The store clerks are NOT out to kill Christmas

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
- Charles Dickens

A local grocery store here in Rochester, New York, part of a large chain (I won't name it), has had Christmas ornaments on display near its entrance since the first week in October. This was while we were still having unseasonable heat. Up here in the land of snow and more snow, people were wearing cut-off shorts and tank-tops as they made their way past the dancing Christmas elves and glowing colored ornaments.

Every year, it seems, the Christmas shopping season starts subtly earlier. My usual joke is that they move it up about four hours each year so that we won't notice. When I was a kid growing up in a small town, the street decorations would come up around Thanksgiving. By the time I graduated from high school, the ornaments were up just after Halloween. Now, I see Christmas store displays up in early October, at least a week before anything overtly related to Halloween is with them.

About a week later, a sign was posted near the Christmas display. It was handwritten - not on official company stationery. It said something like this: "We understand it is not yet the holiday shopping season. This display is up for people who wish to start their shopping early. If you do not wish to shop early, don't let this display bother you." The sign was removed a couple of days later.

This all seems funny, at least to a point. I'll bet just about anyone working at the store had a smirk or two at the early Christmas display. They weren't laughing, though, when they, not the corporate policy makers, had to field the whining complaints about holiday commercialism. Someone (or maybe everyone) at the store was tired of having to make excuses for a policy he or she did not devise. Hence, the sign goes up. It seems likely that someone in higher authority told them to take it down.

For more than a century, the holiday season has been an era of overt commercialism in America. Anyone growing up in our era knows this, and we're used to it. For some people, it is offensive. For commercial interests, it is an essential structure in financial survival. I don't think that it makes sense to react too much one way or the other. The holidays can be a time of generosity, or selfishness, or both at once, and no matter what commercial interests do, we can make it happen any way we wish. People who are paid to act on commercial interests on behalf of the holidays, though, are not doing so because they themselves are out to destroy Christmas. They're just doing their jobs.

A quick note to my readers

Hi, readers!

I recently put a sitemeter on this blog. Scroll to the bottom and you'll see it there. Feel free to click it yourself, if you're interested in seeing how and where this blog is read. Frankly, I didn't think anyone knew of it, and suddenly, there were readers out of nowhere. That is really cool.

I would enjoy hearing suggestions. A spiritual life in the working world is a challenge for a lot of people - and I would like to know more about how others have coped.

I just want you all to know that I won't be writing for about a week - I have some personal concerns to address over the next few days. I will be back.

Thanks,
Jim Campbell

The fall of the bully

No one likes a bully. We remember them from our school days - the big kids who hurt us. There were all kinds of bullies. The kids who hit us are one kind. The kids who tore us down verbally were another. The kids who took things away from us were still another kind.

When the bully finally went down, we just loved it. Someone more powerful - a school official, a bigger kid, an angry parent - finally caught up with him. The bully got his, and it was about time. We see it as sweet justice and laugh.

The bullies don't disappear when we graduate from school. They appear in our workplace, as adults, in new forms. There is the boss who likes to manipulate you. There is the older, more experienced colleague who uses seniority and connections to suppress you. There is the ruthless, ambitious colleague who tears you down behind your back. There are many people who take every possible advantage they can, thinking only of themselves, and some of them really enjoy making someone else seem weak.

Eventually, things catch up with these bullies, too. The nit-picking boss couldn't make his project schedules. The arrogant partner lost a customer account. The ruthless colleague unwittingly scathed a boss's friend. All these abusers get demoted, reassigned, fired. When they reap as they sow, we laugh. It's a time to celebrate.

I once worked for a company where the CEO was so universally hated - and goodness knows he earned it - that when the trustees finally dismissed him, the office had a pizza party, complete with champagne. "Here's to new beginnings!" toasted one exuberant middle manager.

Once, a guy I worked for was very disliked by the people in the town I lived. No one cried hard when they heard he was arrested for handling stolen property. He left the town soon afterward. Maybe some of the time thereafter was spent in jail.

It is always a big payoff when the movie bully finally hits the dirt. We are expected to cheer, and it works. I remember the first time I saw the movie Casablanca. At the climax of the film, the local police prefect, Captain Renault, witnesses Rick, our hero, shooting a Nazi bureaucrat to stop him from interfering with an escape. Police deputies arrive immediately. "Major Strasser's been shot," Renault commands. "Round up the usual suspects."

