Last night, out of habit, I opened my phone to see what my Monday work calendar looked like.
My thumb knew exactly where to go.
Only this time there was no M365 app.
I deleted it on Friday.
This is day one of unemployment.
***
What struck me wasn’t panic. It wasn’t fear. It was muscle memory. I knew the app was gone. I deleted it myself. And still, my thumb reached for it like it had a job to do.
What is that?
That reflex. That unconscious movement toward a role that no longer exists.
As a practicing Buddhist, most of my daily work since 2019 has been dissolving the solid sense of self I normally walk around with. The one made of titles. The one made of roles. The one that feels very real until something strips it away.
Apparently, there’s still work to do.
And that’s okay.
When I took rebirth, this was the assignment. I enjoy the work.
Over the past few years, I’ve had excellent opportunities to practice letting go of titles.
My marriage dissolved. The idea I had in my head of what family was melted away. As men, we’re programmed to be providers. That title gets reinforced when we marry and start families. It becomes structure. Purpose. Identity.
When that’s stripped away, what are you?
Two weeks ago, I was told I was being “let go” from my role at work. I would have two weeks to transfer knowledge to someone half my age with no prior experience.
I call that a triple threat to the ego:
1. Loss of income.
2. Loss of accomplishment.
3. Loss of value.
Again, I ask: what are you when your job is stripped away?
These are uncomfortable questions.
But they’re powerful.
They shape how you see the world. And how tightly you cling to it.
In Buddhism, we talk about samsara. The cycle of suffering. Birth, aging, sickness, death. Gain and loss. Praise and blame. Pleasure and pain.
Even if you don’t believe in rebirth, you will experience loss. You will experience aging. You will experience things you desperately wish were not happening.
So when youth fades, who are you?
When health shifts, who are you?
When the roles you built your life around disappear, who are you?
For someone like me, someone who has struggled with self-worth, these questions don’t feel philosophical. They feel personal.
I was a fixer. I attached deeply to the titles of husband, father, employee. Maybe even “Buddhist.”
Now I notice gray hairs in the mirror. Aches in my knees when I rise from meditation. The body changing. The story changing.
All these titles. All these sensations.
They’re not me.
The practice that began shifting this for me was simple breathing meditation.
Nothing exotic.
Just sitting. Breathing. Letting the nervous system settle.
When the body relaxes, the mind softens. When the mind softens, it becomes easier to see that the job was never you. The marriage was never you. The youth was never you.
Even the ache in your knee is not you.
When we relax deeply enough, we begin to sense something quieter underneath all of it. A vastness. A kind of inner space that isn’t threatened by loss.
Then, when we listen to teachings on emptiness, the heart gets lighter. Less defensive. Less grasping.
We begin to understand that the nature of mind isn’t a job title or a relationship status.
It’s possibility.
Whenever I feel myself tightening around a title, when the loss of it feels like it says something about my worth, I stop and breathe.
I remember: my real nature isn’t “employed” or “unemployed.” It isn’t “married” or “divorced.” It isn’t “young” or “aging.”
From a Buddhist perspective, it’s something far less fragile.
A being of love and light.
A Buddha in training.
This morning I reached for the app again.
It still wasn’t there.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll reach again.
And maybe one day I won’t.
Not because I disciplined the habit away.
But because there’s no one left who needs it.
Previously Published on substack
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