After 2 Years Sandwich Board Guy Gets Job-No Problem

This article was originally published by Technorati on 25 April 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

This is how life is.

Fifty-nine-year-old Paul Nawrocki lost his job in February 2008 and nothing happened. He took to the streets of Manhattan wearing a sandwich board, handing out resumes and nothing happened.

He appeared on over a hundred news and talk shows because America and the world, in the midst of what has been called the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, were interested in this former toy company executive's self-effacing efforts to replace his lost job, and nothing happened.

Because lawmakers had the good sense to keep extending unemployment benefits since he was laid off back in February 2008, Nawrocki received 99 straight months of unemployment checks to help keep him afloat. And with the additional aid of the four Fs of hard times--Friends, Family, Food Banks and Food Stamps--he and his wife stayed afloat.

Through all this, Nawrocki's wife was sick, but he held on to his medical insurance throughout. Nothing happened to their health as a result of the downturn.

Nawrocki declared bankruptcy in 2009. Even through bankruptcy he has two mortgages on his home, on one of which he is six months in arrears. But so far nothing has happened on that score either, and probably won't. No mortgage holder wants to be at the wrong end of that publicity train: Bank Forecloses on Sandwich Board Guy.

In March, Nawrocki, the face of the rotten economy, finally got a job. It pays half of his old $100,000 salary, but it's enough to keep "nothing happening" for now.

Poor economic times force folks to reevaluate what is fact and what is fear. It causes us to focus our attention right here, right now.

According to spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, there are no problems now. There are "only situations — to be dealt with now, or to be left alone and accepted as part of the "isness" of the present moment until they change or can be dealt with."

Calling any situation a problem brings negativity to each moment, a value that the moment doesn't possess in and of itself. Present-moment awareness allows us to focus a non-judgmental attention on that which is happening now. We cause no pain for ourselves that way, no matter what a particular moment holds, and any action we take is likely to be much more effective.

This hypothesis can be effectively tested as well. "Find out if you have any problem at this moment," writes Tolle in The Power of Now. "Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now. Do you have a problem now?"

Chances are, you don't. All moments are like that if we allow them to be.

Paul Nawrocki's life over the last two years has been an amazing roller-coaster ride, during which a lot of good at the family and community levels happened and nothing negative actually came to fruition.

This is something he realizes now better than most.

"I had reached the limit, the last week, and they called and had me start the next week," Nawrocki recalled in a recent AP interview. "Through this whole experience it's been like that. We get right to the edge, and then . . . " Paul's voice falters.

I'll finish his sentence for him: And then nothing happens.

Photo credit: The Big Picture

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