Life is not a movie, though. People are three-dimensional. Like anyone else, I forget that when I celebrate someone losing out. I think that because the action seems deserved, I am entitled to enjoy it. That is, until I begin to think, rather than feel.

Speaking as one who has suffered demotions, firings, and professional humiliations of many sorts, I can tell you there is no celebration when the failure is in the first person. The shock, anger, and grief from a demotion could last a long time, beginning with that first, dreadful evening going home, and telling the family about what happened. Imagine how I might think of someone else going home and gleefully proclaiming to his wife- "Good news - Campbell is OUT!"

I am not a bully. Yet, experiences like these make me hesitate when I hear of people going down, even when I am convinced they have no one but themselves to blame. I may not do things as they do, but I have to wonder how very different I am from them. Don't these people have a family to face, too? What's it like for all of them? How about the kids, watching Daddy or Mommy suffer? Moreover, consider the new office situation. How do we know things are going to get better, with so-and-so now gone? A jerk may have just been pushed out of the way, but is it certain that person did no good for anyone? What or who takes the place now? And - oh no - is it possible that someone was fired due to the actions of an even worse bully?

When I was in my first job out of college, trying hard to prove myself, it seemed I could do no right by someone. A woman in a remote office would send me mail a couple of times every week, criticizing this or that, and copying over my manager. I answered as steadily as I could, but I really felt like it was out of my hands. It looked like she was building a case of some sort. For reasons I never directly heard about, she was fired in less than a year. I didn't miss her. A few months later, though, a colleague almost casually informed that she was a regular victim of spousal abuse. I sure didn't know that. Later, I had to wonder - suppose that horrible husband started punishing her about the lost income?

There are many sides to every story, and a myriad of characteristics goes with every person. I don't like bullies - I never will. Yet, the bullies are still people - and the chances are, they wouldn't be the way they are unless someone had hurt them, in the past or even into the present. Psychologists have long known that bullies act as they do in reaction to a feeling of powerlessness, and whatever blow they just suffered at work, however justified, certainly didn't help them to overcome that. When a bully falls, the world isn't necessarily any better, and it really isn't the time to pop a cork. I think it better to quietly reflect, because the experience only points out that we are vulnerable, too, and we may not be so far from them as we would like to think.

The handyman who saved the world

We salute the rank, not the man.
- from Band of Brothers

As the last surviving veterans of World War II face their final years, many writers, filmmakers, and historians have given this generation a new torrent of attention. This attention often is in excess to what these surviving heroes would want. It was quite telling when I read that Richard Winters, the valiant Army major depicted in the 1992 book and 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers, will no longer be handling fan mail. A note posted on his web page early last year says:

It is with deep regret that we have to inform you that Dick is no longer signing pictures, books, or posters. Any mail from persons unknown will be disposed of and not answered. Any packages containing books will be refused at the post office. We feel it is time to retire and get some much needed peace and quiet in our golden years.

Regards,
The Winters Family

Richard Winters, now nearly 90 years of age, certainly has every right to take time out from serving the public. We raised in peacetime often are not aware of how traumatic the experiences of war were. No one wants to relive days of terror, pain, and distress, even when the results were victory and admiration.

I recently watched the DVD set for Band of Brothers, and included with the excellent dramatic productions were recent interviews with several of the actual persons depicted in the show. From these recountings, I not only heard of their pain, but also of their true humility. In one, Richard Winters tearfully declared he did not consider himself a hero, but instead considered himself as having merely served with them. Even more pointedly, another veteran, Bill Guarnere, claimed the heroes of World War II were the ones who had "crosses over their heads, the ones that are buried in the cemeteries. Those are the true heroes, not us." It was that same Bill Guarnere who lost a leg in the Battle of the Bulge.

Of great interest to me was how unostentatiously most of these men conducted their peacetime careers. The men shown in Band of Brothers served in "E" company, 2nd Batallion, of the 506h Parachute Regiment in the Army's 101st Airborne Division during World War II. They were among the first to perform in the highly dangerous, experimental role as paratroopers, but they succeeded, having accomplished all sorts of heroism from D-Day through the fall of Berlin. Highly regarded, they came back from war still young men, with a maturity that was well beyond their years, and a potential that was outstanding. In a now free world, as citizens of a grateful nation, with industrious souls in a booming economy, they could have taken any grandiose path, riding these waves into careers as astronauts, politicians, or authors. Yet, that is not what they did. They instead were mailmen, accountants, and crop fertilizer salesmen, quietly laboring on behalf of their families and local communities, right into their old age.

