gemini://thurk.org/blog/574.gmi

It is a good morning. It is a good morning despite having the feeling that Marisa is irked at something. Of course, I could be placing the origin of her being irked upon myself, which makes me an egocentric offal ball. More likely, and I'm thinking positively here (but again, *thinking positively* means that somewhere in my sodden brain, I am searching for what **I** may have done to cause the *irk*), she is irked because of her need to go to work early. She always needs to go to work early. Shouldn't she be used to it? Or perhaps she just didn't sleep well. Nightmares? She gets um.

Occidental culture trains humans to complain. I'd say that a significant chunk of the occidental population feels **uncomfortable** if they cannot complain. And surely the greatest source of complaint concerns daily toil. I could be a simpleton and say (and surely I have in the past) that Marisa *chose* her line of toil. Didn't she know what she was getting into? But of course she didn't know what she was getting into. Any line of toil that deals with a swath of the public is in a bureaucratic flux. Any ideal one had of *working with people* is incrementally eroded by constant friction against the *system*. Smatterings of joy are further and further apart. One becomes disillusioned and jaded. One wakes up every morning dreading spending another day fighting against or even just accepting the direction one's toil has taken, further and further removed from that original ideal of *working with people*. A hunk of each workday is torture. Respite comes in the evening, but is clouded with thoughts of the next workday. Weekends are false liberation for the same reason. Stress mounts during Sunday since on the following day, the cycle continues.

I agree that it is depressing. Knowing what she does now, possibly Marisa wouldn't choose education as a career, though I am uncertain, as during earlier epochs of life, idealism is much more likely to win out over discursive evaluation of an unclear future.

In any case, the contrast is plain. I wake with *joy* every morning, delighting in my routine. I am *happy* to be alive another day and tread through it accomplishing various creative and cerebral goals. Marisa is grumpy. I don't blame her. I wish her life had taken a path more marked by contentment and especially inner peace. She is also ridden with anxiety and although that is an altogether different topic, it's related because her daily toil exacerbates this anxiety.

I hear her milling about after her morning shower. Hopefully, when she opens the door to greet my morning, a smile will light her face, even if it is the ghost of the ancient idealism that originally set her upon her life's path.

The Direction One's Toil Has Taken

Topics: work, routine, toil, idealism

2022-09-30