervisor told him that an assistant professor position would open the following year, Nathen had decided to apply for it. Nevertheless, he still had to convince himself of his own decision.

The part of Nathen that knew all this was the same part that had been watching him as he panicked. This calm and grounded Nathen was in no hurry to convince the rest of Nathen in anything. The main question was whether to continue to pursue realization in a corporate environment, as he had done for the last three years, or to return to academia. This question was pursuing Nathen ever since he heard about the position opening in the University. However, after this little incident with his manager this question seemed greatly significant.

The workday passed mechanically and like a washing machine program set for a particular time duration so did Nathen remained logged on until 17:30 and then logged off. His wife Tina was listening to some podcast, while their one-year-old son was sleeping. Nathen had mentioned the assistant professor position before to his wife and she seemed supportive enough, but Nathen was not yet convinced and feared she somehow disapproved of any carrier change on his part. She was still in maternity leave and the family budget relayed mostly on Nathen’s salary. Wasn’t it more practical for him to keep his current job?

He skipped his recent embarrassing experience with Michael and asked Tina’s opinion on his intention to change jobs.

“Well you want to do it right?” she asked.

“Yes I do”

“Do you feel unappreciated at work?”

“Well…” Nathen looked away from Tina’s brown eyes and paused, only to say, “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I just don’t”, insisted Nathen.

“Well are you being treated the way you wish to be?”

To this Nathen really wanted to answer with another “I don’t know”, he had already become acutely aware of the awkwardness in their dialog. Tina was so loving and genuinely interested in his predicament. There was no blame or any hidden agenda in her questions. However, regarding people’s emotions and especially those of her spouse Tina was notoriously curious and like a good detective, she was going to get to the bottom of this.

“Come one Nate, are you being treated ok?”

“Well, I can’t say”.

“Seriously?”

“Ok, let me think”, Nate was buying time. Why was it so hard to answer this, he had no clue. He was always rushing in his work, in his personal life, in his speech even and now he could not stand silent, but felt that he had to say something and fill the void. But he did not know what to say and this made him even more jittery.

While all this was going on Nathen could see himself being awkward and evasive. This observing Nathen was calm, he of course knew the answer to Tina’s question, but was in no rush say anything. Never the less Nathen said it:

“Yeah, I guess I feel underappreciated, but I do not what to complain about the work, about my manager or about my colleagues. I do not want to be that sort of person.”     

“Well that’s fine, don’t be,” said Tina, “But you can still feel underappreciated right, without pointing any fingers?”

“Hm, maybe I can.” Nathen blushed.

Tina smiled at Nathen and said:

“Listen Nate, I had my doubts that you could start off as a business analyst in the first place. I knew you had no previous experience, but you still enrolled in courses, applied for tens of position. I did not know what to think of it. I believed that it did not suit you and that you could not do it. However I thought to myself who was I to tell you what you can or can’t do remember, we’ve talked about this?”

“Yes I do”.

“Yeah,” Tina continued, “But you still found a job, you did it. And now you want out of it right?”

“Yes, but I don’t think I made a mistake starting there in the first place”.

“I agree”, said Tina “I earnestly think you did not make a mistake. It is a valuable experience and you can always return to it later in your life if you wish”. Tina stopped and sipped from her tea. “You know life is funny that way, you think that it is straight, predictable, mundane, but in reality it is quite like a labyrinth of events, very odd and very unique. So you should not feel bad that you are returning to the University it won’t be the same as you left it. You are not the same either.”

A few nights later Nathen dreamt of an Excel spreadsheet. It was zoomed in and he could see a large grid of cells, one of which was filled with a number. He could not make out the number, but he knew that he had to divide it by ten and fill ten empty cells with the result, so he did. Then he had to sum up these ten cells to get the same number he had just divided, so he did, and then he again divided it by ten only the sum up the ten cells, then divided again. This repetitive, nonsensical task felt very enjoyable, very pure and even crucial. He felt a sense of rapture as he summed and divided, summed and divided. Then he awoke.

He could see the outside from his window. The morning was so early that it felt mystical, the moon was still in the sky, but sunlight was creeping up from unknown sources making the sky look dark and pale at the same time. Birds unknown to Nathen were singing. As perhaps a continuation of his dream, he remembered the Heart sutra, a Buddhist prayer he had come across in a book he was reading. It went like this:        

Form is no other than emptiness,

Emptiness no other than form.

Form is only emptiness,

Emptiness only form.

Then Nathen gave his own version, the version of a business analyst:

Summing is nothing other than dividing,

Dividing is nothing other the summing.

Summing is only dividing,

Dividing is only summing.

The morning’s peace and tranquility flowed into Nathen’s very being. He had touched upon something. It did not matter if he was a business analyst or assistant professor. He could play both parts, he could have preferences, but it did not matter since the business analyst was an assistant professor and the assistant professor was the business analyst. There was nothing left of his doubts or his anxious anticipation, he had found his way out, everything seemed to be in order.

A few hours later, Nathen was driving to work. He always departed too early, while the traffic was still light and commonly had half an hour to spare before he entered the office. During that time, he would listen to audio books or write in his journal, or daydream, staring in the fluent and ever-changing sky, where clouds were gathering and dispersing, all pierced and recolored by the lazy sun. Nathen had always felt that the minutes were slower in the morning. Evenings were fast and passed unnoticeably, mornings where slow like dripping honey and he enjoyed their slowness.  

That morning, as he was driving eastward to enter the city, a feeling of warm peace from his dream continued to exist. He thought about his University and his current job, about his former supervisors and mentors and his current manager, about his friends from the times he was a student, as well as his friends from the office. He thought of his parents, of Tina, his son and many other people and places. However, his thought came and went slowly and quietly, as if tiptoeing across his mind in order to go somewhere else.

For a while, he was contemplating about the way he would resign, what would he tell, what will Mike probably answer, and this imaginary dialog went back and forth for a bit, then it went somewhere else.  “I wander if all people daydream only about themselves?” Nathen though, “Always doing the appropriate things, receiving the praise and recognition they think they deserve. I believe that even when we daydream about how other people achieve their dreams, we are still at the center – we see ourselves as helping and being generous. Again all the praise is meant for us, but we don’t mind giving it to someone else”.

Then Nathen thought of Jacob and saw him as a teacher with a home in the countryside. He saw how Jacob was going to work, he saw him in the classroom, in the schoolyard and he saw him having long lazy summers. Nathen did this with the effort to remove himself completely from the story. This proved to be not as difficult as he thought. The details were not important; Nathen understood that, the only thing that was important was that his friend had achieved what he wanted for himself.

Then the picture changed completely and then there was Martha in a spacious, sunny office with big windows and minimalistic decorations. Martha’s diploma was hanging on the wall and it read “Nutrition and wellness expert”. Martha was consulting a client via the telephone, after the call ended, she wrote a quick email and then she took out a book from the drawer, laid back in her office chair and begun reading. Again, Nathen removed himself from his own daydream. It was all Martha. She was the essence of this dream, just as Jacob was the essence of the former one.

This dreams seemed long and spacious just like the morning minutes. Nathen parked the car, looked at his watch and saw that he had about 40 minutes to spare. He got out of the vehicle, then started walking aimlessly and daydreamed until 08:57 AM.