Laid Off

I was laid off from work again.

The sun is out in Issaquah, a small town east of Seattle. I head out from the office for a lunchtime walk to see Jakob Two Trees, a 15-foot-tall troll holding onto two trees. I see Jakob’s face and his necklace of birdhouses. Kids and adults are all there watching and photographing the troll. We are a community of troll lovers. 

Photo courtesy of the City of Issaquah

The artist’s father told him as a child to make the world a better place than when he entered it. Walking back, I watch people’s faces approaching the troll. Are they visiting again like me, or is this their first time?

My employer laid me off the next day in a video call that seemed less than a minute. The company had hired for a project that evaporated. I discovered later they let several others go. I was laid off eight months ago from a job I had for seventeen years. I have quit many jobs but never imagined this. Now, it has happened twice. I take the rest of the day off but cannot sleep that night. I get up and start my day at four in the morning.

The house is dark and quiet – wife, son, daughter, son-in-law, dog, and hamster are all asleep. I put on headphones and listened to a podcast on a shamanic approach to trauma. In Tibet, they have a tradition of helping someone who has experienced something traumatic, such as an accident or a divorce. They say the person has experienced soul loss. In a car accident, your body cannot physically leave, so a part of you, a piece of your essence, may flee the event. In this act of protection, a part of you goes into a world outside of time and becomes lost.

The Tibetan shaman performs a soul retrieval ceremony by shaping a deer out of clay and placing it on a small wooden boat. The shaman puts it into a pond. As the boat floats away, the shaman follows it into a non-ordinary reality to retrieve the lost soul part. After the shaman returns, the shard is integrated and sealed with a piece of turquoise. Turquoise was my mother’s favorite stone.

Photo by author

Later in the morning, my wife and I pull out the three trash cans – waste, recycling, and compost. We stand on the front porch, and she says, “Look at the spider.” It had started to weave a web. The spokes were there, and several rings were in the center. The outer ring was complete, as were several anchoring threads to a blueberry bush and the porch railing. The spider is now weaving from the outside and has completed three outer rings.

A few hours later, I checked on the web. It is complete, and the spider is there in the middle.

The troll, Jakob Two Trees, is built from recycled materials. The artist made something beautiful from waste. I am rebuilding a part of my life. The boat is about finding guidance and direction. The web is about connection but also getting or grabbing things.

A friend texts me, “How did you become you?” This question seems way too broad, but in a small way, I am answering this question. The question is a Zen koan. There is no one answer. There is only contemplating it and attempting an answer.

Note: Thank you to Christin Chong for her koan and Shirley Rivera for her support. I appreciate the listening space that Danny Oak held as I told him the story. Thank you to Dekera Greene Rodriguez for facilitating the Idea Gym space and Miche Priest for being vulnerable in sharing her story, which gave me the courage to share mine.