Massage School: Values

The exchange of money reminds me a little of sex. You can do it thoughtlessly, to fill the need of the moment. You can make it the center of your universe and be addicted to it. You can do it cynically, to get things out of people you dupe. Or you can do it with sincerity and affection, hoping to give as much to the person you're exchanging with as you receive. Our culture tends to think of earning money as prostitution, rape, or sin. But earning money can be wholesome, healing, and giving, not just to yourself but to your community.
--M.C.A. Hogarth, writing as haikujaguar on LiveJournal

One of the first questions I asked about this school, before I enrolled, was whether they had business courses as part of the curriculum. I'm not going into the field to expecting to become wealthy, but I value self-sufficiency, and would like to have the training to operate independently if I can't find an organization I mesh well with. I was pleased, therefore, to learn that the owner's background was originally in business; it was his and his wife's dream to open a massage clinic, but they had trouble finding therapists that met their standards for business practices.  They started the school as a way to train their own therapists before opening the clinic a few years later.

I'm coming to realize, having spent quite a bit of time in both the school and the clinic (running the front desk for work-study), that it wasn't just business education in the traditional sense that they wanted - scheduling and tax forms and accounting. It was people who understood the ethics of business, who grasped the importance of being intentional and careful and communicative, who could manage that tricky balance between self-care and self-giving. As the owner put it to me on my first day of work-study, "We need to take good care of ourselves and our business -- to make sure that we are acting in accordance with our ethics and our values -- so that we can be of service to others."  English not being his first language, I suspect it was only lack of familiarity with current buzzwords that kept him from coining the phrase "sustainable service".

* * *

"Well, you see, you have to find someone who needs something you have. And then you figure out what they have that you need. You exploit them, they exploit you, and it becomes mutually beneficial. It's simple."

And, really, it is. The Boy's description of the economics of human transaction is arguably the simplest thing I've ever heard. Also the most simplistic, the most fundamentally debasing, and the saddest things, all at once.

"Don't you think compassion has a part to play? The recognition of someone else as separate from you?" I can't help but needle him a little bit, take advantage of the status he ascribes me due to my gender (he is, essentially, a mama's boy) and my greater age. "Would you see clients who didn't respect you as a person?"

The defensive shrug. "If they paid me, sure. Wouldn't you? Money is money."

I shake my head. "No. I have too much integrity." I do my best to say it as a statement of fact, not as if I'm bragging; though when he doesn't react, I suspect I'm giving his vocabulary too much credit. "If someone doesn't respect me, I'm not going to want to see them again. It's part of why I'll probably run my own business."

"Then how are you going to find enough clients?" He's still defensive, but also genuinely puzzled.

I turn and look at him, directly, for a long moment. "Do you truly believe that there are so few people out there who are willing to recognize your common humanity?"

He turtles, overlarge shoulders coming up, the scrunching of the face I'm coming to know so well. "Well, sure. But they're all broke."

I make some politely disagreeing response - "that hasn't been my experience", or something to the same effect - but ultimately I leave it at that. It's pretty clear my experiences aren't going to be real to The Boy. Not in the mindset he's occupying at this stage of his life.

But I'm rapidly learning that, much as they push my buttons, his behaviors -- the defensiveness and inability to learn, the unwillingness to connect with others, the dismissive demeanor -- are all tied to his fundamental values.  If his entire life revolves around making himself into whatever his clients want him to be, what use has he for personal integrity?  Arguably, in his situation, a lack of personality is an asset.  Human interaction is based around sharing oneself with others; if he has no self to share, it comes off as all the more real when he makes something up for his clients.

But that brings up the corollary question.  If every worthwhile transaction is based upon mutual exploitation, why should he care about making his clients feel genuinely nurtured and cared for?  

I wonder how he ended up at this school -- heck, in this entire industry -- in the first place.  The trite answer, of course, is "Because it's exactly what he needs to learn and grow!"  But while that may be true, he also needs a willingness to reconsider his values, to examine his assumptions and where they came from.

That part of the curriculum, he's failing pretty spectacularly.