Mirror Mirror On The Wall
This morning I woke up filled with thoughts of work that were all tumbled and tossing. I got the dogs and headed out to the park for our walk and it had been raining, the skies were grey, and I was wearing a tee shirt – part of the unnaturalness of this winter in 2012 New Orleans. I looked up, pensive, and saw a break in the clouds and it formed an image that was strikingly the emblem of Wonder Woman.
I smiled.
In the park, I ran into a friend and neighbor, who I have been thinking about, and who I haven’t seen since last year. I was excited to see him and when he asked how the new business was going, I began chatting a million miles a minute. We had both been in the same funk, and I felt like I was on the other side and I was trying to describe it to him.
I was relaying a story about another friend and neighbor who had asked me something similar and how I had been trying to explain to her what I do and she said I need more corporate lingo in that elevator pitch and I told him I had stumbled across a woman who is doing exactly what my company is doing but she had the corporate lingo and it turned me off. He said that corporations like to have their world mirrored back at them, lingo and all. It makes them comfortable and gives validity to their universe. And I said that is why it gave me pause as to whether those types of large corporations would be the best clients. I had left that world of “bubble up” “circle back” and “transparent” behind.
But this isn’t the story. The story goes like this, I ran into a friend who I was happy to see, and after about ten minutes, my friend turned to me and said not in these exact words but close, “It’s funny I needed this time to walk alone and gather my thoughts and now here you are intruding into that because you’ve been talking a million miles a minute.”
He had just been telling me what I should have told my other friend who was coaxing me to make my delivery more corporate, and so since honesty was in abundance I told him that I was sorry, and that much in the way he had wanted a different experience with me than the one I was giving him, I too had expected a different experience.
I left him with a bumpersticker message – It will be okay. And he left me with one – people mirror what is inside of them.