On Friday, I was done with the excel worksheets, done with people demanding things from me within 20 minute time frames, done with long hold times. It was a real TGIF kind of Friday.
It's in these kinds of moments where it's easy to doubt the value of my work -- easy to say that none of it matters because you're so quick to be hung up on, easy to say it doesn't matter because you'll always have the chance of being snapped at, so why even bother trying to be nice? It's easy to say it doesn't matter because you finish one stack of paperwork only to watch more of it flood in within minutes, and realize that the same process is about to start all over again.
So, as I'm sitting at work on this particular Friday, playing Katy Perry's Prism album in the background to give me some peace of mind as I type insurance ID numbers and calculate Blue Cross and Blue Shield contract rates, I'm simultaneously thinking about a book I'm reading and a movie I'm about to go see.
I'm obsessed with the term "bravery" ..it's my mantra for the year and I think about it often. I'm in the midst of reading the "Divergent" series by Veronica Roth, which tells the story of a girl named Tris who lives in a futuristic society where you have to choose which faction you belong to based on the results of an aptitude test. Each faction stands for a value, like bravery, honesty, selflessness. This girl is brave and awesome -- she fights, she messes up, she forgives herself, she keeps moving forward. She jumps across trains and survives fights and stands against corrupt leaders. I want to be like her.
The movie I'm waiting to see is about Cesar Chavez. America Ferrera plays Chavez's wife in the film and she has a line (from the preview) that still rings in my ears: "I'm standing up because somebody has to!". She's fighting for rights for her friends who work picking crops but can't feed their families, she's standing up against systems of oppression and she's fighting for what she believes in.
This week, this past Friday, I wanted to be Tris, I wanted to be America Ferrera. I wanted to throw out the insurance contract notes and the excel spreadsheets and be in the dauntless faction that stands for bravery. I wanted to fight for food-worker rights and protest corrupt systems.
The thing is: the books, the movies -- they have the music in the background, the dramatic statements, the emotion and the heroic moments of bravery that are perfectly captured with that kiss on the mountaintop or statement crafted by the most beautiful weaving of words.
My life, my work, my job, my day to day...it doesn't have the dramatic background music and I don't look brave in my job as I type emails or answer phone calls or make my lunch or go to the park or hang out with new friends. There's no music to that and it looks pretty ordinary -- sometimes, like this particular Friday at work, it looks kind of low and dull.
But I think the point of the books and the movies is to bring the drama to the ordinary. The ordinary is us: but the what we're doing, who we are being, who we are becoming -- is anything but ordinary. It is dramatic, it is exciting, it is exhilirating, in its own way. Maybe I'm not that different from Tris, or America Ferrera, or anyone else even as I sit at my desk sometimes feeling like a little speck in a very large universe.
I want to keep finding the brave, keep finding the meaning, in my work and in my day to day: even when I do get hung up on, even when I get snapped at, even when I wait on hold for endless minutes. I have to believe that my work and how I do it matters, I have to believe that the relationships I am forming are of greater significance, and are beautiful and brave, with or without loud music and big screens.
Here we go, Monday.
