Lucky for Me, I’m So Damn Clever

I find myself defending my position an awful lot. It’s like I have to argue, debate, and justify my every move. That’s what it feels like. Whether or not that is a bad thing is a wholly subjective assessment, and I wholly assess it to be a royal pain in my ass. It’s ridiculous, and I am tired of it. At work, an honest-to-God grown-ass woman actually walked over to one of my technical superior’s office and asked him for exactly what she had just asked me for 15 minutes prior. She didn’t like my answer, so she went to him. When I say “grown-ass woman,” I mean that she’s an adult. An adult that’s older than me. I’m not exactly from the “straight out of college” set, either. More like “straight out of college 14 years ago.” So, she’s definitely closer to retirement than I am. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Un-freaking-believable. She really pissed me off.

Then the steam vented. And I pondered: why was I so angry at being challenged? Is it that I think myself so clever as to confound my intellectual inferiors with my verbose and articulate electronic repartee? Or is it because I am a manager…I manage people…I am very important…RESPECT ME!?!? Or, perhaps, it is quite simply that I am a human being, prone to the same moments of weakness and self-doubt as everyone else? Yes, I quite think that is, indeed, the answer. I am human, and as such, I find myself falling victim to my ego. My ego is nourished and fed by all my clever, clever thoughts. And in all my cleverness, I sometimes lose my connection to my conscious self and fixate instead on my little, insecure ego.

This is the predicament in which I find myself this week: struggling to rise above my ego and act from a place of consciousness. The woman in today’s rant is the same woman from yesterday’s rant. There’s just another lesson to be learned from that one interaction, and it’s the lesson of the challenged ego. When I allow myself to become disconnected, I find myself threatened by many trivial things, least of which is the opinion of another person. When I am connected and conscious, I can watch others act out their frustrations for what they are: external manifestations of an internal struggle of that individual. This woman, you see, obviously had a reason for her reaction. Whether I deem that reaction to be “legitimate” or not is irrelevant, of course! She will do what she wants, and the consequences of all her doing will be hers for resolving. I can’t share those consequences with her! Now, I can choose to allow her actions to influence mine, which I did, and the consequences of MY actions then become my issue. The subsequent poisoning of my aura had to do with me, not her, just as the initial poisoning of her aura had everything to do with her, not me. It’s really quite clear to me now. I wish I would have seen it sooner!

Conscious action and conscious living…Aristotle offered that “the unconscious life is not worth living.” He so “got it.” That dude was ON. Like Donkey Kong, as they say. Like Donkey Kong, indeed.

I wish to be “on like the Kong” myself. There is so much more wisdom and peace in conscious action and conscious living. I find I can have the greatest influence on others when I come from that compassionate, loving place. That will be my focus for the remainder of this week. There are three days left at work for me to redeem myself and correct my behavior. There is plenty of opportunity for me to do the same at home. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out.

Lucky for me, I’m so damn clever.