On Friday, I had my last company Christmas party while I was
extended a couple more months, most of my remaining coworkers were laid off,
November 30th being their last day.
Thus, it was a bitter sweet celebration where we gathered one last time
as a team before parting ways. This being the third time that I get laid off, I
have learned that losing a job brings the worst in us, but also the best. On Friday, the CEO responsible for relocating
the company to Texas was in attendance, in addition to Santa Claus, people who
completed their last day of work and free booze- I was certain it was a recipe
for disaster or at least lots of drama. Having been in the trenches these past months I have seen the
despair and anger of losing a job so near the holidays can cause.
One of my coworkers who always had a sunny disposition
became angry and bitter. After years of
seeing him always in a bubbly way, I learned once again that one can’t trust appearances. Often, I’ve heard about how people that are always
happy are usually covering deep hurt, but it’s easy to classify a smile as
someone with their ducks in a row. It
was during an after office gathering that I spoke with Joy and he told me
how upset he was by the layoff because it made him feel like a failure. It made him feel like all the professional decisions
he’s made up to this point have been wrong.
I still remember how surprised he was when I told him, “It is just a
job.” Then the following day I emailed him one of my favorite Maya Angelou
essays in which her mother tells Maya that losing a job is not the end of the
world. I’ve often felt like a professional failure – when I had to
stop teaching, when I got diagnosed as bipolar and couldn’t work for a year,
every time I have gotten laid off, when I compare myself to others, when I see
my paycheck and wish there were more zeros, when I remember there’s no fancy
titles after my name… It’s hard to live
in this country and not measure success the way we are taught to do so - by the
amount of money, title or power acquired…
On my lowest self-pity days I can throw a mad party listing all the
wrongs, all the things lacking, all the mistakes made and all the dying
dreams. However, God is teaching me to
rise above my circumstances by controlling my thoughts or rather by replacing desolate
thinking with TRUTH. In the end what
titles or jobs I held won’t matter because God doesn’t measure a life well
lived the way the world does. He gives
us all the same twenty-four hours and the talents necessary to fulfill our
mission on earth. Sometimes our mission
is to pass to others bits of what we have recently learned, like when we get
laid off to say with confidence, “it’s just a job, I had a job before and I
will have another after.”
Am happy to report that even though the recipe for drama was
definitely in place, everyone used the moment as a time to enjoy each other one
last time. I went home thinking about
how I wouldn’t see most people coming today, but how much I learned from them - to smile and see the goodness even in uncertain times. Most importantly to
celebrate what was and not pity what could have been.
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