Then there are the people, in particular two groups. Those who look up to their boss for guidance but to the point they are so needy they are more like little children than they are adults. Always wanting a bit of attention or help on a problem for which they should be able to work the answer out. They've done the job for years and get paid a handsome salary, yet don't appreciate these salient important features. The unemployed figures are exceedingly high, it's an employers market something else they don't take into account, just as their abilities most certainly should be. The second group are those above. The ones who make the big decisions and get paid the big bucks. They have expectations of how things would run but don't want to get engaged in the finer details, along the lines of snapping fingers and expecting high jumps. There is between these two groups a massive disparity of reality. Being stuck in the middle is like Bob Dylan's song, with cowboys to the left and Indians to the right. If you are stuck in the middle expect your hat to have multiple arrows and bullet holes in it. Trying to talk of reason to either group about the expectations is like backing a snail in a horse raise, with little chance of it every making the finishing line let alone winning. The situation will not change no matter what happens. Cowboys will always want to shoot their guns and Indians ride bare back and shoot arrows.
It's a matter of accepting your own limitations, and fobbing the rest of them off in a diplomatic way. The working like a slave bit just doesn't seem to change the situation. More than anything else it is about understanding your own stress and your own stress reactions. Then knowing how to handle them, how to change behaviours and recognise how to prevent the stress habit from sinking you lower than a world war two sub just hit by a depth charge. There's a line from a poem called Desiderata it is:
"Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself"
This can be taken in many ways, gentle with emotions, thoughts and importantly feelings. Such as the feeling of being unable to cope. The most difficult thing in the world though is to act on this ideal. Not to take on the opposite view, e.g. you are able to cope but rather accept, you will do your best and if there is just too much crap; accept you can not cope but why the hell should you let it harm yourself? It's also about expectations, your own and other people's, even if they demand you do things all the time and there are only so many demands which can be met. Time for human beings is finite. Sometimes it is not even about doing the most urgent pressing things, sometimes it is about giving some of that precious time to the not so urgent or pressing things but are important to other human beings.
It's about looking outside of the moment you are in. Outside of the moment which has become a critical stress crap situation, as these don't last forever. In the middle of my day I like to speak to Sparkling, she is like a rudder and steers me back to the important things in life. Which are usually her and Rock Chick. So thinking about family, and outside of the current situation can bring it to insignificance. Coping is about looking after yourself, changing bad habits, such as eating junk and waiting for a heart attack, it includes exercise, time for self meditation, esoteric and aesthetic things. Listening to music you love and crying with happiness at a fond memory from and old photograph. These are things I have to personally take on a lot more and so hope I can for the sake of my own being.
With a little luck this two day headache will shortly lift. Even a headache goes away, eventually.
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