Love and the Horrible Boss

My ex husband once had the Fidel Castro of bosses.  There is no sitcom, cartoon or movie that could even come close to how despicable this man was.  He was so concerned with his mounds of money that he had no idea that there was a big beautiful world outside his vault.

He sincerely believed he was a "good" business man, but he was so mean and hateful that he had run off business to the point that the phone no longer rang and refused to recognize it was he who had caused the problem.

His employees had to bring their own toilet paper to work.  The Boss Man thought it was not “cost effective” to provide assistance with natural body functions.  And in the extreme summer heat, he refused to provide water for these folks, water was another unnecessary cost. His method of "leadership" was to yell and scream at his employees to humiliate them.  It was clear he was not only a cheap skate, but a control freak with a lint trap for a heart.

My ex was being paid quite well at the time. With no warning, he cut my husbands salary more than half.  Imagine finding that out the hard way when there are bills to pay.

I was so full of rage it was unbearable.  If you have ever experienced this, you know what I mean.  It tears at you.  It wears you down.  It consumes you. 

I had to let this go in a way that was so excruciating; I didn’t want to do it.  As a matter of fact, it took me weeks to get to this point.

The back story here; I had one of those injuries where you have no explanation as to how it happened; perhaps I fell off a cliff and didn’t remember.  My knee had been bothering me for a week to the point I was barely getting around. I was going to call the doctor, but inspiration hit me where I had a moment of tenderness and I knew full well that I had to cease the moment, before I did anything else.  It had to be genuine, authentic and with the proper intention behind it and I was there.

I hobbled in to my office.  I sat down on the floor screaming in agony.

It was time to to ponder on the nature of Bosses existence.  I believe that in order to let go of anger at another individual, you must try and understand the other person.  In Buddhism, it’s called “heart centered compassion” and it can be a real bitch to get there. It’s a vital part of letting go and possibly one of the most difficult things to achieve. And letting go of hurt and resentment is a process, sometimes a painfully slow process at that.

I think it’s also foolish and unrealistic to think that it’s not okay to feel anger.  It's simply a feeling.  Nothing more.  Anger, when embraced, can become a jumping off point and perhaps more imperative to healing than we give credit.  This emotion exists to teach us to work at letting go of something. Harboring anger and resentment does nothing but affect the individual feeling it in a negative way.  It has literally no effect on the other person.  Being angry with someone doesn’t change them, but it does change you…and not in a good way…unless you chose to turn it into something positive.

I imagined Boss in his office.   What would make someone so shallow and money hungry that it becomes their entire existence?  Was he abused as a child and never let it go?  Had he experienced something so horrible that he felt as if he needed to control everything around him?  Did he feel as if the world “owed him something” because of something he could never make peace with? Did he know what gratitude, love and compassion felt like?  What would it feel like to have created such an awful reputation for yourself that people recoil at the mere mention of your name?  Does any of this bother him?

Surely, you have to be empty when your only goal in life is to make money and treat the people who help you make that money like crap.  I felt compassion and sorrow for him.

I lit a bundle of sage and blew the smoke his way.

 May peace and love soften your heart. May you find love and compassion.  My prayer is that you experience a shift, a shift so powerful that you know and understand gratitude for what you have, instead of greed for more.  I hope that you are feeling this now; that someone cares about your wellbeing and evolution as a human being.

I sat in silence for a while, just to stay grounded in compassion.  After a while, I braced myself to crawl back up, knowing it would hurt. 

My knee didn’t hurt at all.  I was shocked, thinking that maybe I had just popped it back into place when I was sitting.  To confirm, I did several deep knee bends.  I stood on my bad knee and jumped up and down.  It was fine.  Three weeks later it was still fine.  Three months later--four months later-- it never bothered me again.  

This confused me.  Isn’t the point of trying to send love and compassion to someone else to help heal them?

It became the A-ha moment when I learned that love can heal.  Not in the woo-woo way, but in a deep profound way. Was this a reward for actually caring about someone who needs cosmic attention?  Had my own anger settled in my knee as a metaphor? Do we heal ourselves when our intentions for another are genuine and authentic?  Yes, yes and yes.  Could it have been a fluke?  Of course.  Maybe I just sat in a way that somehow placed my knee back where it should have.

Boss is still an asshole.  It didn’t work on him, but I can still run and skip down the street without buckling in pain.

Amen.