The last three jobs I have held featured the title of “Director”. One in the Fire Department, one for a Non-Profit, and, currently, for a software company. I have taken that title and my roles seriously in each case, as I have with every job I have ever worked, starting with Baseball umpire at age 14. For 33 years, I have thrown my entire being into elevating my skills, taking classes, attending conferences, reading books, getting certificates and using every other available avenue to help me and the organization I serve(d) succeed. I like to think that I more often than not have been effective at those roles.
But in recent days, in the face of articles on the Great Resignation, the aftermath of Covid-19, a wonderful sermon from Pastor Amy, and some really impossible situations, I have begun to truly evaluate what that drive to succeed has cost me in return for success.
You might say I can be a touch compulsive. Or that I am at times a perfectionist. You would probably be right. You may also correctly observe that my childhood featured echoes of the great depression by way of my parents and their own upbringings.
“Your job is your life.”
“You must have stability and be the best at your job because if you don't you may starve.”
"Don't stand up to your employer, they might get mad at you and take away your job and then where will you be?"
That was the base layer. It was understandable, but far from healthy. Especially when that focus on work and determination was not accompanied by encouraging a side order of balance and boundaries and appreciation for the human needs of… being human.
When you add in an extra entrée of “must be best little boy in the world syndrome” is it any wonder I have been in some form of solid tea kettle boil since the age of about seven? For the unaware, that syndrome refers to us gay kids who grew up with a constant undercurrent of a terror that if anyone- a parent, friend, preacher, teacher knew who we REALLY were we would be rejected like a donated kidney and sent to live with really bad people in the woods or an orphanage, followed by an eternity in hell. Or Michigan.
Our Faustian bargain was to think that if we were perfect (about everything) then we could overcome our original sin (shame) and possibly earn our way to tolerance. Not acceptance. That was out of the question. But tolerance. Sort of a Tiny Tim existence where our shameful self would at least be given some table scraps on major holidays and perhaps be allowed to have a supporting role in the family production of Christmas Day. Likely while sitting in a closet. Forever and alone.
For far too many of my LGBTQ sisters and brothers, even that modest goal proved unattainable and the exile became very real. And incredibly painful, horrible, and complete. Thankfully, my own exile lasted only a few months. But the wound caused by a knife is more about location than duration. And the scar does not tell the difference in time.
That leads me to today. And that word: Director. As well as the accompanying realization that for far too long I have been all about perfecting the wrong words on my business card. I have looked at my job and my role with all the passion and commitment of someone whose worth was found in his ability to live up to the Title.
That was the result of an early electric connection between my shame and fear of being openly who I was and the ability to "make up for it" through work. Thinking that I did not deserve grace and acceptance, just like with trying to be the perfect child to earn some form of tolerance, work offered the same possibility. If I was great, well, maybe I could make up for my shortcomings. I could earn something close to that which I thought I could never ever have.
That was my own vow or oath. When my work became not the bottom couple of lines on a email signature, but something so much more than it should. That’s at least partially ok when you have taken an oath, when lives depend on getting it right. It is no less dangerous for your psyche to seek perfection in that case but there can be found some logic in the quest.
But what happens when grace and peace become a prize to be earned through that work rather than a gift already sweetly and perfectly given? When salvation connects itself to how far above your quota you were? How many hours you extended yourself beyond a normal schedule? How well did you put on a smiling face and not say what needed to be said because of fear of scarcity or rejection?
Welcome back to the Christmas closet, workplace edition. Realizing that along the way the comma between the name, my name, and the title was replaced by an equal sign.
And if that happens, when it happens for some of us, the question becomes, how in God's name do we stop? How do we put some distance back between what we do and who we are? That question may become our most important and hardest job of all. Being fully, completely, honestly one's self in an integrated way, focused first on our humanity, not our title. How do we get back to being, Joe or Joanne, “who happens to be for awhile serving as a ___________”
Anytime I forget that truth I lose my way. It is always impossible to find your way home if you know not where you are, or where you are going. Those are essential bits of information for even the most ambitious of GPS systems.
I do suspect where the road back begins. It starts with asking: who am I always? No matter what. What brings me joy and peace even when the tempest boils? Where can I find myself again, even if I lost me along the way. It continues with an understanding. I am the only me who has ever been or ever will be. I am an original work of the creator. I am a recipient of grace and love and peace not as a reward for winning a prize, or meeting a quota, but as a result of being here, alive, and human. The best of our friends, family and counselors remind of this. On our best days we remind each other.
If you can find that, then you can begin to find it all again. And that my friends is another form of grace. A beauty which comes from hearing your own name in your own ears not as an afterthought to your past or your title or your shame or your success. But on its glorious own. Serving as the reminder of whom you were made to be and who you are. No matter how you earn your pay. No matter what you are called. No matter who you love. No matter what those before you did or did not have. No matter what room you occupy on Christmas or any other day
My forever oath is to do better at remembering that it is not an equal sign, but a comma. That much of our entire life is a blank line with words written in pencil following after a name that is ours forever. A name that reflects my purpose above by position and the grace given to me and never earned, because it did not have to be. My oath is to be the best Christopher Blake Carver there is, or ever will be. And that should always be more than enough.
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