My boss can be very particular about things. Sometimes, if I don’t make her coffee just the way she likes it, she’ll get mad, and I won’t hear the end of it for hours.
She’s not very forgiving. She loves reminding me of all the mistakes I made during the past day, so she can tell me exactly what I did wrong, and what I need to do to make sure it never happens again.
And she demands a lot! Just today I went half an hour out of my way to pick up lunch for her because she was craving Vietnamese noodles.
At the same time, she gets very upset any time something throws off her routine. If plans change at the last minute, she’ll often freak out and nag at me until I figure out exactly what the new plan is and how it’s all going to work.
She even tries to control my appearance. If I don’t look presentable in the way she wants, she’ll make me go back and change.
And she’s very touchy–when a project doesn’t go her way, or if someone says something that threatens her ego, she’ll sulk and play the victim, and my life will be miserable until I can soothe her.
The worst of it is, she gets resentful about the kids. She thinks all the time I spend with them, and the effort I put into taking care of them, is directly taking away from serving her needs.
Ok, I wish I had some clever way of delivering the punch line, but I can’t think of one, so I’ll just tell you: the boss is my Self.
Get it? Get it? It’s like I’m my own boss. And most of the time in my life, I’m serving my Self: I say, “Ok, Self, what do you want to do today? What do you want to eat? What do you want to wear?” And my Self has very particular wants, and if I don’t give her what she wants, she makes me feel bad until she gets it.
This is all kind of tongue in cheek. But I really did start thinking of my Self this way in the first months after my daughter was born. It felt like there was constant conflict between my kids’ wants and needs and those of my Self: The baby wants me to wake up and feed her and rock her; my Self wants to sleep. My older son wants me to play a game with him; my Self just wants to lie on the couch and read a book. Both my kids need breakfast in the morning; my Self has emails that she wants to get answered.
For the longest time, I really was resentful of the kids. They take so much time and attention and hard work. I loved them, but I also felt like they were this constant obstacle, preventing me from doing the things that I (my Self) wanted to do. I would tell people I was just waiting for them to turn 18 so they would get out of the house and I would be free. But one day, I felt like God flipped my perspective.
“What if,” he said, “What if it’s not the kids that are making your life miserable right now? You wanted to be a mom. You love your kids. Even now, you want to take care of their needs and sacrifice for them. That all sounds really good to you. But you just have a hard time doing it.
“What if,” God said, “What if the real source of the problem is your Self and all the desires that your Self has? If your Self didn’t have those desires, then you would be perfectly happy changing diapers. You would be perfectly happy reading the same book 50 times. You would be perfectly happy spending half an hour walking a 5-minute distance because kids like to stop and lie down in the middle of the sidewalk.
“What if,” God said, “What if it’s not your kids who are making unreasonable demands on your time and energy and patience? What if your Self is the one being unreasonable? What if it’s your Self who’s being demanding? You feel like you’re a slave to your kids–well, what if it’s totally the opposite way? What if you are a slave to your Self?”
Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. In liturgical churches, Lent is a season of mourning and penitence. A season of self-denial. People give up things for Lent, like social media, or chocolate. Why does the church do this? Why has this been a practice for thousands of years?
Because the church knows a secret.
The rest of the world thinks that the goal of life is serving the Self. Our society worships the Self. We practice Self-care. We do Self-motivation. We glorify our Selves online, making them look really good so everyone else can see the great Self we have. We’re told on every side: “Your Self deserves this food or that beauty product or this house or that career, this vacation or that significant other.”
The world has been totally brainwashed. They spend their whole lives serving the Worst Boss Ever, and they love it. They are completely enslaved, and they have no idea.
But the church knows. The church knows that the Self is a slave master who pushes us and pushes us to do more and get more and be more–and then the Self beats us up because we aren’t giving it enough rest and comfort and relaxation. Our Selves are sucking us dry, whipping us to the bone, never satisfied with what we give them, always looking forward to the next thing.
Lent is a time to be set free. Lent helps us say: “No, Self, I will not give in to your demands. I will not serve you. You’re not the boss today. You can’t make me do what you want.”
In the next series of posts, we’ll talk more about the Worst Boss Ever, how to rebel against the tyranny of the Self, and who our real Master is.
The Lowest Place 