Just close your eyes

Okay, so I admit the title came from a Slipknot song and that I really had to think hard about what I wanted to write about. I’m choosing to write about the disconnect. You know the one. 

Carl Jung’s persona springs to mind when I  think of it. We’ve always worn a public face even when there’s no reason to. But lately, perhaps as a result of isolation over the last few years, it’s harder to take it off. Surely you’ve felt it. You want to say something, you want to embrace the mantra of self-care, the catharsis of speaking your mind, but rather than spilling everything and getting it out, you hold it in a while longer. 

So you keep quiet about the problems that are eating away at you, even though it would be so easy for just one person to fix this, this issue, this situation, this – everything. It’s just not worth the pain. Because if you say anything, you’ll have someone else say something, too. 

And they will be more concerned about their own personal issues than what’s really going on with yours. So in the end, you don’t speak up at all. You stay silent, and eventually everything falls through and the issue is forgotten altogether.

You stand back and realize that the people parading your work around have no idea what they’re doing by the numbers. You question the competence of the people in charge. Realize that the people pushed ahead don’t even have the skill set you were asked to have. We’re all familiar with nepotism in some way, whether it’s your boss hiring people they get along with rather than people that do things. 

We let people with no discernible power or pull tell us what to do and act like we’re impressed. Devoting skills that are valuable to others (for instance, did you know a 500 word blog can be worth 25-100$ and there’s a team doing this for free! dedication, right?) 

Either way. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to let the mask slip a little. Your ideas go unnoticed, so you slowly do less and less. More and more I’ve heard that hard work doesn’t pay. Business professionals getting passed over for the guy in the next cubicle who does half the work but is friends with a manager or something and so people learn not to come in early, not to stay late and do the bare minimum. 

This is the world we live in and day in and day out we do nothing to change it.  There’s so much potential, but no one wants to take it from us, no matter how hard we try. I mean, sure, we make progress, we learn new things and we do well, but it’s never enough. And that’s fine. As long as we’re moving forward, that’s all we need. We’re working toward something greater, and that’s okay. It’s fine.

But we just need to figure out where this ‘greater’ is, because it seems that we’re stuck in a tunnel. The only thing that’s going to change is how many times we have to repeat ourselves before someone listens. We’ll finally be able to breathe and laugh and smile instead of holding our breath until we choke.

Maybe if you can’t speak your mind, just close your eyes and live vicariously through your imagination, instead of being just another rat stuck in a tunnel in the dark.