Right Livelihood

This is not about money. This is about identity.

The society I live in is not one of hunter-gatherers, nor is it an agricultural economy. I don’t find or grow my own food, and trade the excess for other goods and services. To survive, I need to purchase goods and services. To buy these things, I need money. The easiest way to get money is to get a job.

Let’s look at this piece by piece. I don’t need a job. I don’t need money. I need the goods and services essential to live. I need to eat. I need to keep a roof over my head. I need clothing to keep me warm and socially presentable. There are things I want, but let’s stay focused on need for the moment.

I do not need a job.

I do not need money.

I need goods and services.

This is a huge paradigm shift for some people. You do not need to work 60 or 80 hours a week, unless that’s what it truly takes to keep your family fed, clothed, and sheltered. You don’t need a prestigious job title. You do not need to sacrifice a lot of other stuff for the benefit of your job, or for the acquisition of money. What you need is to manage your needs.

The Buddhists have a concept called “right livelihood”, which basically says that what you do for a living, the means by which you make money and acquire goods and services, matters. I think most people with any sort of moral and ethical consciousness are down with this concept. Don’t exploit other people. Don’t screw people over for your own gain. Don’t knowingly do things that harm other. Pretty basic stuff, which extends far beyond livelihood and into how you spend your life in general.

Which brings us to the concept of occupation being equated with identity. When you meet a new person and ask “so what do you do?”, you’re really asking “who are you?”. Yes, in many cases what you do is who you are… or, at least, an expression of who you are. I prefer to think of it as the latter. Katie is an elementary school art teacher. It’s a good reflection of who she is. She’s an artist. She’s a caring person. She wants to make the world a better place. She’s so much more than “art teacher”, but it’s a good starting point. The first time that I worked in a bookstore, however, there were no booksellers there. The place was full of actors, playwrights, painters, musicians, composers, screenwriters, novelists, and poets. “Bookseller” was what they did to make the money to pay the bills, but it wasn’t how they self-identified, it wasn’t their identity.

People ask me what I do. People ask Katie what her new boyfriend does. There’s social awkwardness there, because we’re conditioned to make good impressions and to demonstrate, for lack of a better word, worthiness. I’ve had jobs with “good” companies and have held impressive-sounding job titles. Right now, I can tap dance around it by saying I’m a writer, an independent film producer, a counselor, a whole lot of things. Meh. I have a grunt job that pays the bills and allows me the freedom to do other things. If I said where I worked and what I do, some folks would look at my age and my education and wonder either what was wrong with me, or where I screwed up my life.

I need goods and services, so I need money, so I need a job. I want other things, so I take a job that balances my needs and wants.

Katie tells people I’m a superhero. This makes me happy, because I like that she sees me this way. It’s a good answer, because it provokes follow-up questions and allows her to explain what she means. She tells them that I help people, that I’m a good person, all sorts of things that I take as validation that I’m doing the right things. It makes me happy that she sees me the way I want to see myself. It also gives me a lot to live up to, which isn’t a bad thing. Unlike most of you, dear readers, she sees me on a daily basis and can easily see through hyperbole and bulldada. If I’m not walking the talk, she’ll know. Scrutiny keeps me honest.

Bad segue here. Bear with me.

Yesterday I watched paramedics cart off a homeless guy whose alcohol-to-food ratio tipped a bit too far to one side. He apparently didn’t collapse because he was inebriated, but because he was malnourished. People ask why homeless men don’t just go to shelters on cold nights, when extra beds and emergency space is opened up. Well *ahem* some of them are frankly too drunk to realize they’re going to freeze to death if/when they pass out. I’ve heard people refuse to give money to homeless people “because they’re just going to spend it on booze”. Well, I buy food for homeless people. Last night I raided the discounted day-old baked goods at the supermarket and handed out rolls and bread and such. People say “well if you buy them food, they’ll just spend their money on alcohol and drugs”. To which I say, well, DUH, but at least they eat and maybe, maybe, don’t die.

The past few months I keep falling into situations involving stalkers and/or domestic violence. I’ve had a lot of hard conversations with a lot of guys, and a lot of really rough discussions with women. People say I’ve helped. I know that people have gotten out of bad situations due in some small part to my intervention. I’m here to help.

Hell, a bunch of people have told me in the past week that my blog posts, Facebook updates, and Tweets have been inspirational to them and influenced them into making better life decisions. Win.

These things aren’t what I do for a living. This is not my livelihood. However, because I work the job that I do, which accomodates my modest needs, and because I manage my needs so that I don’t need to work a job that takes up 60 hours of my week, I’m able to do these small things. So, the job that I have is in fact “right livelihood” for me, not because the job itself makes the world a better place, but because it frees me up to in some small ways continue to try to make the world a better place.

That said, I’m back to job hunting. There has to be a way that I can make money while doing good works. It’s part of why I considered re-entering the clergy or becoming a monk (the first isn’t entirely off the list; the latter, well, I reiterate, DUH). I will sweep floors and fetch coffee at a non-profit if it frees other people up to do good works. I’m not job hunting because I need to; I’m job hunting because there has to be a way I can do more. There has to be a way that I can leverage the skills that I have in support of some worthy cause, somewhere, that will pay me some modest stipend I can trade for the goods and services I need.

I’m looking. I welcome suggestions.