start me up!

Where the buck stops

Persuaded as Miss Bingley was that Darcy admired Elizabeth, this was not the best method of recommending herself; but angry people are not always wise; and in seeing him at last look somewhat nettled, she had all the success she expected.

This is from Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, a book I have read maybe ten times. I'm not pointing out this passage because I need to read the book again, though I suppose that's possible. I have on occasion been very angry the last several months. The reasons are not relevant, because if I am angry it's not your problem, dear reader.

Being angry wouldn't even be MY problem if I could somehow manage to be wise at the same time just a bit more often. No such luck. This summer I've managed to hurt several people with my anger. Most of the time it's been personal, which is probably a deeper hurt; but once it was professional, which is plenty deep enough and more appropriate to this Web log.

I was working on a project with someone. I got irritated with her. My anger caused me to see little problems on the project as big ones; I also saw her gifts and talents as irrelevant. I went to the boss and blew the whistle. Much later I learned that she was reprimanded, and that this will stay on her permanent record. Yet my anger had melted away within a day or two. She never even knew I was angry at her. All she saw was the results. Crap, she lived with that all summer, and I didn't even know the pain I'd caused. Professional pain: you can't receive candy or flowers or get taken to a movie or a ball game or have anyone say anything nice to you and get over it. It has lasting effects. "Someone with power over me looks at me differently now, because of what you said," I finally got her to tell me. Even then it didn't sink in, not for several hours. But it's sunk in now.

I told her I wanted to fix it. She told me she wanted to vent. I told her her venting might not make her feel better. She told me I might not be capable of "fixing it," and might even make matters worse if I try. But that's the kind of person I am, I guess. Having seen that I have done something wrong, my first instinct is to correct it. And NOW, having seen the depth of my wrongdoing, I see that, like Elizabeth Bennet (pictured, played by Keira Knightley in the 2005 movie version), "till this moment, I never knew myself." I could say I feel like crap, and I'd be right, but it's nothing compared to the pain I have caused. (And imagine, if it's this bad when you hurt a colleague, how bad it must be when you hurt someone close to you! I know this betrayal as well!)

Don't you feel sorry for me. I'm writing this primarily to remind myself that all this has occurred. I'm going to try to fix things, without any real hope of winning my colleague's respect back, because it's the right thing to do. Doing the right thing, even when it's nearly hopeless, is still mostly better than three dead lemmings and a sharp stick in the eye. And I'm going to let her vent. But mostly I'm going to learn, finally, to count to ten. You'd think an engineer would know how to do that, wouldn't you?

I hate seeing the truth about myself. I hate knowing what I'm capable of. But I gotta know or I can't be healed. We all gotta know this about ourselves. So entrepreneurs, I tell you that Pride & Prejudice oughta be required reading for you too.

Labels: rhetoric

posted by Ron @ 8:47 PM