Why is this? Could we say that these men became too tired or overwhelmed by their experiences, and didn't want to bother? Certainly not, or their personalities would not show today as they do. Can we say that they had had all the adventure they needed, and didn't need life to challenge them any further? Again, certainly not, since the way they value bravery and risk-taking is still in evidence as they cry in appreciation for their fallen colleagues, six decades later. I believe their small-scale career profiles directly resulted from the noble lessons of war. Their sacrifices on the battlefield, experienced together in a bond of boundless mutual support and trust, showed them the meaning of courage, responsibility, and humility - and that such values must be held at all costs, even of life and limb. A loud, flashy career, where personal accomplishment is the top priority, isn't likely to be the means by which these ideals are reached.

George Luz was one of the men who apparently learned all this well. A fun-loving NCO in "E" company who fought hard, he returned to his home in West Warwick, Rhode Island to live out the rest of his life as an industrial engineer. After he died - on his job - in 1998, 1600 people came to his funeral. His career, as those 1600 people might have attested, was saving the world, both in the wild ravages of wartime Europe and in the peace-loving New England town where he made his home. George Luz was not a man of rank - but, like his humble colleagues who we now salute with adoration - he truly was a man of greatness.

When the business watches you (part 2)

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
- Latin for "Who will guard the guards?"
from the satires of the Roman poet Juvenal

I realize the subject of employee monitoring is a major one, and I could easily devote a whole blog (or book) to it and its spiritual implications. With that in mind, I am going to make this my second and last post on the subject for now, knowing fully well we may return to it in the near future.

One possible source of anxiety in the consideration of employee monitoring is how it empowers management even further in a game that seems set to their advantage from the outset. While we are contitutionally entitled to privacy, an employer can take away our jobs, and with it, our livelihood, at least for the short-term. The state of New York, where I work, is an "at-will" state, meaning that an employer can decide to terminate an employee at any time, and for any reason, so long as the reason cannot be legally established as discriminatory or coercive. It is legally acceptable for an employer to terminate us because they don't like what we say.

Further, many employers require employees to sign agreements that permit monitoring of electronic communications. Is this because we actually welcome such scrutiny? Hardly. It is the proverbial offer that cannot be refused. Sign it, or find a new job.

A study undertaken by Robert Half Technology in May, 2007 reported that 70% of employers do some sort of computer-based monitoring. How the information collected from these activities is used is not clear, since we seem to hear comparatively little about employees being reprimanded or dismissed due to what is found in monitoring. Yet, this silence is not especially difficult to understand given how employers are bound to confidentiality, and how employees are out to avoid humiliation, even when the employee may be angered at having been "snooped." Are the manager and employee really going to openly discuss the embarrassing details of a private E-mail or chat, or just quietly push the whole sorry business behind them?

Employers truly do need to understand what is happening with their employees. On the other side, monitoring of communications leaves the employee all the more vulnerable and the boss all the more privileged. Employees don't monitor the boss, do they? To wonder what sensitive information may be known by a boss certainly detracts from our senses of safety and trust, which are basic elements in an environment conducive to getting job done well.

To impose some "separation of powers" on this practice could go a long way toward increasing confidence that data accumulated through monitoring won't be abused. Consider the possibility of electronic monitoring systems securely exporting the data they accumulate to a mediator who is not employed by company management. If a manager decides to examine the monitored data, for whatever reason, the employee has to approve the action explicitly before the mediator is permitted to release the data, when it is then made available to both employer and employee. If these approvals are not given, some sort of arbitration can be had that may result in a ruling for or against the employer. If, despite this protection, there is still a wrongful action taken on the employee, the mediator would be able to act as a distinterested witness in any dispute that may arise.

Who appoints these mediators? Who pays them to work? Community protection of people's rights comes from civil authority, and, as in all matters of civil oversight of business, questions abound. However, in an age where we now turn to electronic networks to share data of all kinds, major issues of privacy versus property arise, and we need to deal with these issues as a society. In the end, everyone will benefit. We will work better when we know there will be some fair play surrounding the data collected about us should questions ever be raised- and employers will know that any oversight they do will be externally validated and have less a chance of falling subject to some expensive lawsuit. We, as a society, will indeed "guard the guards."

