2006-05-06 - 11:23 p.m.
Last night was the final play of the season in my favorite theatrical venue, Reprise, which, although an independent organization, shows it plays at the comfortable Freud theater on the UCLA campus. (There�s enough legroom between the rows of seats that you don�t even have to get up when people need to pass, although I do get up anyway.) It�s even fun to arrive there somewhat early, because the theater sits on a small slope up above the sculpture garden, a place on that campus that I enjoy.
The play was Zorba, and I admit that beforehand I knew very little about the story, having never seen the famous Anthony Quinn movie, Zorba, the Greek, or read the original book. The late spiritual leader, Osho, whom I admire, had frequently written positively of the character of Zorba, whom he described as �Zorba the Buddha� and whom Osho considered to be a good example of humanity at its best, individually living life to its fullest without restraint. I had thought that this �Buddha� appellation was unique with Osho, but the director of the play, writing about it in the program, applied the example of Buddha to this character, too, explaining that the other main character in the story, the traveling American who had been befriended by Zorba, was intellectually studying Buddha and Buddha�s concept of unattachment and acceptance of the inevitable change that was a part of life, but until his involvement with Zorba, had not understood those concepts in his heart.
The production, of course, was magnificent, as all of the Reprise productions are, and I continued in my pattern of sitting there with my mouth practically open, amazed at the wealth of talent that ends up on that stage�virtually all of them unknowns to me in this city of celebrities, but no less highly experienced for that. When I think of that level of talent that shows itself on stage, and also reflect upon my first-hand knowledge of a similar wealth of talent that shows behind the scenes, and then which finds itself achieving this city�s brass ring of being hired by Hollywood or successful independent film companies, I have to laugh at the sociopaths I find on places like the Internet Movie Database conversation boards who so routinely �dis� every movie that comes along as �stupid�, something that �sucks�, or something that they, with all their �wisdom� (and �experience�!) could make so much better! These people don�t know enough history to even know what they don�t know.
For example, with the recent semi-documentary, The Notorious Betty Page, how many of them despised the casting of the lead character. I doubt if any of them even had any idea who Betty Page was, they certainly had never seen in a store any of Betty Page�s famous pin-ups or bondage material. As for me, I thought the casting director had been a genius in finding an actress who was so much �Betty Page� that I couldn�t tell which photos were of the original and which ones were made for this film. But IMDb youths were adamant that the filmmakers should have cast somebody like Angelina Jolie! I couldn�t imagine why they thought this, it was just so incredibly wrong, but it wasn�t until a Weight Watchers meeting in which they discussed acceptable body types throughout history that I understood it. In the 40s and 50s when Betty Page was working, the accepted female body was much rounder and plumper. The Weight Watchers lecturer asked people to think of people like Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield in contrast to the practically anorexic women that are touted these days. (The point of this was not to elevate the Marilyn Monroe body over the current �heroin chic� one, but to simply point out that everybody has a �perfect� healthy body for them that exists outside the dictates of what happens to be fashionable at the moment.) These IMDb youth who thought that the actress in �Betty Page� was �wrong� were thinking only within the very strict limitations of current time. They had no idea that the actress who played Betty Page had exactly the correct body type for a 50s pin-up model; they inserted only their idea of what �sexy� was supposed to be, exemplified by Angelina Jolie, and therefore concluded that the �Betty Page� filmmakers were �stupid� or �had no idea how to cast a movie.�
There�s an unfortunate principle afoot in certain industries (although, I hope, not all of them) to attempt to weed out experienced, mature employees and replace them with new ones who have absolutely no experience at all. This isn�t being done to reduce much of the salary budget to entry level (although that motivation sometimes can enter into it), but they seem to actually believe that that principle will obtain for them better and more innovative employees, that will help to make them more competitive in very fast-moving industries. The theory is that those who are experienced are also entrenched and hidebound, and are incapable of coming up with new ideas.
