I've been dreading my 90-day job performance review on Thursday, a review I asked for. My boss is super-nice and never less than pleasant, never stands in my way, and yet never helps me much either. She left me alone on my 2nd day on the job, saying, "It's all yours!" Since then, unless I hunt her down, I only see her in passing.
Besides that, I realize I've built up resentment toward her for being so unrelentingly sweet. If I complain about anything, I feel as if I'm chopping a marshmallow with a hatchet, while for me, far from being useless whining, venting is the best preamble to brainstorming about how to deal with hard stuff.
My resentment feels a little crazy to me, but I see myself in a favorite quote from Quaker educator Parker Palmer:
I want to quit my job.
I have quit many things in my life because I was too scared to face my own annoyance or to try to practice using my power (or even avoid thinking I had any---so much nicer to feel the powerless victim).
But Parker Palmer also said, “Community is that place where the person you least want to live with always lives.”
Ohmygod, yes.
This reminds me of the book I'm reading, Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint by Nadia Bolz-Weber. Bolz-Weber was raised in Christian Fundamentalism (a culture I've learned a lot about from Marz). She rejected it in dramatic ways (the Ramones! vodka! stand-up comedy!), eventually becoming a Lutheran pastor.
She says:
So these people and ideas buoy me.
I'm not crazy to feel it, but there's really no avoiding my own resentment because it comes along wherever I go, like the sunset.
Still, it scares me to ask for changes, so I want to believe nothing will change, so why bother?
Maybe-- probably!-- nothing much will change, but what have I got to lose by trying?
Well, that's a silly question: I can lose a lot. For instance, I can lose my calm; I can lose my sense of myself as nice and [emotionally] nonviolent by having to face my irritability and resentment.
While quitting has rescued me from conflict and annoyance (temporarily), it is hardly nonviolent.
Quitting jobs, leaving town, ending relationships (or not entering into them in the first place), not speaking up can be a kind of violence in that it can inflict injury or damage--not through action, like physical violence, but through inaction.
I like that the Catholic prayer the confiteor ("I confess") includes the omission to act-- that is, passivity when action is called for-- as something to be confessed, and one confesses to "all the angels and saints, and to you, my brothers and sisters" for "what I have done and what I have failed to do."
Anyway, I've been thinking about nonviolence lately--it seems in short supply-- and today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. As I've gotten older, the principle of nonviolence seems less like a spiritual or emotional virtue and more like an effective political & interpersonal tactic.
I used to think "Love your enemy" meant you had to like everybody (hmmm... is my boss trying to do that?). Now it sounds to me more like "the buck stops here": i.e., I will use love to muffle violence so it doesn't keep reverberating. Not romantic, not fun, nothing to do with liking anyone, and possibly dangerous . . . but possibly also effective.
And possibly not.
Well, maybe I won't be able to improve my workplace, but lowering expectations and raising my courage, I am going to try.
I can always leave town later.
Besides that, I realize I've built up resentment toward her for being so unrelentingly sweet. If I complain about anything, I feel as if I'm chopping a marshmallow with a hatchet, while for me, far from being useless whining, venting is the best preamble to brainstorming about how to deal with hard stuff.
My resentment feels a little crazy to me, but I see myself in a favorite quote from Quaker educator Parker Palmer:
"When I think about people with whom I have the deepest sense of community, I think of people who have been able to share with me their contradictions, their brokenness--thus allowing me to share mine.Yes, that's it: if I can't share my "brokenness"---my confusion or annoyance or heartbreak at working with people living with dementia, I don't know how to keep working well. And yet instead of welcoming this chance to work on improving things with my boss, I want to cancel the meeting.
When we present ourselves to the world as smooth and seamless, we allow each other no way in, no way into life together. But as we acknowledge and affirm that the cross is the shape of our lives, we open a space within us where community can occur."
I want to quit my job.
I have quit many things in my life because I was too scared to face my own annoyance or to try to practice using my power (or even avoid thinking I had any---so much nicer to feel the powerless victim).
But Parker Palmer also said, “Community is that place where the person you least want to live with always lives.”
Ohmygod, yes.
This reminds me of the book I'm reading, Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint by Nadia Bolz-Weber. Bolz-Weber was raised in Christian Fundamentalism (a culture I've learned a lot about from Marz). She rejected it in dramatic ways (the Ramones! vodka! stand-up comedy!), eventually becoming a Lutheran pastor.
She says:
So these people and ideas buoy me.
I'm not crazy to feel it, but there's really no avoiding my own resentment because it comes along wherever I go, like the sunset.
Still, it scares me to ask for changes, so I want to believe nothing will change, so why bother?
Maybe-- probably!-- nothing much will change, but what have I got to lose by trying?
Well, that's a silly question: I can lose a lot. For instance, I can lose my calm; I can lose my sense of myself as nice and [emotionally] nonviolent by having to face my irritability and resentment.
While quitting has rescued me from conflict and annoyance (temporarily), it is hardly nonviolent.
Quitting jobs, leaving town, ending relationships (or not entering into them in the first place), not speaking up can be a kind of violence in that it can inflict injury or damage--not through action, like physical violence, but through inaction.
I like that the Catholic prayer the confiteor ("I confess") includes the omission to act-- that is, passivity when action is called for-- as something to be confessed, and one confesses to "all the angels and saints, and to you, my brothers and sisters" for "what I have done and what I have failed to do."
Anyway, I've been thinking about nonviolence lately--it seems in short supply-- and today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. As I've gotten older, the principle of nonviolence seems less like a spiritual or emotional virtue and more like an effective political & interpersonal tactic.
I used to think "Love your enemy" meant you had to like everybody (hmmm... is my boss trying to do that?). Now it sounds to me more like "the buck stops here": i.e., I will use love to muffle violence so it doesn't keep reverberating. Not romantic, not fun, nothing to do with liking anyone, and possibly dangerous . . . but possibly also effective.
And possibly not.
Well, maybe I won't be able to improve my workplace, but lowering expectations and raising my courage, I am going to try.
I can always leave town later.