When the business watches you (part 1)

In the classic 1936 film Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin plays a factory worker with a very menial, thankless job. From the first scenes, where bustling workers entering the factory are visually compared to a throng of sheep, Chaplin's genius is in evidence. His vision of of a demanding, hairsplitting plant boss using video monitoring equipment to keep tabs on the workers was a total fantasy in 1936, and somehow, this film makes what is outwardly an alarming premise seem both provocative and entertaining. In an early scene, Chaplin, as the factory worker, withdraws into a men's room for a break, and under the belief that he is finally alone, he leans back into relaxation to puff a cigarette. Suddenly, the wall next to him suddenly erupts with a huge image of the boss, seated at his desk. His eyes fixed squarely on Chaplin, he bellows: "Hey! Quit stalling! Get back to work!" The crusty old man's gaze eerily follows our startled hero as he goes racing out the door, as if jolted by an electric cattle prod.

I have read several articles online about "workplace monitoring" as it is practiced today, and I have to say, I'm very uneasily reminded of Modern Times. The practice of using technology to keep track of employees is as old as the punch clock. Today's practices, though, are far more powerful, and much more dangerous, on many different levels. According to laws in most states, employers have full rights to monitor E-mail, chats, web use, and phone calls. Cameras are routinely installed throughout the premises, usually in the name of security, but this technology is obviously usable for tracking the moment-to-moment whereabouts of an employee.

Of even greater significance is the ability to use software to assist with monitoring. Keyword searches in chat and E-mail logs can automatically scan for keywords and instantly alert a supervisor of any statement that is considered interesting. Phone records can easily be matched to numbers of prospective new employers or ex-employees. There has even been some discussion of requiring employees to carry GPS devices in cell phones or corporate badges so that an employer can see where an employee is at any time, day or night, and send alerts to an employer if someone goes to any unauthorized location.

I do not dispute that employers have the right to know if their employees are doing their jobs adequately and as agreed. They also are far better off knowing, sooner, not later, who is giving away trade secrets, or stealing company assets, or who may be creating cause for a sexual harrassment lawsuit. However, companies had such policies long before there was information technology to analyze it all, and business generally got along. Why do we need these changes? One could argue that computer-aided workers, now able now to tap into any website and transact in any way with anyone in the world, need to be appropriately moderated so that their attention and efforts go to the right places. However, this answer is plainly too simple.

Like Chaplin's character in the movie, employees need to take a break from not only their work but also from their watchful bosses, and that may involve any number of things that are necessary for a unique person's spiritual and physical health. Employers, generally fixed on the bottom line, may not readily understand or accept such practices, especially as they are seen far out of context - that is, without an initimate understanding of the employees' personality. In this spirit, Modern Times depicted the factory worker suffering a breakdown and being swallowed up by the machines he was servicing. This heavy-handed visual metaphor is quite plain here, and it is relevant to today's "modern times." Ironically, it is the practice of constant monitoring that might actually reduce worker productivity, as employees now feel mistrusted, less free to act on their individual needs, and far less loyal to interests who seem out to control and monitor their every waking moment.

Degrees of Wisdom

As we attend grade school and then high school, we are given measures of our academic success. Our assignments get graded, our report cards give averages. If our averages are high enough, we proceed to the next levels. Eventually, if we hang in there, we graduate, and if we keep going, we head to college and do the same, meeting bigger challenges with more demanding work loads. It can be tough and humiliating, as well as rewarding and beneficial. Yet, how good a testament is a college degree, or really any degree, to one's actual character? I believe the answer is plain: it is no testament at all.

Don't get me wrong. School can be an important part of education, and education is fundamental to a successful life and a rich personality. However, too many untrue assumptions are at work as we consider school to be synonymous with education. The idea that a college degree somehow indicates that we are educated, and that education of this sort is an indicator of total character, is not factual in any way. Worse, the narrow standards created by the corporate world have done society a great disservice, in that we miss the fundamental truth that the presence or absence of a piect of paper often has nothing to do with whether a person can do a particular job.

