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A Difficult Job One day three programmers were walking downtown for lunch, busy arguing about their personal preferences for programming languages and naming conventions. One guy argues for using phrases, broken up by initial caps; one guy prefers one word variables, the last prefers creating his variables in Polish. Anyway, one of these programmers is making a point about about how he reuses a particular variable name in writing for forms processing, when, as he steps off of the curb to cross the street, he is hit by a bus and instantly killed. The next thing he knows, he’s floating lightly on a silver cloud, a feeling a peace and serenity flowing through him. “I’m in Heaven!” he thought. But then a man touched him lightly on the shoulder, gave him a piece of paper and a pen, and told him “Fill this out. When you’re done, get at the end of the line over there.” He then pointed to a line that seemed to extend off infinitely into the distance. So, the man sat down and started to fill out the form. Pretty typical stuff at first, just fill in the blanks; things he had seen before. What was his name, how old was he, gender, profession, marital status, children. Then it started with some short answer questions. “What would you say was your greatest accomplishment in life?” He got excited and rattled off about how he had once been in charge of a programming project that had encompassed his entire department—he had been in charge, then, boy… those were the halcyon days. Then it asked him “If married, was your wife happy?” Hmm. That was a tough one, not the sort of stuff he was used to thinking about. He decided, yes, he made her happy; he made a lot of money, kept her in a nice house and bought her nice things, didn’t he? Then it asked: “If a parent, were your children well-cared for physically and mentally?” He had to think hard about that one for a minute, too. He hadn’t actually seen them in a while; the wife had shipped them off to camp or something for the summer. But then he decided, yes, they were happy, they wanted for nothing as well. Then it asked him about his spiritual nature. “What religious affiliation are you? Did you attend church regularly?” What a minute? Were they allowed to ask this question!?! Oh yeah, I guess they were. That was the whole point, he suddenly realized. Then he got really nervous; no, he didn’t go to church much, he hadn’t for years. Not since he was a child, basically. He had been a few times while his parents were still able to get about on Christmas and such, but once they had become invalid he had shipped them off to a resting home, and the whole going-to-church thing was over. But who had time for that kind of thing nowadays, really? He wrote down a laundry list of excuses; he had devoted his life to fulfilling other duties, but these things had to be done, right? He decided to write down that he was Christian, and that he didn’t attend church regularly, but that was because of the demands of his job and of supporting his family. He felt pretty comfortable with that, and got up, took his form and pen, and got in line. After what seemed to be an eternity, he noticed that he was making some progress forward in the line. But it was tough going; people were pushing and shoving, trying to introduce themselves to him, asking him if he knew anything (he tried to argue that he did, but couldn’t think of too much to say, except to talk about how important he had been as a programmer). But finally, he got to the front. St. Peter stood before him, standing on a dais with a podium. He asked for the programmer’s form. The programmer handed it to him, somewhat sheepishly, trying to accentuate his positives. “It says here you were married?” “Yes sir. Four years.” “I have in my notes that you were married three years.” “Oh, that was my first wife.” “And what happened to her?” “I don’t know really. She moved back in with her mom, and then we never talked much after that.” St. Pete continued with that line of questioning for several minutes, “Why did you leave her? Was she a bad woman?” No, of course she wasn’t; they had just grown apart. Then, he turned his line of questioning to the children. “You had two children?” Easy questions. He could handle this. “Yes. Ben, who is five, and Sarah, who is three.” “Are they happy?” “Well…” that was a tough one! How did he know? Who knows what goes on in a child’s mind? He wasn’t a mind reader! “Yes, I think so.” “You ‘think so.’ So what makes you think that?” Wow! This guy wasn’t pulling any punches. But he had prepared well for this interview, thought out answers to likely questions in advance. “Well, I bought little Sarah a doll last Christmas, and she really liked it. She carried that thing around with her everywhere. And I bought Ben a bike, I was going to teach him how to ride it as soon as I got some time off.” St. Pete nodded his head, pulled at his beard, then smiled. “I think I’m getting the picture; you would have gone to church more too, if you had the time?” “Oh, definitely.” St. Pete made some notes, tapped the tip of his pencil to his forehead, and smiled again. “Well, you’re in luck. I think I have something for you.” “Really! Excellent. What do I have to do?” “Well, it’s a really difficult job, but I think you’ve got the stuff. We’ve changed our mission statement, so we’re offloading some of our more resource intensive tasks to another vendor. What we really need is a go-getter for our programming team who has the experience and know-how to handle writing apps for some of our forms processing--in order to automate the system.” “That sounds great! I want to be a member of the team; when can i start?” “It’s a tough, thankless job. You’ll have to dedicate yourself to it, to the extent that you won’t have time for much else… friends, family, … spiritual life.” He paused here, and looked the programmer as if sizing him up for the final push. “But we’re only offering it to you because we need someone who will be really dedicated.” The programmer was virtually beaming at this point, and declared with enthusiasm. “I’m the man for the job.” St. Peter looked away, a sad smile on his face, a knowing look of sorrow. “Well, good then. You can start right away; take the stairs to your left all the way to the bottom; you’re new boss will be waiting for you.” Fini [ Buddhism | Activism | Spirituality | About Us | Links ] |