Companies not only expect you to do the work. They demand that you do it with a smile.
A neutral employee is a threat to meaninglessness.
Performing the work with a quiet, detached mind is the demonstration that the work has no power over your peace. Ego can’t tolerate it. Ego demands engagement. It wants you to invest your identity into something that isn’t real.
So, you are not only doing physical and mental labor. You are also commanded to do emotional labor.
It’s a trap.
By forcing you to cultivate passion, it ensures your attention is locked on performance. It says that if you don’t love your work, then you are hollow, unproductive, and not a team player.
These are all lies.
You can’t sell your joy, and your joy isn’t dependent on work circumstances. The attempt to smile at something meaningless is an attempt to make something untrue, true. It’s an attempt to make an appearance look real.
Therefore, there’s nothing wrong with not feeling passionate about a corporate objective. You’re simply acknowledging that the objective has no substance. Your perfection shouldn’t be deterred by the guilt of “betraying” the company.
You Are Not Your Job
I hate resumes. I believe resumes are a list of past actions, discarded roles, and temporary titles. None of these things is who I am. Yet these things are used to prove one’s existence.
A resume is not my track record. I am not a manager. I’ve never managed a thing. The belief that I can control, direct, or am responsible for outcomes is a heavy chain. I cause nothing to happen as everything is an effect.
I am not creative, as creativity gives an air of specialness. There’s no such thing as new ideas, but a rearranging of things that have already happened.
I’m also not a failure. If I’m not my successes, I can’t be my failures.
When I peel away these subjective, superficial titles, I’m not left with nothing. I have the chance to be everything.
The same presence was there before the job started and will remain after the job ends. If I know that a job is an impermanent event, why is there a need for passion? It’s not to say that I’m apathetic. I’m just aware.
I don’t need a promotion to feel complete, nor do I need feedback to know my worth.
Peace in the Mundane
After working in exciting industries like entertainment and gaming, I feel like the next step for me is to do something stable and boring.
I no longer need work to feel special.
We were made to believe that some actions are inherently more valuable than others. It’s the lie that if you aren’t doing meaningful work, or work you’re passionate about, then you are wasting your life.
I fell for this lie. It’s a redirection tactic.
By making you obsessed with the “what” of work, it ensures that you never notice the intention.
It wants you to believe that peace comes at the end of a successful project, not that it is the prerequisite for starting one.
The truth is the realization that nothing you do in this world matters, but the state of mind in which you do it is everything. Your awareness in orienting towards peace is more important than any outcome.
Here’s the difference between passion and peace. Passion is an emotional high that depends on a certain outcome. Peace is the backdrop for all our work and requires nothing.
The Need to Survive
You might say that you know all of this, but aren’t able to shake the mandate for passion because you need the paycheck.
Your mind tells you that if you stop performing the ritual of enthusiasm, you will perish.
This is a lack of trust in yourself. When we are confident in ourselves, we start to recognize that we are sustained by direct deposit. Once we stop believing that our safety depends on a job, any authority over us will vanish.
Your perfection is recognizing that the world has no needs you can fulfill because you are already complete.
This means your boss has no power to sustain or destroy you. Being fired only means a change in scenery, not a change in your reality.
Nothing is Wrong
Seeing through an illusion doesn’t make you lazy. Yet it seems that if we see through the emptiness of our task, we will become a failure.
It’s quite interesting that the obsession with meaningless tasks is called passion, whereas recognition of its emptiness is called laziness. As a result, we feel guilty about our lack of enthusiasm because enthusiasm is supposed to keep us bonded to our tasks.
When we are guilty of not doing, then we’ll never realize that there’s nothing to do. This is the trap. Enthusiasm -> attachment to tasks. No enthusiasm -> guilt -> performance enthusiasm -> attachment to tasks.
Awareness has never been productive. The sun doesn’t have a to-do list. The sky never feels guilty for not producing enough clouds.
Seeing the emptiness of the work is not depression; it’s dispassion. It is the first sign that you are no longer enslaved to the fantasy.
Questions and Responses
No. It means you are beginning to notice that no career can define you. The ego suggests that if you don’t feel passion, you must “pivot” to a new form. This is a distraction. The “wrong” career is any role where you believe your identity is at stake; the “right” career is simply the one where you practice being the Witness. You aren’t in the wrong job; you are just waking up from the idea that a job is your life.
The world calls it laziness because it values only the body’s movement. Awareness has no “productivity quota.” Seeing the emptiness of a task isn’t about doing less; it’s about no longer believing that what you do makes you who you are. The sun isn’t “lazy” because it doesn’t have a to-do list; it simply shines. You can type the memo and attend the meeting without the heavy chain of “needing it to matter.”
The fear of being fired is the ego’s way of claiming it is your Source. You believe your safety is a byproduct of your supervisor’s opinion. In reality, you are sustained by your Source, not your salary. If the dream’s scenery changes (e.g., getting fired), your reality remains unchanged. When you stop worshiping the paycheck, the “authority” of the boss vanishes, and you work with a freedom that “passionate” people can never know.
You are innocent. The “fake smile” is merely a costume for the dream-play. You are not “betraying” yourself by smiling; you are betraying yourself when you believe the smile (or the job) is real. The guilt comes from the ego trying to make the illusion significant. Look at the “mandated passion” as a neutral script. You can play the part with your body while your mind remains at peace at home.
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