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I still have no job description.
As a result, no matter what task is given to me, I accept as mine and do my best to accomplish it. As a further result, more and more tasks have been placed on my regular "to do" list. Such is life in the 21st Century workforce: as long as one is willing to do a job, one has that job added to their responsibilities, regardless of whether or not it fits in with their skill sets or availability.
But this is not about my lack of job description or the number of responsibilities I have on the job. I agreed to do those things and if I don't like it, I have no on to blame but myself.
The foregoing portion of this column was mere background, setting up the real topic, which begins with a discussion with my supervisor over what I have just written above.
I mentioned these items to him the other day and also mentioned that I might like to, eventually, have such a thing as a job description. His reaction was, "Well, so far (in the past year) I've had four different titles and four different jobs. You just wait to see what happens and adjust to the change."
My reply to him was, "If you wait for change and adjust to it, all you are doing is reacting, and as long as you are reacting, you're behind playing catch-up. I prefer to in front, planning and initiating the change that I want to see happen."
He looked at me with an expression somewhere between annoyance and resignation; I know he wanted to say something back, but there was nothing for him to say. After all, we had just recently gone through a two-day workshop on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and he had been touting the part about "Be Proactive" quite often. To disagree with what I had just said would be to refute his advocacy of that philosophy -- as though he had not already done that with his previous statement.
But I continued to think about this incident and later on that evening, as I took my regular bicycle ride (a great time for thinking, by the way) I had one of those small revelations we occasionally have that define a position we have held much longer than we have been able to say why we have held it.
I have always had trouble identifying with and, in many cases, tolerating passive people. I have had, for more than 30 years, a friend who has continually been so passive as to allow herself to be a doormat for anyone and everyone who wishes to wipe their analogous feet upon her. She will then sit with downcast countenance and speak in sorrowful terms about how this person or that has put upon her and how she "almost" said something about it. One might think that, over the decades we have associated, she might be able to predict my retort, but she has not, apparently.
"What did you do about it?" I ask, pointedly.
"Well . . ."
"No -- not well. What did you do about it? Did you say "No, I will not do that" or did you tell the person to go jump in a lake?"
Here she will stammer and stutter, trying to find some new way of explaining why she prostrated herself once again to receive the mud and excrement that others wish to scrape from their shoes. I cut her off.
"As long as you don't stand up for yourself and tell people that you will tolerate being misused, don't complain to me about being misused and don't ask for my help. You know damned well you won't get it."
She will sulk and be silent for a while and then she will put the entire matter out of mind, accept it and ignore it, and go on with things as thought they didn't happen at all, which, I imagine, is the reason she seems always so surprised when it happens again.
I have written before of how I find it difficult to understand how people can be so shy about conflict. To me, conflict is life -- and I do not mean that to say that I want my life to be or believe it should be forever embroiled in one clash or another. What I mean is that life itself is not the natural state of things. If we look on so many different levels -- time being the most observable -- the state of what we call death is much more common and relies upon much less energy to exist than does living. Medical and biological sciences admit that the act of living is a constant struggle with forces and energies which seek the opposite.
On a philosophical platform, conflict, as I teach my students, is the basis for all learning. Learning does not take place unless we replace or alter existing knowledge with new or different knowledge. To do so, there must be conflict between the old and the new. No change ever occurs with out the confrontation of the new with the old and a degree of struggle within the variance.
In Celtic philosophy, there are three aspects to all things. These are called The Triads and are among the most sacred of ideas within Celtic Society. They are symbolized by the triangle. The base of this triangle is the line of extremity -- the two opposites of whatever it is we are defining: lightness or darkness; left or right; black or white -- whatever two opposites we choose. The endpoints on this baseline at the absolute extremes of these opposites -- absolute darkness opposed to absolute light, for instance. In between these two extremes, along the same baseline, we have what we normally call the "gray area", that segment where a combination of the two extremes blends into compromise to some extent or other.
But there is a third point to consider, this being the tip of the triangle -- that which is connected to the two extremes but elevated above it. It is this third option that is most often the most important one.
For any event, according to the Triads, there are three options: along the baseline, we have the two extreme: acceptance and rejection. We may meekly accept to whatever extreme degree we wish to place upon this alternative, or we may reject, to the same extreme degree.
If a law is passed, for instance, we may accept the law and follow it or we may reject the law and ignore it. Whether or not we feel the law is just is irrelevant: we still have those two options or some degree between them (obeying it when a police officer is around, or some such other partial acceptance).
But to acknowledge only these two options is inaccurate and unproductive, if we are opposed to the law. Accepting a law we feel is unjust places upon us the burden of our conscience and tears at our moral and spiritual structure. To ignore and reject the law carries somewhat more tangible consequences of fines or prison, but not the least bit more real or effective than the other.
The third option is to change the law so that it is just in your mind. The law will still exist, but those parts of it which are objectionable to the moral or spiritual self will be done away with.
My trouble with passive people is that they never seem to acknowledge that third option. They accept their fates with heads hung low and eyes downcast and follow meekly into whatever fate someone else has decided for them. While this is bad enough, in my eyes, the real fault of it is that they look to someone else to rectify the wrong being done to them. They abdicate their responsibility to another so that they do not have to deal with the unpleasantry of conflict.
I recall a line from The Magnificent Seven which I paraphrase here. The scene was during the siege of the village by the outlaws and takes place during the night hours when the mercenary gunslingers are keeping watchful eyes upon any movement in the dark distance. Two of them have just interacted with villagers and one is commenting on how much they (the mercenaries) are needed.
The other, I believe it was Charles Bronson's character, replies along the lines of, "Yes, but when this is all over and they don't need us to fight their battles anymore, they'll run us out of town because we remind them of what cowards they have been."
It may be a rude way of putting it -- calling passive people cowards -- but in essence it is how it is. Those who take on the battles of those who avoid them are nearly always shunned afterwards. While they are needed to fight the battle, those who stand behind them will cheer them on and treat them as heroes. Once the battle is won, they begin to fear them and will want them gone.
I do not understand how people can live in and with fear. Fear is the only emotion we have that can completely and utterly control ones life to the exclusion of all else. And yet, it is the one that most people accept and to which they relent most often.
In reacting to change rather than directing it, we set ourselves up for whatever comes in our direction and must then cope with whatever that brings -- like people who wait on the shore to endure the coming hurricane or evacuate, running away and consenting to whatever fates it brings with it.
In the long run, isn't it better that we take as much control as we can and initiate the change we prefer, rather than accepting the change that is put upon us?
