I’d love to introduce you to a friend of mine! Or maybe, she’d be more aptly called a persona. You see she lives in my head! Weird, right? But don’t worry, if you look closely enough, you can still see her…or at least you’ll see the affect she makes.
Organisation likes to categorise and file. She likes to structure and order. Surely, you can relate to the bliss of a colour coded wardrobe, a perfectly white wall and the safety of a clinically disinfected bathroom. These are Organisation’s favourite things! Organisation stands on my inner pedestal, ordering the chaos around, looking gracious, clean and perfect, as she pretends that it’s listening to her.
Employers and parents – they’ve always loved organisation. Who wouldn’t right? She’s reliable, she makes things look good and I’m sure you’d be amazed at how many ticks she can put on a to do list in a day! I mean, it’s like.....a lot! Organisation is my flawlessly dressed, money making, efficiency producing alter ego. And geez, you could be forgiven for admiring her once in a while right…..I sure do!
But you see, while she power walks with her designer heels clicking along the polished tiles of the hallways in my head, classifying and categorising everyone and everything, she’s working hard to hide something from you. You see, she has this ongoing conflict, with someone. I guess she’d probably call him a colleague or peer. Look, I mean, Organisation would really rather he wasn’t there. She struggles to see his value in my internal management system and really, just in life in general. But…..he’s pretty hard to get rid of. Maybe you’ve heard of him before? His name........is Reality.
You see, Reality doesn’t really take orders from Organisation. He’s just not as compliant as emotions and calendars are and when she dictates to him what he should, or shouldn’t be doing, he just makes this sly, annoyingly, alluring smile and continues on his way as if he didn’t even hear what she’d said. Rude, right!
Sometimes, he even likes to just mess things up a bit, just to spite her, because, let’s be honest, Reality quite enjoys seeing Organisation lose her composure and get herself all caught up in a huff sometimes. He finds it funny! He’s a bit audacious like that.
Now, look, in my head – I’ve got to learn to accommodate both of them. Whilst Organisation is here because she got invited, Reality just showed up one day and despite my best efforts, he’s been really reluctant to leave.
Here's an example of a fight they had last week. Organisation said, “Children - don’t touch anything inside – not the walls, not the cupboards and I mean, if you can, preferably not even the floor, because your hands and feet are covered in all that untamed ‘outdoorsyness’ and it makes marks that are not symmetrical or ordered and it’s really burdening our efficiency levels in this house.”
I was grateful that she said it nicely at first…but Reality, he tried to reason with her. He said things like, “Organisation, you really need to understand that children need to play and explore. They need to feel the earth beneath their feet and they need to be coated in dirt sometimes to feel connected to the life forces of mother nature.”
It was kinda nice, that he tried to word it so politely but I’m sorry to say that the conversation really went a bit downhill from there. While Reality had a great point, Organisation…well she’s not so good at compromising and after about half an hour, the argument ended with her screeching and then frantically scrubbing the walls. She was really angry about this, because this outside of schedule cleaning had delayed her timetabled meal prep. It took a few days for her to settle after that one.
I mean, how about last month, when Organisation tried to have a conversation with my husband. She said to him, “Look it’s really important that you stick to my list of priorities, timetables, schedules and standards, at all times! Your non-compliance delays my other plans, or means I have to redo things so they are exactly the way I wanted them. This then affects my efficiency levels and timetabling. So, if you could just do exactly what I want, exactly when I want it, that’d be great.” She even went so far as to say that she was performance managing him and that she was going to make a graph that tracked his compliance over the next month to help inform the next phase of disciplinary action.
Reality really felt he had to mitigate this one. He kind of considers himself a bit of a mediator at times. He pulled Organisation aside when she was inspected whether the husband had cleaned the pee off the side of the toilet in a way that made the toilet bowl shine that pristine white. He put his hands on her shoulders, looked directly into her eyes and said this, ‘Organisation, relationships are not really about efficiency. It’s important to acknowledge that husbands may do things differently, maybe not as effective as you, but still valid and valuable in their own way. It’s actually more important that husbands feel loved and supported, than it is to performance manage their compliance with your lists. Maybe, you might make him feel overly criticised by performance managing him, which in turn might erode at his love and self-confidence.”
I really wish Organisation had more empathy at times like this, but she really struggled with this one. You see, Organisation really was convinced that her way was the best way and she really argued this point strongly. However, she did have to accept that an upset husband, could potentially lead to other efficiency complications later down the track. I mean, does she still micro-manage my husband from time to time? Absolutely! Is she getting better? In baby steps.
Now, Organisation, also really loves categories. She likes to classify everything into clear sections. Sometimes, she likes to do this with my identity and the identity of others. She likes to tell me, that I have to play a scripted role, that’s controlled by a stereotype. You see, Organisation loves stereotypes. It’s because they’re specific and ordered and she can file them in neat categories. It’s way more efficient than getting to know someone for who they truly are.
Organisation started really early with categorising via stereotypes. About when she learnt she could classify colours, she was also exposed to fairy tales and they became a great source of inspiration for clear, ordered stereotypical roles you could cast people into, including myself. She liked to tell me that I needed to be the perfect princess, with no flaws, who was gentle and sweet and attractive. Or, if I failed to fit that stereotype then I have two other options. One is the ugly stepsister. Or the other is, the evil queen. She likes the evil queen, because this stereotype is often very clinical and calculating and the predictability in this makes Organisation feel in control.
You see, Organisation likes to do this to other people too. To be efficient, she likes to make judgements quickly about what stereotypes people fit into so that interactions with them can have clear and ordered expectations and boundaries. Organisation really doesn’t like it when people challenge stereotypes, because it’s difficult to classify them and this can lead to a lack of productivity or even worse, uncertainty!
You see, Reality pushes back pretty firmly on this one. Yesterday, he even made Organisation cry over it. He said, ‘Organisation, you have to understand that your categories don’t always work. Sometimes people can look like one thing but be another. Sometimes people can be elements of many different things. Sometimes, they are striving to be a certain type of person and they fail once in a while, and that’s ok. Life in unpredictable and often, so are people, and you have to learn to love and accept them as that.”
Organisation got really overwhelmed by this. She didn’t like being the mean girl but it’s just so hard and scary knowing that dealing with people requires things like compassion and flexibility, as these were skills that Organisation just wasn’t very good at!
So she hid behind a wall to cry. She hid because crying wasn’t very efficient and if anyone saw, it would break her stereotype of being productive, which would not be organised.
What happened next, was kind of beautiful. Reality went over and hugged her. He pulled her in close to him and held her a while, as she sobbed. Then, he gently said, “You know I’m a pretty chaotic thing and I’m not very good at bringing safety and efficiency into things. I am kind of impressed at how many things you can tick off a to do list in a day and I can see that sometimes, you really help people reach their goals and feel safe.”
Organisation, lifted her pristine, plain head and looked up into his scruffy, interesting face and putting her pride down for a moment, said, “Reality I’m not very good at enjoying life and allowing people to be who they are. I can be cruel sometimes and realise that maybe efficiency isn’t everything. It’s just efficiency is what I’m good at.”
At that moment, Reality reached out and caught her hand. As he held it, he said, “I know we fight a lot and really upset each other sometimes but maybe we could work as a team. You teach me how to be less chaotic and I can teach you how to let your hair down every now and then.” Organisation gave him an enthusiastic nod and at least for today, there hasn’t been any arguments.
I hope they can make this teamwork last..........
The Reformist Princess
Comments
Post a Comment