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| from adimari's album "quotidie" |
I lose all my drive to keep up with the work when I encounter people who suck the life out of the possibility for more improvement.
It happens.
It's 7:30am and you eagerly want to take on the new day. You come in extra early because you want to sensitize your mind to the work ahead of you. You open your laptop and get a cup of coffee and stare out the window just to catch a glimpse of empty space and be amused at the green vine that climbs up the stonewashed wall. You're breathing it all in and your mind relaxes and finds its creative rhythm.
You open a spreadsheet filled with numbers and get ready to take on a report that's been a day late. You list down the people you need to talk to about the information you need to produce. They shuffle back and forth their desks because they're not ready for the information you're looking for. They call you impossible. You call them lazy. They ignore your comment and pretend they didn't hear you call their name. They look at you with fake smiles but at the back of their they want to skin you alive as they grit their teeth and say, "Yes Ma'am." You try to exercise a bit of encouragement and feel positive about the day ahead so you take out your wallet and give them money to order pizza for lunch. It gets them feeling better and they carry on with their work with half-heartedness.
A colleague comes in breaking your quiet reflection and the cursor pauses in the middle of a sentence you're constructing that's supposed to get you going on a momentum that will make you speed up and finish the report ahead of time. You wanted to hit your record time of writing 25 pagers in 2 hours gets halted because of a complaint gestating from the rumble in her throat about the new performance appraisal system she cannot finish because she has no time.
You try to break it down for her. Understand her situation and talk in a calm tone so she knows you're listening. You give her a sympathetic gaze for not having slept for days as you size up her unkempt hair and pale skin. You assign one of your staff to meet up with her so that she can get started up with the work she needs to do in identifying what she wants to appraise her team for.
You helped her in good faith. And 6 months later, she tells your boss she is uncomfortable with you and wonders why she becomes your subordinate now.
I wonder what people get when they do these kinds of things. Does it make them feel better about themselves? Does it make them feel more capable about the job they do? Does it make them finish the work?
I'm a stickler for principle centered leadership. And though I fumble with this sometimes I have learned that there is no other way to navigate through a journey of change and transition unless you are anchored to a set of firm beliefs that illuminate how you make decisions. This is my current struggle and I cope feebly with it by jotting down my random thoughts in a notebook or spending some time on the internet looking for articles that would resonate with my experience. I'd step out of the office and buy a tall cup of caramel macchiatto and enjoy the walk under the sun for 10 minutes. I'd buy some books in the bookstore that I'll just stack up in a pile cluttered in my room waiting to get dust and tell myself "I'll read them someday." as a way of pushing myself to finish all the work so that I can get to that finish line where these books become a trophy of success.
Of course, I pray. I scramble upward that height of spiritual attunement until my mind finds its quiet rhythm under grace. But this is not often easy. The saints know how I slide back every now and then. They see how the devotional lying on my desk remains unturned from the last time I opened it. The angels know how I doze off in the middle of a Hail Mary and they know I ache to finish a Rosary every time I drive to work in the morning.
How do I live with all this you might ask. I don't. That's why even in it's messed up state, I keep on pressing towards finding the peace hidden in the cluttered corners of these busy situations by whispering to myself "all things work out for the good..." and calling out to St. Monica the patron of patience that this virtue in me will increase and I can hold on till the day ends. I do not allow myself to be satisfied with the status quo of disarray but I tell myself to accept that all chaos is a necessary prelude to all creative work and that includes building up my interior mettle to withstand the temporary discomfort of learning how to turn messy business situations into moments of opportunity.
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| St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine pray for us. |
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