I have worked with many people of varying educational backgrounds. Some of the most industrious, intelligent, and original people are excluded from positions they deserve only because they lack a college degree. They hit that ceiling of advancement, and there they will stay so long as they lack diplomas. This is positively cruel when I think back on how easily people in college can acquire degrees without really meriting them. There were many at my alma mater, Colgate University, who got good grades without academic creativity. They instead used craftiness, short-cuts, collaboration with other students, Monarch notes, and sometimes even plagiarism to rack up those A's. In short, they played the game, and they won. Many of these people went on to a life of success, or at least, material success. I often read in my alumni newsletter of some who are quite accomplished in their professions. This is all fine, and I'm not about to assume bad things about them. Yet, I am always more gratified reading of the humanitarian and volunteer work done by many others, often by those who did not graduate with Phi Beta Kappa honors. Maybe those pulling in the less than stellar grades were not so self-involved as some others?

There is a bitter irony in that the workplace often requires degrees before considering any more relevant qualifications, while the academic world does not in who it chooses to honor. Shakespeare, for example, never attended any institution of higher learning, yet, four hundred years after his time, he is still the major star of literature departments. "Is not parchment made of sheepskins?" his Hamlet asked. The same is true with scores of politicians and celebrities who do not want for credibility, simply due to their lacking of a degree. Andy Rooney of television's 60 Minutes, who also attended Colgate, never graduated, since he left early to fight in World War II. Perhaps he considered giving service to his country at a time of crisis a more worthy use of his time. Bob Woodruff, who graduated from Colgate in 1983, had to give up his career as an ABC News anchor when he suffered a very serious injury in 2006 while reporting from Iraq. Instead of withdrawing from public life, which would have been understandable, he now runs a charity fund for people who suffer from traumatic brain injury. This sort of generosity did not come from any diploma.

How, too, can we argue that the highest of academic accomplishment validates the character of the individual? Did the three degrees held by the late Kenneth Lay, the notorious CEO of Enron, dissuade him from participating in a massive corporate deception that cost thousands of people their retirement funds?

Education is the improvement of personality that results from learning, and learning occurs everywhere. Perhaps we need to remember that life, not school, is the greatest educator. Those who did not go as far in the academic world as they might may have been compelled not to do so for a variety of reasons, and maybe none of them had to do with any personal failing. No one better knew this than the Harvard-educated T.S. Eliot, a man whose work I fondly studied in my last year of college. He never did finish the Ph.D. he began, but he still left a magnificent legacy that includes his pageant play The Rock, featuring prophetic words for our times:

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

A sure source of job dissatisfaction

It would be great if we all could love the work we do. What a better world it would be if we all had wonderful jobs - where we get paid to have fun. However, work is work, and its principal role is to earn our living, not provide us with entertainment. We gain our sustenance at the sweat of our brow. It can't all be fun. It must be done, regardless of whether we like it.

We do have choices, though, and it is certainly refreshing to live in a free society that allows us the chance to go elsewhere when our jobs are not pleasant. In fact, doctors and psychologists would say that this may be the most advisable thing we can do. A dissatisfying or degrading job is a major source of stress, and many studies throughout the past few decades identify stress as a major factor in poor health. You cannot be a healthy person in spirit or body if you have to hold your breath most of every day.

I have left jobs before. When I've done so, there has always been a two-fold motive: on the one hand to escape, the other to embrace. The worst decisions I have made about job changes have come when I've let the need for escape take reign. Off I would go, sometimes finding a better job, to be sure - but sometimes marooning myself in a worse one. Had I stepped back and thought a bit more rationally, I would have done much better.

One lesson I take away from these experiences is to realize that the stories that were at play in my mind, whether or not they had foundation, had a way of taking me down hard. For example, there were key moments when I suffered from a sense of entitlement. I had 'earned' a satisfying, fun job at the point where I was - and if it wasn't given to me - if they didn't recognize me - I had the right to leave. Hadn't I "paid my dues," after all? Wasn't it time to "write my own ticket"? There were other times I assumed that objective business decisions were personal. When someone else got a top assignment, for example, I could assume it was because that person was better liked than I was, and that my boss was unfair to like that other person more. In fact, that person got the assignment simply because they were liked, period, and it had nothing at all to do with me, one way or the other. Also, suppose that someone else was better liked than I was. Does that make the boss wrong?

