Work is important and essential for so many reasons. Yes, we need the income, we need to survive, but work isn't always a guarantee of this if you happen to be in low paying employment having to rely on food banks and low barrier shelters in order to survive. The existence of society is dependent upon our work. We all have a role to play: the cook, the lawyer, the waiter, the doctor, the janitor, the teacher, the drycleaner, the artist, the carpenter and many, many more. Even the humble mental health peer support worker plays an important role and sometimes even the psychiatrist!
My job keeps me alive only because I have the blessing of social housing and thus extremely low rent. I am good at budgeting, don't have a car and no bad habits. I am also a vegetarian and not overly concerned about clothes. I am also careful not to waste food. So, I can save money even though I earn twelve glorious bucks an hour. If I did not have the blessing of social housing and if my lifestyle was typical of Canadian consumerism I would not be able to live in Vancouver and it would even be difficult for me to live in cheaper communities.
There is nothing at all empowering about my job. I am at the bottom of the food chain. A prolonged sense of powerlessness is known to be detrimental to good mental health. Only by focussing on giving good care to my clients and working well with my coworkers makes these conditions tolerable. But only up to a point.
For years I have gone totally Pollyanna about my job, stubbornly focussing on the positives while the negatives secreted into my soul their subtle and lethal toxins. Last week two lousy days on the job brought it all to a head and I found myself in the middle of a meltdown.
The emotions have subsided. Coworkers and supervisors are again treating me with kindness and in certain cases almost excessive kindness. My contribution again feels appreciated, even honoured and the grief about systemic and structural injustice and humiliation lurk in the background like a sour, bitter shadow.
There's a lot to be grateful for. I enjoy my work. I eat well every day. I enjoy good health, good faithful friends, a vibrant church community, good mental health, and free and abundant artistic expression. I am financially flush enough to prepare another trip to Latin America. I am also exploited and unfairly remunerated in my work. I have to find a way to live between these two visions of my vocation, euphoric and dystopic because that is the reality. I also try to remember the many whose working conditions and remuneration are worse than what I could even imagine for myself.
And as much as I hate this saying, at least I have a job.
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