I was like a bullet out of a gun leaving work today. Keeping up maximum velocity until I hit Gertrude Street to slow to a slower stroll because I knew I was (literally) on the home stretch. Not unlike when I was a pre-teen and had very strong feelings against school - you know, before I got a handle on all that 'learning is awesome you can be a student foreve I'm never going to leave!' thing - and couldn't wait to get out of my daily institutional commitment every single day.
When I was a pre-teen I hated school. HATED primary school. I had more stomach aches than I had hot dinners (I was a pesky, picky child so I hardly ever ate my dinners hot) resorting one time to fake paralysis (due to fake polio) one day to avoid school. Hey, don't judge me, it worked and I got to stay home; one may say I was imaginative. Not that my mother believed me for a single minute, but she was so exasperated and late for work she just left me there 'paralysed' in my bed for the rest of the day.
My memory is poor but I suspect I was a melodramatic kid. My mother always says she wondered how come the teacher's report told of this quiet, well behaved little girl in class - delightful, one might suggest - while it was a raging, dramastic she-devil child who used to arrive home each day to fight with her brother and be a nightmare to feed and put to bed. Well she never said those words exactly but she sure did suggest I was no walk in the park at home.
I have no recollection of being anything but delightful
I can't remember the last time I lost my temper. I am not sure it has happened at all since I stopped being the mother of a teenage daughter. Not that I've stopped being a mother only that the daughter has stopped being a teenager and I have a bit more of a grip on how to behave in petrol station forecourts.
Recently, while seeing a councellor through work (for my perscribed "over sensitivity" to idiots) it was suggested that I have not got a better grip on my temper, but am in fact afraid to speak my mind because I believe that I will lose control and yell. This was based, I have been told, in my past and the experience of only being heard when I raised my voice and stomped my feet and threw dishes of cold dinner across the room and so forth. You know, the married times.
I have to say, if we're talking about 'learned behaviour' here, the one thing I actually learned during those times was that no matter how loud or angry I got, no one listened to a single thing I had to say and mostly THAT was why I was so god damned mad in the first place!
God is there anything more frustrating than not being heard? Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?
"Your team is going to tell you what they need. Whether it's gossip, rumours, staring, pacing, or yelling, your team is always telling you what they need to know. This means your job is not just to be an information conduit; it's also to employ a policy of aggressive silence. In this silence, you're going to be forced to listen. Try it in a staff meeting: just shut up and see what your team says when you're saying nothing."
Managing Humans by Michael Loop
Of course, you can only be angry if you care enough about something. The very real danger is when, frustrated with a lack of response, respect and responsibility, you push right on through and end up not caring at all. How can you do anything of any value or credibility, if you just don't give a crap.