Mountains of Arizona
Sunny 63 Degrees
11:40 a.m.
Asking for a raise is a funny thing.
As best I can recall, I’ve done it once. But it wasn’t successful.
I was living in NYC at the time and charging my rent to a credit card at the rate of $2,200 per month. This was for a “loft” apartment in the West Village. I put quotes around the word loft because when I went to sleep in the “loft,” I couldn’t actually sit up in bed without hitting my head on the ceiling.
I was living on Perry Street. A beautiful spot.
Best of all, we were steps away from the best porcini mushroom ravioli I’ve ever eaten.
Now if you’ve never lived in NYC, making $28,000 per year is a tough situation. It’s hard to make it on that. Especially when rent is over two thousand bucks!
So that’s the reason I asked for the raise. It really just wasn’t a fair amount to be making. I’m joking, of course. Because saying an agreement isn’t fair when you actually agree to it is one of the most immature and completely backwards things I can think of doing.
Unfortunately, a lot of people call that type of behavior normal.
My lack of self-responsibility was not evident to me at the time.
I took a job, and then began to resent that I was paid so little per the agreement into which I HAD CHOSEN TO ENTER.
But that leads me to an even BIGGER question…
Where did the idea ever come from that one human should work for another?
We know that no child is born thinking this way. No one dreams of working their way up to middle management without some outside influence.
But as common as this “getting a job is a smart idea” thinking is in our society, there seems to be no good reason that it exists.
And that’s why there are so many problems with that arrangement. That’s why people have to ask for a raise. That’s why people hate their bosses. That’s why people dread Monday mornings.
Those things aren’t the real problem, however. Those are symptoms of the problem.
Where did we get trained that the best thing for most of us to do would be to grant someone ELSE power over the amount of material resources we generate?
Where did we learn that the smartest way to live would be to grant another power to tell us where to be and when and for how long?
You don’t want to think about this too much or you realize that the rabbit hole is very deep. Almost everything we’ve been told from cradle to grave is really made up to achieve certain aims that have nothing to do with why you’re actually HERE.
It’s all upside down.
It’s all backwards.
And it’s all by design.