I have had a couple really interesting run-ins with people over the past month. These encounters have forced me to clearly define my professional relationships and my personal relationships, often with the same people. Therein lies the challenge, I suppose. How do you maintain a personal relationship with somebody that is so incompatible with you professionally that you would like them to 'disappear' one night after some gorilla named "Vinnie" came a calling? The answer is, as many answers are, simple.
In the words of one of my favorite movies: "Just say 'fuck it,' and bail." (Forgetting Sarah Marshall)
.
.
.
Well, that would be awesome if it worked, wouldn't it? Life would be so much simpler if we could just axe the people that aren't bringing their professional A game to the table and work with the people of our choosing. Unfortunately, that isn't how it works, and to hold on to that fantasy for too long is to damn yourself to a life of disappointment and frustration. So you're really faced with two options, quit your job and start fresh with a new group of people, hedging your bets on a better spread of personalities, OR, in the real world where I live and I presume most of you do as well, you can try to improve the relationship that needs it through the use of both, making you happier and the other person better in their professional capacity.
I've found that the stronger the personal relationship is, the easier it is to sway the professional one. My candor with close friends is much different than it is with purely professional associates. There are thousands, probably tens of thousands, of books written about how to deliver constructive criticism in the workplace and to co-workers, generally. I'm sure they offer various perspectives and outlooks as well as unique approaches and other crap that I don't need or care about. My dad used to tell me about this sort of thing all the time. In fact, it is part of the reason that almost every person with whom he worked showed up at his viewing and/or funeral.
Do you want to effectuate change in the people around you? Excellent! Then develop a stronger personal relationship with them. Discover their interests. Share your interests with them. Take actual care in their activities and well-being. Now, I'm not saying you need to put them on high alert that you might want to wear their skin to your birthday; let's not get creepy here. But you can certainly do a little extra leg work to form a foundation upon which you can build relationships that allow you to mold your compatriots to your will. This will return you to god-like status in your office or board room, and isn't that what we all secretly want anyway? I know I sure do. If I'm not deified once a week, or so, I have to bury my sorrows in a tub of Ben and Jerry's so deep, the Weekiwachee Mermaids would drown trying to dive to the bottom. (Sorry, I've been trying to find a way to throw down a reference to those broads for like ever. They're pretty sweet, though.)
Anyway, all jokes and fish-girls aside, my natural inclination to befriend everybody has recently afforded me the opportunity to create harmony in my work-relationships and to smooth things over between warring factions in my professional life. It never ceases to amaze me when simple, human-to-human interaction outdoes years of research and scholarship. Granted, I might be the exception to the rule, but don't tell me if I am.
My ego doesn't need anybody else telling me that I'm special. I know I am a pinnacle of uniqueness amongst men.*
*This is sarcasm, just for the record.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
Sunrise, Sunset, Sunrise
It has been over a year since I last posted. An uncountable number of experiences have befallen me over the past year, but instead of recounting them all, I am going to write about what I learned. I find that my most pensive and insightful posts have been about lessons rather than the experiences that spawned them.
I suppose an important lesson I learned is that communication requires emotion. I consider myself to be emotionally mature and possessing of the ability to communicate but I realized that it is very challenging to have and do both. It is rare that I should find myself unable to empathize with a companion and even rarer that I wouldn't be able to strike up a conversation. Just yesterday, I befriended many people while wearing tiny fairy wings at the Renaissance Festival; I was the self-proclaimed largest fairy there. Here's the thing, though: I often make new friends on a purely superficial level. These superficial friends (hereinafter 'superficials') exist in all of our lives. If you are anything like me, though, when you go through a deeply moving experience, whether public or private, you might be surprised how many of these superficials step up to the plate to assert the assistance of their strength. Superficials are the true test of my ability to feel and communicate simultaneously.
In late July, my father's cancer finally won out and he passed away. Although he was ready, the rest of us are still feeling his absence, and I think we always will. Looking back through the blog, I came across an old post about my dad's cancer and that was when this idea came to me. After I had written about it, I had my dad read it and his reaction came as unexpected to me. Somehow, he was surprised by my reaction to the news and to the feelings that I was experiencing. Even near the end, he was shocked to find out how much I was feeling. My father went into liver failure, almost overnight, and his brain started to suffer from the sudden overabundance of non-filtered toxins in his blood. Thus, when he said something that didn't make sense, we just started to take it in stride. These shady moments, though, mostly served to punctuate his moments of lucidity. One night he had gone to bed and suddenly turned on his light. My mom was crying in the living room so I went back to check on him. To say that I was startled by my father's violent outburst is putting it mildly. "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON OUT THERE? WHAT AREN'T YOU GUYS TELLING ME?!" If you've never had to remind your father that he was dying and that it made you sad, consider yourself lucky. But even when faced with his own mortality, he thought I was sad because of something else, not just him. This would seem to suggest that I wasn't adequately communicating my emotions to him. I'm not looking to be reassured about this, as a very great blessing, I don't really carry any regret or guilt about the whole thing. The last words my father and I exchanged were "I love you" and that's as it should be. But if I can't adequately tell my father how I'm feeling, how the hell am I supposed to express it to a superficial?