There are certainly times jobs are poor or unfair, and one should not just submit to that, especially in the amazingly diverse economy we experience here in the West. We live in a world of possibilities that is too easily missed as we cocoon ourselves in our small, self-made worlds, and we are worth the trouble of finding good situations for ourselves. Yet, it isn't always true that a better job can only be had outside the doors of our office. More importantly, if my experience is any indication, job satisfaction can be reduced significantly when we let those nagging, venomous voices in our heart tear us down. It's tough enough to bring yourself into a job every day, promising your boss productivity and results. It gets much worse when we are raging over unproven and bankrupt assumptions that exist only in our own minds.

The "death bed" saying

Time and time again, I have heard this bit of wisdom, in one form or another:

Nobody lying on his death bed ever wishes he could have spent more time at the office.

I get it, and it's a reasonable point. Yet, when I hear it, something about it always upsets me. I have puzzled over the reasons I feel this, and have come to some conclusions.

First of all, I do agree I likely will not regret time spent away from my office jobs. The subtext of this statement, though, is troubling. Doesn't it suggest I will regret the time I did spend at the office?

Gee, I hope not. I have spent a lot of my life inside offices. Sometimes, I had moments of wonder and pride and accomplishment. At other times, I felt stagnant and unchallenged. There have been wonderful bosses, mediocre bosses, and awful bosses. At various points, I've held roles of management and organizational responsibility. At all times, I was given orders and instructed to follow them. None of this is without its questions, its issues, its problems - and yes, even its sins and painful lessons. But do I really have to regret it all from my death bed, as if it were all some kind of waste, a farce?

I have heard many people say that a job and a career gives them a sense of consistency and belonging, and there are times it has done the same for me. Spouses, companions, kids, and friends can go any which way, while the daily chore of going to the workplace provides a constant. The job experience brings us to see people who can help us learn, understand, and grow in ways which another environment doesn't provide. I cannot see any reason for regret here.

Even if we ignore this subtext, though, and pay attention to only the statement, I still find I can't get totally behind it. Someone might actually have good reasons to consider whether they did spend enough time trying to fill professional commitments, making themselves effective, and rising to their potential. Our occupations take up huge parts of our lives. This blanket statement just doesn't cover it all.

There are certainly many people who neglect their families, friends, and communities for the sake of their jobs, and maybe this saying is designed to shake them up. However, it doesn't apply to everyone, and I sure hope that it won't apply to me. While I may not worry that I did not spend "more" time at the office, I sometimes wonder that I did not spend the "right" time there, leading myself and family to situations better than I ended up having. Yes, there were times I could have worked more effectively, but I did not. There were other times when I should have been home with my family but was working instead. I tried to strike a balance, and did not always get this right. Thankfully, I kept learning, and with luck, got better as I went along.

Moreover, it does not worry me greatly that I may still have some of these questions as I reach the end of my life. My biggest hope is that my reflections on life, now and in those final moments, will not be in the context of regret or the absence of it. Many professional situations helped me to change for the better, often quite unexpectedly, and almost always through the example of special and important people whom I would not have met outside the office. If I have any hopes about my final reflections on my working life, it will be that I look back on these people with gratitude.

Life with Mr. Twimble

I've spoken a fair bit lately about maintaining an identity in the face of impersonal corporate expectations. It is an irony how conformity is the standard driving all behavior - yet if one does actually conform to the extent that is seemingly demanded, the individual gains nothing but ridicule. Our heroes, both in real life and in imagination, are ones who did not conform. The ones who do are considered ordinary, if not downright pitiable.

It is ironic, though, that we often attempt to carve out a unique position for ourselves simply by taking conformant behavior to another level. The management track may be more challenging, but it is hardly unique. To gain notice by "standing out", as the "Lieutenant Picard" of my previous posting was encouraged to do, is not so impressive when it is merely part of what is expected.

I sometimes wonder if a lot of people fall into a rut not because they are unassertive, but simply because they see no real winning at these games. Those who work successfully in the corporate world seem as inevitably headed to obscurity as the less successful. Few corporate bosses, and pretty much no one in middle management, will ever be the subject of an essay in a school, or the object of admiration on a child's bedroom poster. At the end of a career, the more successful people might end up with a better pension and a more expensive gold watch. Yet, it's still just a pension and a gold watch.

It may be best just to laugh at it all. Consider Mr. Twimble, the happy underachiever in the musical comedy How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He stays at his decades-long held job in the mail room, refusing to try anything different, reveling in the routine of his life without complaint. The protagonist of the story, J. Pierpont Finch, is intrigued by his attitude. In their song "The Company Way", Twimble explains:

TWIMBLE:
I play it the company way -
Wherever the company puts me, there I'll stay.

