Maggie

The following is a letter I wrote to a journalist that interviewed me for the company newsletter. Maggie, not her real name, was assigned the task of writing an article about me as a result of a couple of commendations I’d received in the course of my duties as a bus driver. I was in a very poetic mood when I wrote this, and it makes me feel embarrassed as I re-read it now. Forgive me 🙂

Maggie;

I realized before you called me that our conversation and the resulting article had to be a fusion of you and I. Your Talent, Heart and Soul as a person, and those of me. Where we differ? Who’s to say, but my role in this company at the moment is as a bus driver, and yours is as an internal communications specialist. (insert giggle here)

I was honestly so delighted to see that you had a journalism degree. In many ways it says to me that you, like me, are altruistic (it isn’t about the money) and that can be a curse in a world “where it’s all about the money”. That may be the paradigm (world view) of others, but we can neither ignore that paradigm, nor can we become part of it. We will be governed by one another’s strengths, not by one another’s weaknesses. If it weren’t for people who thought of how to get the bills paid, we wouldn’t have any place to do our noble work. We are the bridge between two. The court Jesters of our time!

I was also delighted that you are a young person with naïve, high ideals. The real world has a tendency to be a winepress that crushes that out of us, and I’d just love to know who drinks that wine?!? I’m am one such naïve idealist. To put ‘naïve’ in another way, we could say, ‘simplicity’; I have travelled to the other side of complexity, and re-found simplicity. I cannot take the credit for that, it just fits, here’s the credit.

It’s your article, and I look forward to seeing what YOU are born to do! Fulfilling your calling. You have a noble cause here at CMBC! Refreshing the troops in this case. Sure, I’m gagging or giggling at the construct of my imagined paradigm, but it’s what we’re all about, us writers. We have the power of the pen! To enter into the minds of others, and help them see things from a different perspective. It’s only our own insecurity that would mock us into a corner, and then to watch us as we curl up into a ball of inactive good intentions, weeping and sniveling. So, I laugh at my insecurity, while retaining the dignity of my role in this great company. The company can only be the sum of its parts, and to follow that allusion, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but I am one of those parts, that’s the bit of fabric I’ve laid hold of… yet that construct is inaccurate, I’m not a parasite, I’m an integral part of this company, duly hired, and placed in an vital position to make a difference. I must see what I am, as well as what I am not. I must understand my role, as well as the roles of others around me, both my superiors and my subordinates. I’m a senior operator, and the junior operators are my minions. (that’s where we giggle ok?) I can’t ignore, though, the fact that I have influence. I influence the mindset of passengers who feel helpless against the system, of other operators, both senior to me and junior to me who are discouraged, who have given up and given in, who are in the midst of wondering what it’s all for…

All of the aspects of the company are vital. I see my role as being the one who shows one way it can be done, by mounting the horse, and riding it into battle. Horse and rider are one, and the foe is vanquished! All the others were so busy criticizing the horse’s perceived defects, and fearing them! I watched, and waited, then…

Is the CORPORATION the horse or the rider? If CMBC is the horse, and I am that horse’s rider, then we are together, riding into battle. The battle is against the enemy… what is the enemy? See that fellow there, with a couple of nickels bouncing around in his pocket? He needs a ride to a job interview. His suit is just this side of thread bare, and that matches the condition of his dignity, too. He’s on the edge. He waits at the appropriate bus stop, and I pull up, open the door, and welcome him aboard. I’ve seen ‘his story’ before I even got there, from blocks away. He begins his request… I gently interrupt, and invite him to have a seat, maybe ask him where he’s going, and if he’s sure he knows how to get there… that fellow has one less obstacle in his way. I don’t need to know his whole story, I have no need to judge how he got there, nor how he’s chosen to get out of ‘there’. I can be part of his solution, for this moment in time. I am Alexander The Great, (there are many of us) riding Bucephalus (aka CMBC) slaying the threat to this man’s dignity (no transportation to his job interview) with a single well aimed blow of my sword, (I’m not required to force anyone to pay their fare) and I carry on to my next battle, and he to his.

Alexander took the time to UNDERSTAND Bucephalus, and then applied that understanding in such a way as to become the horse’s rider. The ‘Philip’ referred to is King of Macedonia, and Alexander is his young son.

In my paradigm here, I am not the victim, I’m subordinate to the horse in some ways, but I am also joining with the horse, giving it what it needs, and in exchange being its master. It’s merely a beast, with no mind for such things as world conquest. It must have all of its needs met. To feel safe (survival as an entity in a hostile environment of local and global politics) To be watered and fed (funding…) To be respected and… I think you get the notion of how to see this story poetically as an overlay to our context here.