My own experience has shown that the presence of innovative thinking is not dependent upon being young�that youth are just as capable of failing to think innovatively as the most crystallized oldster, and some oldsters continue to think innovatively for a long lifetime (Buckminster Fuller or Nikola Tesla, anyone?). While it is true that youth may have a fresh perspective on things, youth is also just as likely to have no perspective at all.
To seek to honor youth above experience is, I believe, nothing new, though, otherwise there wouldn�t have developed a long-held and entrenched fear among certain middle-aged and older managers who seek to impede the efforts of the newer, younger employees instead of mentoring them. My view is that businesses need both kinds of employees and they need to work together, not against each other, but working together will not work when the two groups fear or suspect each other. Such fear is the fault of an upper management that believes that competition among the employees is the ticket to success (instead of an individual healthy self-competition to always better oneself).
I�ve even heard from an older employee at the school where I work that there the policy is to be against the experienced employees and to over-respect fresh ones right out of school. I�m not sure that that perspective is really correct, although if somebody feels it, there may be something to it. I haven�t really felt it myself, but perhaps I am �saved� in that I have always been known to work well with employees of all ages and abilities. I have never in my life, whether I was young or old, participated in office politics or group battles or stonewalled the efforts of others I might have viewed as competitors. Instead, I have always helped as many people as I could, even when others told me I was stupid to do so.
I remember one time when I worked at the Stanford University Medical Center and had designed some pretty impressive systems for the administration of the Department of Surgery when PCs were first being put on administrators� desks. That was when the PC was a new development; before that, all computer work was done on mainframes in central computer centers. Apparently I had developed a little fame that had begun to spread, because one day, a woman I did not know, the administrator of another department in the medical center, came to me and said that what I had done with our computers impressed her and since they had the same computers but really didn�t know how to use them like I did, would I be willing to teach her how to do what I had done. Without batting an eye, I said, �Of course.� And she and I began to devote our lunch hours to this teaching of her by me. I wasn�t getting paid for this or anything like that; I was simply sharing my knowledge and my discoveries with another human being. The fact that it also benefited my employer was a plus, but that hadn�t really entered into my thinking�I did it simply because this person asked and I was happy to help.
But others in my department hit the ceiling when they heard about it. �You are so stupid,� they would spit. �You�re Stanford�s computer expert, and instead of hanging onto your advantage, you�re simply giving it away to somebody else. At least you aren�t telling her everything, are you? You must be holding on to some secrets so that you can maintain your superior advantage?� But no, I wasn�t holding onto anything, I wouldn�t have known how to do that even I thought that way. It was either give her all, or nothing, and I gave her all. Probably if I retained any advantage, it was whatever I had that allowed me to create what I did in the first place (because I can say that I made those computers do things beyond anything their designers had ever imagined). I suppose my coworkers all thought that once this woman knew all that I knew, she would then turn around and sting me with her stinger, eliminating me from the �competition.�
Competition, what competition?
Not that I haven�t been harmed by others playing these office games. Well, I have been harmed, but only temporarily. I would say that sometimes I have lost battles (not that I ever fought any), but never have I lost the war.
That woman that I helped at Stanford definitely found her career there zooming after that, which was appropriate�she deserved it (after all, on her own she had seen the potential of what I had been doing and was enterprising enough to seek me out and dedicated enough to devote personal time to learning it). But she didn�t hurt me. In fact, she was now in a position to offer help to me, and at a later, crucial time when I needed it, she was there for me. I am a firm believer in developing the power of everybody you know who is willing to receive that power; then you end up with a very powerful team and one that more often than not can be quite loyal.
But back to what is going on at work�there do seem to be some strange things afoot that I don�t fully know what to make of. When I describe it all to friends who don�t work there and who don�t know the culture, they say, �It looks like they are trying to get rid of you.� And they actually may be trying to get rid of me, although I know that they don�t have to try very hard, they can simply get rid of me with one word instead of going through the convoluted efforts of what could be interpreted as �constructive discharge.� But it�s all just a matter of point of view; need I be insulted by what they are doing, or need I not be?
