A couple of days off

Cherubs:

You know, it's a really sad thing when you have to have oral surgery. But what's really much more sad, is that you're grateful to have a good excuse to take a couple of days off.

I'm sitting in my home office, happily writing to you. I have minimal pain thank goodness, and if I have more pain, I have drugs. But I'm blissful, why? I'm blissful because I was able to take two days off because I was having this procedure. What is wrong with this picture? Why in my heart of hearts, could I not have said to my boss, I need to take a couple of days off, for my own sanity. Why didn't I just do that?

Well it's complicated I think.

In this economy, one wants to feel that one is indispensible and needed and that one's absence will be missed. I'm not sure that I'm indispensible (even though I'm the only trainer for a global company), and frankly, all that I think will be missed is my sometimes annoying message to my colleagues -- that my company must become a learning organization and that learning and continuous improvement is important. Yikes, I wish I were not the only one saying that but in fact, I think that is true.

The other thing that plagues me is the good old Protestant work ethic. You work, and if you can walk, you work, and if you breath in and out, you work. It's a terrible plague. The Europeans are much better at the work life balance. The saying goes that American's live to work and that Europeans work to live. I like the European approach better, and being of Italian descent, feel drawn to that approach. But frankly, I was born here, and hard work has been beaten into me since I was a tot. My Italian cousins shake their heads at me. "You're in Italy for one week", my cousin Bruno exclaimed. One week! He was amazed. I explained that one week was the only vacation time I could get. Once in my life, I took two weeks vacation, but I couldn't this time. He simply was amazed.

There's one more, even more disturbing reason why I feel that I can't just take a day off. My existence. I worry about my existence. I worry that if I don't constantly prove every day of my life that I am of value, that I will simply cease to exist. Now that's really messed up. (I would use the F word, but this a public blog.) But I feel compelled to admit it to you all, because I think that I am not the only one who feels that way.

So I sit here with my slight discomfort in my lower right jaw and I feel grateful for a failed root canal. I feel grateful because I could lie in bed this morning and watch Sense and Sensibility or Henry V or any of my favorite films and not feel guilty. Heavens, this is just not good.

I think sometimes that this is why people play the lottery. Not because of greed, or worries, or anger, or even the hope of riches. But because they might be able at some point to be self actualized human beings and make their own decisions based on their own feelings. Wow, what a luxury that might be.

I bid you peace dearest cherubs with the hope that you might actually take some time for yourselves without guilt or other forms of hand chafing.

Warmly, Margaret