I contend that there is nothing more precocious than a pre-teen child who regularly acts with adult mannerisms. I’m not talking about snobby children, but the ones who are honestly wise beyond their years.
Conversely, few things frustrate me more than an adult who chooses to behave like a child.
(Note: choose)
You would think a place of business that has never dabbled in the practical joke market nor trained clowns would be free from belching contests, threats to fart on another’s person, and the phrase “I know you are but what am I?”
This is a professional setting, presumably, filled with professionals. We can’t even use the excuse at my office that we work with children who somehow influence us more than we influence them.
I don’t have a bias against being carefree or even joking with co-workers but I do draw the line at announcing every change in body pressure and when conversations that are completely void of work related content extend on for hours.
I am being honest here, hours of discussion go on while work does not.
Nearly every morning I revert to my childhood at precisely the moment my alarm clock rings. I burrow under the comforter I bought on the comfy mattress I own and reach out only to slap that SNOOZE button hard enough to propel time backwards just for another few hours.
When I was a child I certainly acted like a child. I cannot tell you how many times my dad would come in bounce me bodily out of bed, drag me by my feet and wrench my hands away from their place wrapped around the bed frame.
And yet now, without any physical cohersion I manage to drag my assets out of bed, bathe, clothe and feed myself and arrive at work on time.
How is this transformation possible?
I became an adult. No, this did not occur magically when I turned 18 but rather when I made the choice to act like an adult and be responsible for myself.
Unfortunately, some among us have yet to make this choice either by personal failure to mature or the lack of suitable consequences. I’ll admit, one motivating favor that propels me from a place of slumber (besides the threat the dogs will piss on the bed) is that if I am not at my desk, doing my work bright, early and cheerful at 7:30am I run the very real risk of losing my job and thus my livelihood.
I was thinking today about how much we act in our day to day lives. We act like we care that a co-worker’s kid had gas at 3 a.m. or act like we know what’s going on with North Korea. We act like someone’s rude comment doesn’t bother us or that something insignificant is really an issue.
(Mainly a generational thing to me but why is EVERYTHING so freakin’ OMG, like, totally horrible and then, like, NOOOO, horridly unfair and Oh. My. God! with most of the under 30 crowd?)
The inspiration, if you must call it that, for this post comes from a co-worker I unfondly call “the actress” who decided some months ago to step up the efforts to annoy the hell out of Kelly. This started the day our hardworking, industrious co-worker was laid off and the actress started waxing poetical about how we all need to work harder and be better employees.
She was acting as if her job wasn’t protected by her mother. Which it is. The very next day she began to prance about announcing she was set to become a world famous act-ress! Entire days were spent pondering all the fabulous things she would buy once she hit the jackpot in Hollywood. She announced she would take as much time off as she wanted, thank-you-very-much, because this was her destiny.
A mere 24-hours after insisting we all needed to be model employees.
In the months that followed I have heard more of the act. Not just from a Z-list “actress” but from many people. Even myself.
It seems the only time we feel free enough to say what we’re thinking and act naturally is behind the wheel careening 80 miles per hour down the freeway, middle finger extended and obscenities flying.
What is fear that grips our conscious when faced with the simple challenge to tell the truth and mean what we say. No acting. No fooling.
Just tell that vendor that you don’t appreciate their characterization of your account as unimportant, let a friend know that it would mean a lot if they made time for lunch with you, inform your parent it’s not a good weekend to visit.
You, like everyone else, want to be different, extraordinary, memorable. What better way than taking a step back from the automatic responses that our mouths speak before our brains can filter and stop. Stop pretending to hate things you don’t mind. Stop faking excitement when you don’t really care. Stop investing in people and things that are unimportant and stop acting one way or another because it’s what’s expected.
How extraordinary would you be if you told the simple truth without embellishment and found, without acting, the things that matter most?