For example, while I have long been wanting to get more involved in straightening out employee conflicts, they�ve instead turned these over to external consultants. And I have been emotionally hurt by this, as if by their hiring of consultants to do this work, they have characterized my abilities in that arena as inferior.
But they have begun to use consultants in other areas that I think of as �mine,� too, such as hammering out job duties and position descriptions (something I had done for a company back when I was in my early 20s), and a couple of weeks ago, they brought in two consultants from another state who worked for an entire week to prepare a program of employee evaluations, when I already had one on my computer�s hard drive that I could print off in less than five minutes. My former boss had me devise such a program, but then quit a few weeks later so it was never implemented. I could say that my new boss hadn�t a clue that I already had such a program (and a better one than the one devised by the consultants), but I was surprised that he hadn�t even asked me about it or at least told me that he was going to bring in these consultants for that purpose, because if he had, I would have then said, �Well, I already created one, why don�t you take a look at it and see if you would like it.�
But I would think if they were trying to get rid of me, they would be treating me badly in other ways, or else just ignoring me, but they aren�t. Instead, they have been consulting with me over some heavy policy issues (and even the brought-in consultants have been doing that), and have also slipped me some new, more significant responsibilities, such as determining the salary figures to pay new employees, something I had never touched before. It's like the job has really been upgraded, but I feel bad because of things I'm NOT asked to do!
I think what I am going through is a �disconnect� between an older, "stuck" image that I have of myself, and a new way in which others are seeing me. I can only explain this by way of an analogy of a new pair of pants that I had gotten.
I am now wearing clothes smaller than any I have ever worn at this school. I do have a closet-full of even smaller clothes that I haven�t worn for at least ten years, but those represent a sight I haven�t seen in the mirror for quite a long time. In a way, it seems that I have been tearing my way down through clothing sizes, perhaps faster than my ability to process it.
Despite having this closet-full of smaller clothes, I had to buy some more that were sized between them and what I had just come down from. I really don�t know what I wore before that bridged the gap between these two size areas; I only know that I had gotten to the point where my closet had no pants that would fit, they were all either too big or too small, so I had to buy some more.
One of the things that I did differently when I bought these new pants was get �flat front� pants instead of �pleated front� pants. While pants of any size could have either kind, pleated front are more in vogue among people who are overweight. I also have read that flat front pants make you look even thinner, although I had long assumed that was simply because overweight men bought pleated front pants and thin men bought flat front pants, so wearing flat front plants, by default, cued the viewer into �this is a thin man.� Well, I seem to have both principles going for me, because now people are starting to say to me, �Be careful you don�t get too thin, now,� or they warn me about how �Now the challenge is to keep it off,� as if I have now already lost every ounce that I need to, although I know that I am not even half-way yet. When I tell people that, they are severely shocked, saying that I couldn�t possibly lose another pound and they simply don�t believe it when I say that when I arrived in L.A. back in the late 90s I weighed sixty pounds less than I do now and was wearing pants with a waist size that was six inches smaller�which is about the correct ratio, as with the weight loss that I have just done, each inch in waist size corresponded with 10 pounds of weight lost.
Should I not have the body-size of a 20-year-old, or a male fashion model, when that is what I basically had when I was already a middle-aged man? People are so used to people�s bodies going to seed when they get older, but why should that be acceptable? Obviously it doesn�t happen to everybody, so why should it happen to anybody?
But even my own eyes don�t fully �get� the reality that I am achieving. Three weeks ago, I had gotten a new pair of flat-front khaki pants for wearing on casual Fridays at work, but each Friday I�d put them on, look in the mirror, and feel weird about how they looked. To me, they looked like I was trying to be a flamenco dancer or maybe a bullfighter, these pants were just so thin! So I�d be embarrassed and take them off and wear something else. I guess I was just too used to dressing like I was wearing a tent around my waist; my mind hasn�t quite adjusted to looking halfway-normal.