FINCH:
But what is your point -

TWIMBLE:
I have no point of view.

FINCH:
Supposing the company thinks -

TWIMBLE:
I think so, too!

Later in the song:

FINCH:
If they want brilliant thinking
From employees -

TWIMBLE:
That is no concern of mine.

FINCH:
Suppose a man of genius
Makes suggestions -

TWIMBLE:
Watch that genius get suggested to resign!

One cannot take this very seriously. This show and the eponymous book that was its inspiration were meant as satire, debuting in 1961 and 1952 respectively, squarely in that same "Age of Admin." that C.S. Lewis cited (see my earlier post). In this show, we are made to laugh at the foolish and myopic attitudes of business people, which were very much in cultural evidence at the time. Mr. Twimble is meant as a caricature, and it works well, as the did the entire show, which won the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

We would not be laughing, though, if Mr. Twimble didn't draw a little empathy from us. We have seen Mr. Twimble in various forms throughout our lives, and there is a little Twimble in all of us. Sooner or later, perhaps not quite so soon as Mr. Twimble did, it may make sense to jump off the ladder. The success we have reached may have been worth the trying so far - but it's up to each one of us to decide when we've tried enough.

Tapestry

I have found myself thinking of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that applies well to the subject of spirituality in our working lives. The episode, called "Tapestry", had our hero, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise, falling into critical condition due to a complication with his artificial heart. As he lay near death, he dreamed he was in a reverie filled with white light, reminiscent of the accounts of near-death experiences we hear today. Much to his surprise, though, Picard meets "Q", that menacing super-being who has plagued him throughout his command. "Welcome to the after-life, Jean-Luc," he sneers. "You're dead... and I'm GOD."

With no apparent motive, Q reveals that he plans to give Picard a second chance at life. When Picard was a young cadet, he acted impetuously in a bar room, and started a fight that led to the grave injury that caused him to lose his natural heart. Picard, who always regretted this episode, overcomes his understandable skepticism toward Q's promises and seizes the opportunity. Q, in his typically miraculous fashion, causes Picard to reimpersonate his former life as a 21-year old cadet, and soon finds himself again in that bar room on that fatal night. With the perspective of hard-earned hindsight, Picard steps aside and avoids the fight.

At first, our hero is thankful. Since he no longer requires an artificial heart, there will be no danger in the future, and no longer the need to face the near-death experience that brought him to this historic replay in the first place. Q then returns Picard to the future Enterprise, with the error of his proud, indiscriminate youth no longer scarring him.

Yet, all was not well. The once illustrious, commanding Jean-Luc Picard rematerializes in the present to find himself a pitiful, compromised man, now in a much lower rank than Captain, taking orders from the very same officers who were once his underlings. In a state of shock and humiliation, Picard pleas with them to be taken more seriously, and he finally hears his situation spelled out to him by Counselor Troi and Commander Riker, formerly loyal officers who now outrank him by many levels.

TROI: Hasn't this been the problem all along? Throughout your career... you've had lofty goals... but you've never been willing to do what's necessary to attain them.

RIKER: I'd have to agree with the Counselor. You talk about wanting more... but when it comes to doing something about it, you hang back. If you want to get ahead, you have to take chances... stand out from the crowd... get noticed.

In other words, the "new" Picard had spent his career playing it safe. Rather than focusing on the essential value of a life that was once nearly taken from him, he instead favored the drive to please others, avoid confrontation, and adhere to narrow definitions of assigned duty. The young man whose fiery insolence led to a critical heart injury was destined to be an accomplished starship Captain thirty years later; the rational, conservative young man who avoided such indiscretion would be doomed to retire as a Lieutenant, Junior Grade.

This episode was first shown in 1993, and it resonated with me. In the years I've had to think back on it, I not only see the explicit lesson it contained, but some other more subtle considerations. For one thing, wouldn't Picard himself have spoken the same words as Riker and Troi, had he been faced with a crew member who was similarly guarded and guileless? Yet, it was that very same Picard who opted to avoid the experience that taught him to approach his life in a courageous way. He failed to see the connection between his present outlook and the painful lessons that he needed to gain it, a truly difficult thing to see in that mixed up "tapestry" called life. Whether we are Captains, or Ensigns, or just thoughtful people, remember that sometimes, we must lose our heart in order to gain it.