Isn't the Acting Exhausting?

I read a book. The Seven Habits. Read it in one sitting. Found out I was a terrible listener — not because I lacked the ability, but because I was so full of my own projects, my own urgency, my own vision that there was no room for anyone else's reality.

The next morning I walked into work resolved to try something radical. I was going to ask people how they were before dumping a new project on their desk.

First cubicle. I stopped myself from launching into the usual routine. “How are you doing?”

They looked up. They weren't doing well. And I could see it now — because I wasn't blocked by my own noise. They looked like hell. They'd dragged themselves to work because the project I'd given them yesterday was important to a customer.

The project I'd given them yesterday.

I couldn't remember it. I had already moved five steps past it in my head. And there I was, stupidly, with another project in my arms, realizing that twenty-four hours earlier I would have just walked in, dropped it on their desk, said “I need this by noon,” and walked away without ever seeing that this person was sick.

I told them to go home.

They stared at me. Stunned that I'd asked how they were and actually listened.

I picked up their project. Headed to the next cubicle. Caught myself again.

“How are you today?”

Their son was in the hospital. Twelve years old. They were at work because I'd given them an emergency project. Absolutely had to be done.

I was crashing inside. Two cubicles. Two people paying the price for my ambition. Doing so because they were honorable and they cared — and I hadn't noticed, because my head was full of me.

I sent them home. Stood there with an armload of work that in my imagination had been getting done — only I'd been inhumane about it, and they'd been absorbing the cost.