The Comic Book of a Failing State

Sounds fading into an echo and then to a muffle, figures starting to move in slow motion, a glaze with an imbecile-no-attempt to understand, and then it all happened.

Today I will try to have you live with me a first of its kind experience that I lived in response to our office life...

Without much choice in a decision I had to work my way through its everyday details and make "IT" happen. I was informed fair and square and with no much choice for me in the matter, that we were holding an event and that my institute will be organizing it. Not just that, my institute will be sponsoring it as well.

Being right in the final countdown in the application phase for our fellowship, I panicked. My brain lighted up with the red lights of alarm but without thinking I shut the sirens up and dimmed the lights just to get things over with. A decision i unconsciously made in the spur of the moment that led to everything that came after. Without much thought I turned to the execution mode. My brain shut down all the intuitive perceptions that would wake me up in the middle of the night asking over and over again "What on earth will I gain by this?"

Anything that is done for the wrong reason renders nothing but wrong results.

I had just promised myself never to do this to myself again but there is was happening as if all my remaining brain cells died at war. With every step of the preparation I felt nothing but extreme bullying and under appreciation and there it was as always taking a U-turn to hit me in the face; what started off as an event that I did not even ask for, was being treated as my own objective and found myself defending myself every minute of the day.

It all started going down hill for me when I found out that no one even cared to get it done properly and that unfortunately I had yet again put the name and reputation of my institute on the shoulders of those who did not even care. I wonder how indifferent everyone was really? Was it true indifference about the event or was this just indifference about me and all my effort and everything I ever cared about. For a moment, I had no idea what brought me here and why I was the only person on earth fighting this war. What is more, why was there a war in the first place.

This morning after it is over and with rising questions about how it came to happen that we even made it through and how the wounded and deceased and mutilated were all summed up in a ruined "ME", tears will not stop flowing and emotions will not stop overpowering me. Today is reflection day, reflecting and making conscious decisions that I hope this time will help me learn.

In a moment of revelation I sat there 12 hours before the event, looking at senseless mutilation of everything I had invested in. Self centered decisions being taken one by one with no attempt at even measuring the significance of the repercussions. For a moment, i looked around in a quest to find an honorable motive in tearing down the work of two long years but came back empty handed. All I found was the tunnel vision of decision making and a lack of understanding of dynamics or power grids. All of a sudden it looked as if all the stakeholders migrated to the "low interest high impact" box in the stakeholder analysis map and that i stood outside the box watching the migration happen in hypotonia and a lack of will to move a muscle.

Watching my whole life fall apart with no role for me in the process at all, I was waiting for the physical response, brain hemorrhage, heart attack, what ever usually happens in these situations. This is not an exaggeration because the truth is, this is the investment of my whole life. The fact also is that, having been involved in this planning, I could not get it done until created some gain for my program, gains that would now be shattered and come back with repercussions that probably would remain without remedy for a very long time.

Waiting for the physical response and actively looking for it, took my brain off what was happening and all of a sudden i found myself somewhere else. The portrait of people in a heated discussion and the sorrow that I saw in the eyes of one of the university officials at the incident started looking in my eyes like an animated cartoon picture. I saw colors and a silent scene in a hand scribbled comic book with everything moving slowly and gestures looked interesting. I found my brain wondering about the physical posture of the kindest person in the room and how her crossed legs looked so beautiful in comic colors. I saw the hands of our vice dean crossed on his lap through an x-ray vision through the desk he sat behind and wondered why on earth did they leave this desk without coloring it. I decided to color it brown and started filling between the lines. And then a thought started over powering my brain, a thought that brought the vision of my sick friend in hospital straight to my head. He was supposed to be coming over to the university hospital today for a radiotherapy session in an ambulance from his inpatient stay facility. Suddenly all i could think about was him... i wonder if he got into the ambulance yet? was he on his way now? When was that session supposed to be? 11 was it? maybe 12?

In extreme confusion I put my cell phone in my pocket stood up and left the heated room with no word uttered, after all it was a silent comic page. "Next thing I remember" in the voice of the eagles, I was in the radiotherapy room feeling so much peace and looking down on my friend thankful that he was not in pain. I stood there quiet from the inside and the outside and feeling no threat at all. My brain was blank apart from the title of an article post I read years back that spoke about a friends revelation on her sick bed "When you shed half your weight" that nothing in life seems as important when you are on your sick bed.

For the first time in my life I did not speak my heart or fight back... I surrendered to the place I felt the most comfortable in. I stayed there for as long as i could and came out of the room to find that the situation had been resolved with much effort from the school administration leaving the situation with an event that was still to happen next day and a broken soul that had to put on the smile and comfort everyone that "Everything was going to be OK".

Being a game changer all my life meant that noone needed to feel threatened but me, I heard it over the phone with the voice of a friend asking to see the smile on my face the next day. The smile was drawn with happiness and drawing on energy from my friend the next morning who lay in the hospital smiling at fate and its twists and turns..`who was I to frown?

Life goes on and the face we put on is something that people around us deserve from us, but a broken soul is something that no mask can cover and no phone call can heal.

A broken soul in a workplace comes with your shattered trust.

No system can ever hope to grow with its game changers broken.

A failing system will break its people and step on their passions and have them fight wars that they did not start.

A broken system takes pride in the suffering of its people.

A broken system puts its own pride in contest with its people's pride.

Only a sinking ship throws valuables off deck

When the captain of the ship shuts his ears and stops listening then this is a sinking sail

When it takes effort of the closest people to speak sensibly then this a non productive medium

Non productive environments at work create nothing but rotten products that look and feel rancid and that simply cannot compete