When you
attend a function do you notice the people who float by you without
acknowledging you even though they are quite familiar with you? Or the people who stop and ask how you are
and then move on without hearing your answer?
Then there are the ones who give you eye contact and nod without hearing
a word spoken.
Recently I was at the World Oil & Gas
Show and we wore name tags with our current position labelled on us like so
much cattle. As a project administrator
I noted very quickly what my net value was in this world and that was similar
to the one I inhabit at work. Next to
nil. Until they want something. Then suddenly I am “Susanne Darling”. However Susanne Darling does not equate to
Susanne Stupid.
Fortunately for me, and I hope others
take a page out of my notebook, I do not value myself according to my job. I value myself on my own personal worth scale
and no one knows me like I know myself.
First
of all, I know what my IQ is. Tick.
Second,
I know what my experiences are. Tick
Third,
I don’t care what others think of me.
Tick.
Bundled
into my experiences are things like education, travel, friendships, career
moves, extracurricular activities such as volunteer work, running political
campaigns, writing, researching, supporting people, meeting celebrities, co-founding
businesses and surviving the trials and tribulations of being a single woman in
a complex world that does not acknowledge single women. With this armour it is easy enough to sit at
a table with 7 men who wait impatiently for me to leave so they can talk “guy
talk”. I can also observe with perfect
phlegm the people who breeze past me acknowledging my co-worker on one side of
me yet ignoring me as the Invisible One.
And why I have this patience is because I recall the story of The Emperor’s
Clothes.
No comments:
Post a Comment