Destruction at Will

I watched with ambivalence as she walked out the meeting with a look I have never seen her wear before. There was no need for a soothsayer to interpret how she felt: - betrayed and disappointed. My state of ambivalence stemmed from the fact that the two colleagues who went in for this vacant supervisory role had become very good friends even beyond working hours. Hence, head or tail, I could not afford seen to be expressing any sentiment. For years she felt she had committed her life to this business and thought at least that should count for something. Going up against someone who came to meet her in the company, someone she trained and oriented to settle into his role was actually a foregone conclusion. Irrespective of the fact that her supposed protégé was more qualified than she was, she hinged her high expectations of clinching this role on her numerous years of experience and service to the company. However, considering the direction management wanted to take the company vis-à-vis that department coupled with the demands of the supervisory role, it was obvious the qualification of my other colleague will definitely come in handy.

When it became official that the position will be filled by our relatively new colleague, it was predictable her entire disposition, demeanor and attitude towards work will change. Just as expected, other staff who felt cheated out of one privilege or the other came in to console and welcome their new member into their clique. Filled with rage, you could clearly see the Operation-Sabotage-My-New-Boss was activated. The idea was to prove to management they made a wrong choice in her colleague. However, not only did this quest fail, but the closeness with which she came to losing her job was enough to set her on the right course.

Life usually does not give us what we bargain for even when we feel it’s our due. In just a matter of seconds, you sometimes watch helplessly as opportunities within your grip just slip through your fingers. We put in so much effort into a project only to witness an end product which is incomplete aberration to our inputs. Significant investments in the form of time, energy and resources are sunk into relationships only for the very people these sacrifices are being made for to throw them back in our faces. Genuine love is demonstrated towards our objects of love and they just turn their noses up at us. All these and many more other scenarios unmentioned have the inclination to make us justifiably bitter towards the people we think should have known better. Our expectations of the processes engineered by these people are so high that it takes just a single act or word to cross the thin line between affection and resentment. Due to the feeling of rage that naturally comes with the unjust treatments, our judgments are clouded so much so that we fail to even take retrospective stock of our own actions. We have all deliberately fueled that loaded gun called bitterness just to pull the trigger at our own selves. In essence, many of us have created a viable environment for bitterness to thrive in our lives as if it was a virtue. What we fail to see however is that, bitterness is just like cancer which metastasizes and devours the host but does absolutely nothing to the object of resent.

Like weeds that makes a blossoming plant wither from its roots, to deal with a problem is to deal with the root cause. Dealing with just the symptoms is like window dressing the issue when indeed the causative agent is untouched. Bitterness is no different. The cause of bitterness thus have to be dealt with to give way to progress. The causes are just three: - disappointments, disappointments and disappointments. Disappointment emanates from placing high expectations on people and processes. “Disappointments lead to hurt, hurt leads to bitterness and bitterness leads to anger. Travel too far down that road and the way is lost.” Terry Brooks once said.

Many people believe the way to avert disappointment is to lower your expectations of people. It is always said, “No expectation, no disappointment”. I however beg to differ. I believe this notion is annex to mediocrity. The honest fact is no matter how low you lower the bar, people will still fall below. So the question then is why lower it in the first place. Dealing with bitterness therefore has no correlation with having high expectations. Conversely, the antidote is the reaction to the inability of people to meet up to our standards and expectations.

Years ago, together with other national service personnel recruited to work with defunct UT Bank (now GCB Bank), we were required to read and report as part of our training on the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. It was from this book that I learnt the principles of Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern. In this master piece, Stephen talked about how proactive people focus their energy on things they can do something about: health, finance, problems at work, etc., i.e. their Circle of Influence. Reactive people on the other hand focus on their Circle of Concern – things they have little or no control over. Chief amongst that is how people treat you. You have absolutely no control over that. However you have control how you react to the treatment, be it fair or otherwise. Disappointment is inevitable, but to become hurt and bitter, that is a choice I make. Instead of being crushed by someone’s injustice, I will rather choose to let it spur me on to aim higher to prove to myself and everyone around me that I am better than everyone thinks.

In dealing with bitterness, it is important to understand everyone is different. People will never think like we do. In our wildest dream, we sometimes imagine how beautiful the world will be if everyone around us see things from our perspective. The honest truth is, this will never happen, neither in this world nor the next. There is beauty in diversity. If all of us were to think alike, progress and growth will be stalled. You therefore have to train yourself not to be surprised when people treat you differently from your standard of excellent human treatment. Once you come to the realization that we are all different, you can deliberately control how you react to people based on their voluntary or involuntary actions.

In summary, bitterness inhibits growth in our lives. It is actually a huge obstruction to bringing out the best in all we do. This heavy heart act is that one thief that will always steal your joy and all the blessings yet to be bestowed on you. It is the most powerful prison you can ever put yourself in and ironically expect the other person to suffer for it. Life is not always fair. On a second thought, it mostly never is, but choose not to fall for the temptation to be bitter. Just as Woodrow Kroll said: “Always remember that a bitter spirit will keep you from being a better person”.

Ing. Ernest Bonnah
[email protected]
+86 1865 140 1551