However, yesterday, Friday came around and I put those flat-front khaki pants on again and by now I was kind of getting used to them, so I decided to go for broke and appear out in public in them. For a shirt, I put on a sky blue and turquoise checked Abercrombie & Fitch sport shirt (�Fitch� does NOT sell clothes for fat people; in fact their sizes are all moved down one category, in that this shirt was, by their reckoning, labeled �XL,� whereas every other shirt I am wearing now is �L�). No one at work acted like there was anything weird about how I was dressed. No �Hey Matador, the bullring is down south a-ways,� or whatever I might have expected (though, in their defense, nobody at work talks that way!). And an even greater proof that this was �okay� was at the reception after Zorba that night. Since UCLA is less than fifteen minutes away from where I work, I saw no reason to waste an hour and half going home to change clothes and then driving back to UCLA, so between work and time for the play, I went to see the movie Hoot nearby and thus had on the same clothes when I went to see the play.
The ticket series I buy at Reprise is one that has an after-play reception in the courtyard. I like it, because that�s where the cast comes out after they�ve removed their costumes and make-up. There is wine and cheese and cookies and other goodies. The cast doesn�t necessarily feel constrained to mingle with the audience guests�mostly, they just talk among themselves, enjoying a glass of wine and some food as a wind-down after the play, and it seems so many of them have a boyfriend or girlfriend waiting for them out there. But still, the audience guests are perfectly free to go up to any of them and talk to them, and I always do, finding somebody whose performance I had particularly enjoyed and I lavish praise upon them, which they definitely are willing to accept. I also always include the orchestra director whom, I think, makes this series, his orchestra and their music is so good. I�ll shake his hand and say a few words, he�ll be gracious back to me, and that will be it.
Never before have I had members of the cast come over to me, but that sure happened last night. Several of the young female members of the cast came over to ask me how I liked the play and we talked for much longer than I ever would have expected. They also told me their name and asked me mine, and wanted to know where I worked and what I did�in other words, interested in me personally, rather than only caring about whatever I said about them. Then a couple of the guys came over to talk to me, and, like the women, told me their name and wanted to know mine. Finally, I went over to the orchestra leader, with whom I had spoken at least five other times, and I expected interaction with him to be the same as always, a polite and gracious �thank you� and then he�d be through with me and on the lookout for somebody else to come over and praise him. Not so last night, where he took ahold of my hand and kept holding it while we talked, and he asked me my name, and wanted to know if I had seen other performances in the series and which ones I liked the best, and so on. We actually had a good conversation, a conversation among equals, not �star� to �adoring audience groupie�.
It�s all about looks.
Do you look like a star, or do you not? Or, alternatively, do you look like somebody who is taking care of himself, or do you look like somebody who has let himself go? Sometimes the proof of �achievement� that matters in the business world is achievement on your very own body. Your �track record� could be your apparent ability to now �run track�.
A friend of mine at work with whom I eat lunch practically every day, someone who has been around the block several times and understands the business world--she�s put together and run some notable programs such as at a university in Massachusetts--says I shouldn�t think they are �trying to get rid of me� ("and if they are, they're crazy," she says), but, instead, they are demonstrating that they don�t believe that I should be mucking about in dirty areas such as �employee disputes� (in which I would have to impose supervisory power over these employees) or plebian pursuits such as individual tasks and job descriptions. It�s like doctors don�t take your blood pressure and dentists don�t clean your teeth, they have nurses and hygienists for that, and these consultants who seem to be �taking away my job� are like the nurses and the hygienists. My �job� is something else. And it�s weird, because, for example, instead of cutting me out by their creating the employee evaluation program, they have made me an important component within the program. Employees are supposed to be able to come to me for getting help in filling out their self-evaluations. I am being positioned as a counselor, not a martinet, so I am there to help the employees, not rule them. Hey, I can buy that!
She may be right or she may be wrong, but the best philosophy for such things is Zorba�s: don�t be attached to the limitations of your expectations, but live fully for the reality of the moment. And I already know that if I am gotten rid of, I�ve got a Plan B and a Plan C and a Plan D and a Plan E. My problem won�t be knowing what to do. My problem will be knowing, upon my sudden freedom and a whole sky that has opened up above me, in which of all the directions I want to fly to pick first.
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