TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

#85 – The Agenda Lounge

#85 - The Agenda Lounge

Never let it be said that I pass up the opportunity to talk about something that’s bugging me – this one’s hot off the presses.

So..Grandpa and his stroke – you know it, I know it. It’s old news. As I said in a previous dose, it’s about the principle and not the person. That was the most important lesson I learned from the life of my grandfather. So what do you do what you can adequately say how you feel about life, family and everything? You write it down and so I wrote. This is me, this is me and if you read it you will know what I think. No conversation required. So effective, I thought that I sent it in an e-mail to different people (names redacted) and awaited their response. I read it over the phone to others. I wasn’t hoping for much of a reaction and I’m glad of that because that’s exactly what I got.

And so – the end result of all that effort, the family drama, etc. is that we’re in the same exact place we were when we started…we took a trip through Robin Hood’s barn. But the difference is, now we know why and thus this topic is one to be revisited because I know time has the ability to make you forget.

Because of HDS’ book club, I’m the proud owner of Jack Welch’s business book, “Winning” (available wherever fine management fad books are sold). In it, he discusses the concept of differentiation. Differentiation is a people-managing concept and, according to Mr. Welch, is nothing new. You reward your stars, you nurture your average folk (who may in time become stars themselves) and you dump the losers. Simple, right? Most of the good ideas are, but this one is so open to misuse that most people won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. Too many babies get thrown out with the bathwater through misapplication of the concept. Even Mr. Welch acknowledges that this is a practice to be done over time with plenty of opportunities to both change and observe the outcome. So let’s understand what we’re talking about before we get too much farther down the road.

Basically – I’m getting to that point in my late twenties where I’m doing some housecleaning. Nicole and I are going through the house and dumping a lot of stuff we haven’t used and now are able to tell ourselves “You never will – dump it”. While reading Nick Hornsby novels Wil Wheaton’s blog you realize that in a young adult’s life there’s always this point at which they say to themselves: “I need to get my stuff together”. We’ve tossed a lot of stuff, making room for the things that are more important to us. It’s very therapeutic – I’ve been feeling less stress as a result ever since.

The process isn’t done – I’m simply re-applying another one of my Tim-isms to another area of my life. Through conflict lies resolution. So – taking on conflicts like “This-house-is-messy-clean-it-up” or “My-car-makes-noise-get-it-fixed” I’m finding that the old habit of putting up with stuff doesn’t suit me as well as a new habit that I’m trying to teach myself of Fix-It-And-Move-On.

How about the stuff that won’t be fixed? There are a few things like that and obviously, I’m not talking about cars or houses. Some of my relationships in the past suffered from a permanent limp from past injuries that were never properly treated. Grandpa’s stroke and Janine’s pregnancy both meant that the family was going through a process of restructuring and after watching it happen it work, I was ready to try it at home.

I wasn’t ready to admit it at the time but something Bruce told me when new people joined the group or other ones left, that time was an opportunity not to be squandered. You had the opportunity at that point, he said, to look at the whole group and blow up some old bad habits. Group dynamics is a discipline and Bruce gave me my first lesson.

With Grandpa’s stroke, I realized almost immediately that things had changed. The patriarch, if we ever had one, was Grandpa and now his usual pillar of support was gone. It might come back but who knew when that would be? We had to start relying on each other. I tried to communicate as much when the discussions about long-term care, going home from the hospital and other matters came up. Some of the message got through for a while. Going into 9 months after the fact, it’s plain that not everyone was ready for a change like that and there have been more times than not that people are still trying to fit square pegs in round holes in my family. Sure, square pegs fit in round holes will fit if you hit them hard enough…but that doesn’t make them good for anything else after the fact. More to the point, when you get back out in the real world where square pegs set in square holes, you find yourself at a disadvantage. You’re a square peg that fits very loosely in a square hole.

But let’s put all that aside – this isn’t court and I don’t need to provide opening arguments, independent testimony, character witnesses or closing statements. Took me a long time to figure it out but eventually I did: I’m not obligated to go through the angst. The sad part about it is that the people who are closest to me (in theory) are the ones who taught me the least about how to be a mature, responsible adult. Strip off the veneer and spend a few hours around them; the claws start coming out. At first I was shocked, then I was outraged and finally, I was just disappointed.

What does “the claws” mean? Pretty simple: the agenda. When you run up to these simple conflicts that aren’t resolved so simply – there’s an agenda. When you can’t be in the same house with certain family members and get excuse after lame excuse – there’s an agenda. Sorry, Tim – you can’t watch the annual football game with your granddad. Why? Uh…*cough*...everyone’s just going to be watching the game… eh-hem…we don’t want to distract Grandpa…we don’t get to see them that often…we just want to be selfish today…

See what all of that nonsense means is that underneath it all, there always was a conflict that nobody was prepared to acknowledge and work to resolve. What makes me angry about that is a couple of things: A) It was so eminently fixable. B) You squandered so many opportunities to make this thing better. Even if you couldn’t solve the whole thing right away, you could have at least started on that path. Maybe you didn’t even know how to get started but could have admitted as much and learned how. When the student is ready…the teacher appears. I’ve learned so much in the past couple of years about resolving conflict as an adult and none of it came from the place that it should have.

Other things about it piss me off: it wasn’t one-sided. There were some genuine issues involved in the family; really, really simple problems that would have been resolved long ago had the right people insisted on it. It just shows that no matter how old you get, people are capable of being immature and selfish. They get better at hiding it and other people get better at excusing it. Whatever. The clan has been prepared to act as though there are two sets of rules: one for family and one for everyone else. Not only does it make every disagreement protracted and every argument one-sided, it just sets a bad precedent.

But all of this is kind of like arguing about why water is wet or the sky is blue. You know it, I know it and if you want to argue about it, do me and you a favor and check into the mental hospital…now. The worst part about this is how obligated I feel to continue re-hashing old topics just because I feel that if I don’t, somehow reality will return to the way things were before. It’s beginning to annoy people.

Angry? Oh yeah. Sad? Believe it. Disappointed? Yes. Ready to move on with my life? Yes, more empathically, YES.

I think that’s what Eminem was talking about when he wrote “Cleaning Out My Closet“ – it’s like a closet full of old, junky relationships and it has become a liability for you. The stuff in your closet was stuff that identified you before and now, it’s time to make that oh-so-painful break with the past. This is okay – it will hurt for a while but it’s worth it. Sit down and write the e-mail. Thank them for teaching you the things that you learned from them. Let them know that the door is always open to get together again and what needs to happen for that to work. After that, the hardest thing is to not pick up the phone again.

You discuss, even argue, the issue with other members of your family. You endlessly question your actions, your motives and look over and over again for what you could/should have done differently. Beneath it all, you know that you did the right thing and that yes, you could have completely knuckled under to all of the pressure but you would have hated yourself for it. It doesn’t mean you don’t hate your life now, it just means that part of your life is about doing difficult things and this period of time is one of them.

So – lots of vagueness, I know. I don’t want to mention names, I don’t want to turn my page into a Soapbox of Tim is Right, even though I’ve been boring Janine, Nicole and Ryan silly with all of this. Actually, I think the times where I’m wrong are more instructive because I learn more. Beyond that, this part of my life is the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. Hoping that this book has a happy ending.

- Tim Woolery, 12/06/2005