“Busy has become a four-letter-word,” Sheila winced, speaking of the work ethic at the office. “If you’re not busy, something’s wrong with you. If you slow down, people think you’re not ambitious enough. The panic around competition fosters decision making from the dark side.” 

Sheila had just come from a meeting in which she learned about her employer’s plan to replace her department with more sales. “’Restructuring’, they said. ‘Tightening up the bottom line’.” Her company was opting for more foot soldiers and salesmen over people with creative ideas. In terms of the bottom line, aggressiveness does seem to be more valued than creativity. 

Competition in the corporate world is stark. It forces us to think in economic terms instead of human terms. Competition grows between workers within the same organization – to keep their job, to get a raise – rather than the team working together to compete with other, outside companies. The focus or purpose becomes that of the individual, with no focus on the good of the whole, even when the whole means the rest of humanity, as in environmental considerations.

“Companies don’t care about their workers anymore,” Shelia said, speaking of the dark side of decision making. “The only thing they care about is, ‘How much money can I make?’ — not we, owners and workers together, but ‘How much money can I, the owner, make?’”  If the accepted values are competition and individual gain, then taking into consideration the needs of those behind me in line means falling behind myself.

For an individual company to keep moving ahead, it seems, getting new business is more important than creativity or human relations. Personal worth is measured in dollars rather than in personal gifts and talents. There’s never enough.

Isn’t there a story about a tree in the middle of the Garden of Enough? Wasn’t there more than enough to go around in that garden, but the two inhabitants wanted more? More knowledge? More power? Aren’t we still fighting over the rights to such a Tree of Knowledge — the knowledge of how to create a leaner, meaner money machine — no matter the consequence to the garden itself? Concerns for the environment always seem to lose to concerns for the bottom line.

“The corporate world has injured my self worth,” Sheila moaned. “They took what I had to offer them, my creativity, used it, then they dismissed it as insufficient. There was never any positive feedback, only negative motivation to develop more, more, more business.” Even the salesmen who had good people skills and took good care of their existing customers were told this was no longer good enough. New business was the only way they could hold on to their jobs.

Each of us has to determine for ourselves what is enough. Sheila tried to work it out within her own situation. “I’m going to have to find something that will ensure my having an internal sense of success rather than an external one.” That may mean a lower salary. “I’ll have to enjoy it myself and appreciate my own abilities. I can’t be dependent on external rewards or motivation; but, how do I find a career at my age,” she asked, “with that kind of internal reward?”

Thomas Moore, in Care Of the Soul, offers insight. “The more deeply our work stirs imagination and corresponds to images that lie there at the bedrock of our identity and fullness, the more it will have soul.” (185) The more our work awakens in us a feeling of our own worth – a real appreciation of our own gifts – the more satisfying and liberating it will be. What we do has to have some integral connection with who we are as a person.

We are human beings first, workers second. Does what I do allow me to be creative? Allow me to be in and to nurture essential relationships? Contribute to my feeling of aliveness? Free me to act with conscious integrity? Does what I do allow me to make time for beauty in my life, for soul time, allow me to “bend time” so I can include those things that heal and hold and whole me?
Does what I do flow from my essence and not just something I have to will myself to do?

If these factors are present, perhaps our present circumstance or career choice is enough. If they are not, all the competition and energy with which we choose to participate in the race toward emotional security will never be enough.

“What do I have to do to take my life back?” Sheila asked. Joseph Campbell once observed that all mythic adventures begin with people who were initially lost, stuck, confused about something. I told Sheila she was right where she needed to be. She was asking the right questions that would lead her to the next right step.