MsTiara’s Thoughts

On Sunday mornings I like to have breakfast at a wonderful Greek café that has the smoothest coffee and makes its biscuits from scratch. The café’s clientele is in the 70 and above age range and is an interesting mix to watch, listen to and observe. Some come in as group, 4 or 5 people with a mix of male and females. They are the ones who in their younger days were always part of some social network and as they aged they traveled together as packs around the word always planning their next adventure.

Then you have the couples, husband and wives. Some, when you watch them, bring a welling of emotion to your throat. The love that has lasted 50 years and is still as strong and fresh as the day they met. A respect for each other, an attentiveness, a caring that seems to bind them whether they are chatting together or each reading a section of paper or waiting as one steps away to freshen up. I wish I could put my finger on what defines them, that moment. But, I can’t as it just is a love that binds them together.

There are many other type of couples, the ones who have only a couple years together, filling each others life with companionship, not wanting to be alone. But, the other one who stands out in my mind from this morning is the one who has been married for 50 or so years who are cold to each other. I don’t know if it is something lacking in each of them, but they talk or hold a conversation but there is no emotion between the two. Sentences are short, no heat, nothing. A long pause between the return sentences from the other. Talking to talk but no connection.

The thing about all of the couples is that none were ‘making the other laugh’, the requirement everyone seems to have in today’s society for their mate. Instead the one that seemed successful to me was the one where the other made them content.

The great translator Stephen Mitchell (the poetry of Rilke, The Book of Job, Tao te Ching…) met an old girlfriend many years after they had been together. After spending some days together catching up she said to him, “”If I could have wished anything for you, it would have been that you might become the person you’ve become.”

from this fascinating article about Mitchell in the Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-stephen-mitchell12-2009apr12,0,631455,full.story

The thing about…

Being a consultant, is that you can work on projects, give your heart and soul to it, own it, live it and breathe it for 2 years. You can do the impossible and the project can win awards for everyone involved, but, you don’t get any of the awards. You shrug, you hear the line about ‘well you get compensated by money’, but when you are the program manager and basically it is your baby… Sometimes you get a little nostalgic.

My last project won a very prestigious award for the company, all 65 people on the project got the plaques, the money compensation, and the accolades and party. I had to leave the company before the final release to the entire field and even if I was there, I would not have been ‘able’ to be invited to the party. I was the program manager and I wouldn’t have been able to go.

Since I have been back at the company I have been welcomed and it has been very nice. But, today, I had probably the kindest and most meaningful compliment I have ever received for my work. Someone I worked closely with on the project pulled down their award off their wall and handed it to me and told me that they wanted to give it to me since I deserved it after all the work I did and that it wouldn’t have happened without me.

I really do believe it is the greatest compliment I have ever received.