That's just it, though: I don't express it. What I've learned is that instead of making everybody else feel weird, I crack a joke, say something reassuring, and move on. But the fascinating thing is that I think my approach has actually just made the whole thing worse. People react very strangely when I make light of the situation or feign a light heart. The truth is obviously much darker. I'm not a robot, and as much as I'd like it sometimes, I feel deep sadness like the rest of humanity. Apparently I'm not special. . .
Lame.
Although it is infinitely harder, I've started to consciously tell people that I'm not doing very well, and that it is very hard. The plain truth. Who would have thought it was so hard? Don't answer that, by the way. I am well-aware that the truth is often harder, but I just didn't expect the truth to be this hard. But be faithful, if you find yourself sugarcoating it for the cheap seats in the back, where the superficials like to hang out in the theaters of our lives, the first word is the hardest. It isn't the truth that poses the challenge; rather, it is the commitment to tell it.
Thus the lesson: even though it sucks, when people ask me how I am feeling, they are getting a cold, hard truth-slap square across the face because sugarcoating it just won't suffice. It makes me seem unfeeling, it makes them feel uncomfortable. Who needs it? The added benefit to this approach has been the seamless transition of various superficials into actual friendships.
There are obviously a million lessons that I've learned from my father, and particularly from the last couple weeks that I got to share with him, but this one feels like a particular winner. I might not always make you laugh, but if you converse with me, you will learn about me rather than the ridiculous tales that I weave to create false familiarity. So long surface-level banter, hello meaningful conversation.
I suppose an important lesson I learned is that communication requires emotion. I consider myself to be emotionally mature and possessing of the ability to communicate but I realized that it is very challenging to have and do both. It is rare that I should find myself unable to empathize with a companion and even rarer that I wouldn't be able to strike up a conversation. Just yesterday, I befriended many people while wearing tiny fairy wings at the Renaissance Festival; I was the self-proclaimed largest fairy there. Here's the thing, though: I often make new friends on a purely superficial level. These superficial friends (hereinafter 'superficials') exist in all of our lives. If you are anything like me, though, when you go through a deeply moving experience, whether public or private, you might be surprised how many of these superficials step up to the plate to assert the assistance of their strength. Superficials are the true test of my ability to feel and communicate simultaneously.
In late July, my father's cancer finally won out and he passed away. Although he was ready, the rest of us are still feeling his absence, and I think we always will. Looking back through the blog, I came across an old post about my dad's cancer and that was when this idea came to me. After I had written about it, I had my dad read it and his reaction came as unexpected to me. Somehow, he was surprised by my reaction to the news and to the feelings that I was experiencing. Even near the end, he was shocked to find out how much I was feeling. My father went into liver failure, almost overnight, and his brain started to suffer from the sudden overabundance of non-filtered toxins in his blood. Thus, when he said something that didn't make sense, we just started to take it in stride. These shady moments, though, mostly served to punctuate his moments of lucidity. One night he had gone to bed and suddenly turned on his light. My mom was crying in the living room so I went back to check on him. To say that I was startled by my father's violent outburst is putting it mildly. "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON OUT THERE? WHAT AREN'T YOU GUYS TELLING ME?!" If you've never had to remind your father that he was dying and that it made you sad, consider yourself lucky. But even when faced with his own mortality, he thought I was sad because of something else, not just him. This would seem to suggest that I wasn't adequately communicating my emotions to him. I'm not looking to be reassured about this, as a very great blessing, I don't really carry any regret or guilt about the whole thing. The last words my father and I exchanged were "I love you" and that's as it should be. But if I can't adequately tell my father how I'm feeling, how the hell am I supposed to express it to a superficial?
That's just it, though: I don't express it. What I've learned is that instead of making everybody else feel weird, I crack a joke, say something reassuring, and move on. But the fascinating thing is that I think my approach has actually just made the whole thing worse. People react very strangely when I make light of the situation or feign a light heart. The truth is obviously much darker. I'm not a robot, and as much as I'd like it sometimes, I feel deep sadness like the rest of humanity. Apparently I'm not special. . .
Lame.
Although it is infinitely harder, I've started to consciously tell people that I'm not doing very well, and that it is very hard. The plain truth. Who would have thought it was so hard? Don't answer that, by the way. I am well-aware that the truth is often harder, but I just didn't expect the truth to be this hard. But be faithful, if you find yourself sugarcoating it for the cheap seats in the back, where the superficials like to hang out in the theaters of our lives, the first word is the hardest. It isn't the truth that poses the challenge; rather, it is the commitment to tell it.
Thus the lesson: even though it sucks, when people ask me how I am feeling, they are getting a cold, hard truth-slap square across the face because sugarcoating it just won't suffice. It makes me seem unfeeling, it makes them feel uncomfortable. Who needs it? The added benefit to this approach has been the seamless transition of various superficials into actual friendships.
There are obviously a million lessons that I've learned from my father, and particularly from the last couple weeks that I got to share with him, but this one feels like a particular winner. I might not always make you laugh, but if you converse with me, you will learn about me rather than the ridiculous tales that I weave to create false familiarity. So long surface-level banter, hello meaningful conversation.
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