”Do you know those scenes from movies where soldiers walk on a battlefield, very carefully, knowing that they could hit a grenade at any time and blow up? I kept thinking when I was little – why would a man do that? But probably someone has to do it and behold, some are braver, they take risks. Or they have nowhere to go, hoping they will win.
It seems to me that there are some groups like those in various organizations. Everywhere are these grenades, these people talking to each other, gossiping about others, outlining all sorts of scenarios, and turning to the boss to complain later, these scenarios being nothing more than creations of their minds. These people behave in a certain way in front, they show a false smile, and when you turn your back they are ready to make you dead and gone. I remember a scene from Ally McBeal, in which she, angry at a colleague, imagines taking out flames from her eyes and melting the one in front until they become small, small, like the lead soldiers that children used to play with.
Grenade-type people hidden in the ground are usually supported by someone. They have as a friend a boss of the boss’s boss or a relative who has a relationship with that boss of the boss. Many know these connections, preferring to avoid confronting the grenade person, to not touch them, to not disturb. Thus, on the surface, everything is fine in the best of all possible worlds, to quote Voltaire’s Candide. But on the surface. Because if someone new to the group dares to come up with a different approach, they are immediately targeted, accused of the worst intentions, put on the pole of infamy, and ‘cast above’. Not because they did something, but because the others are weaving defamatory scenarios, looking in their yard and forgetting that the imaginary straw in the new man’s eye is nothing but the beam in front of them.
It’s not new, it’s a Mioritic approach, of course.
It’s like that joke with Ion who bought a goat. His neighbor is upset and no one enters his will, he kept talking bad about Ion. God comes and says to him:
‘But what is wrong with you, why are you so upset?
Well, Ion has a goat!
Look, I’ll give you a goat, so you can have it too, just don’t be like that!
But I don’t want a goat, says the neighbor.
What do you want? says God in amazement.
I want Ion’s goat to die. ‘
So it is with our people. It’s not about what they do, what they could do differently, it’s about how the other person can blow up.
I admire those who know how to dance among grenades. I think it’s not easy to always guard your back, to be careful what you say, to whom, to be alert in any conversation.
On the other hand, I also admire those who, even if they are in the same company with someone close, behave equidistantly, professionally, so it is easy for everyone to show up. Then we no longer dance among the grenades but on a normal, clean, transparent ring.”
via: spotmedia.ro
