In short, don't do it, if you can help it.
We are sentient beings having a human experience. Everything we say, do, think and feel, is affecting someone else. That one droplet of consciousness is something we cannot turn our heads on. For better or for worse, we all get affected by the same feelings and ideas, whether we like it or not.
That's why healthy work environments are so important. A healthy work environment can really help you to feel important and part of a happily purposeful ecosystem. However, as there are happily dysfunctional families, can there also be happily dysfunctional work systems. I begin my journey of concern when it is no longer happy or healthy. Then it becomes toxic, and we now must worry, because our life wreaks of a new set of concerns, which is very different from the other two environments I've mentioned. Your work life turns into a game of survival, where you are not certain if you'll make it through. More on this in another post.
This leads into lunch. We have working lunches when we work in a dysfunctional or otherwise toxic environment, where a deadline means far more than your personal well-being. A working lunch means that your food will now be infused with the emotion you were having while you were eating it, and is now therefore reinforced within your body...encased in your stomach....transported to cell tissues...where it becomes an absolute part of who you are and how you think about your work life; the class, the students, the administration, fellow teachers...all conversations and emotions will now be laced with that thought, that emotion, that energy. It is all much more important than most people really think.
It's like washing your hands before picking up a sandwich. You'd be worried about the germs on your hands getting onto that sandwich and contaminating it. If we were only more careful about our words, emotions and the way we speak to others. Even a projective feeling can transport. That goes more viral than any cold or flu, is the power of a negative sentiment. Think of that next time before you bite into a sandwich, and try not to eat your pain.
