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Ripples on pond
The meetings at Karen’s workplace often vibrated with tension and fervor. Voices rose, tempers flared and exasperation oozed, that is except from her. Unperturbed, she observed the frenzy with a mindset I call “detached concern.” As the term implies, that means one cares but not too much. It also means avoiding becoming sucked into interpersonal melodramas and the emotional hijacking they usually create.
Occasionally, Karen would offer an idea or observation but did so dispassionately. Then, if someone baited her by criticizing her input, she let it go, choosing not to engage. Even though she continued to perform well in her job, her colleagues viewed her lack of emotional investment as an indicator of something amiss. After all, everyone else was popping emotional rivets, and Karen’s failure to do so left them unnerved.
This transformation occurred in her personal life as well. Returning home from work, she often sat on her porch, sometimes for hours, reading, listening to music or watching dusk turn to night. Invitations to office parties, happy hours and other people-laden events rarely captured her interest. Predictably, Karen’s behavior began worrying not only her colleagues but also her family. This once ambitious career woman had evolved into a Sphinx-like observer of the madding crowd, rather than an all-in player.
“What’s wrong?” many of them asked, but she simply replied, “All is well.”
Ominously Tranquil?
But they didn’t buy it. In her work and social circles, being a laid-back soul was an oddity, so for a young and capable person to be so tranquil appeared disconcerting, if not ominous. In hopes of assuaging her family’s concerns, she agreed to a mental check-up from yours truly. What’s more, she asked that I openly share my conclusions with her family, claiming she had nothing to hide. Based on my assessment, Karen checked out just fine.
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“I don’t care much about the career rat race and all the social networking anymore. There are far more important things in life,” she shared.
Many view such utterances as harbingers of depression or a dangerous deviation from the established path toward the so-called American Dream. However, for Karen, her Zen-like detachment from the urgency of “having it all” proved liberating, not debilitating. How did she flip from up-and-comer to go-with-the-flow?
“I was at the office one day and everyone was so agitated and rude, and that’s when it just hit me,” she explained. “The whole thing seemed over the top and senseless.”
Life Perspective
What struck Karen most was the lack of life perspective and kindness in her colleagues.
“They were treating everything minor as major, like it was the end of the world, and then ignoring the important things, like each other and something bigger than ourselves.”
After that, she began emotionally detaching from the obsessions of modern life, instead following a simpler and more meaningful path. She cancelled her TV service, used her smartphone sparingly, exited social media, picked up her guitar again, spent quality time with close friends and began looking for a new vocational path.
Karen’s family and colleagues remained alarmed, certain she was losing it. In fact, she had simply deviated from what they considered normal in our culture, that being frenetic activity, obsessive connectedness, hurry sickness, intense competition, materialism and tunnel vision.
When someone unplugs from the competitive feeding frenzy and feverish pace of modern, techno-saturated life, particularly in an abrupt fashion, we often assume the worst. These dropouts, so to speak, can unnerve those who remain deeply invested in the cultural mainstream. Outliers like Karen offer an alternative path, one requiring its own brand of courage.
“How do you know she’s really alright?” Karen’s sister asked me.
My reply? “I looked at most of the rest of us, then at her, and realized who was the most sane.”
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