Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, for they too have their story.
As we decorated the tree on Monday evening, general discussion centred around this idea; that of speaking your truth. The irony of the Desiderata poem promoting not telling porkies when its very origin has been wrapped up in all manner of heresay (the copy which arrived on the Homestead by way of The Renovator’s Year 12 English class claimed it was anonymous and discovered in a Baltimore church in the 1600’s when a little googling shows it to have been penned circa 1920, copyright Max Ehrmann) is not lost on us, it’s just: who cares when the words are just so blimmin’ relevant?
But all that aside and to recap, as we flung our motley but very precious collection of tat and tinsel at the tree on Monday night, we were talking about telling the truth. Why? Two words: Secret Santa. In recent years, we have utilised the method of putting everyone’s name into a container, drawing one each in turn, and purchasing a small gift for this person, aka Secret Santa, to ensure there is one present for each Homesteader under Oma and Pop’s tree on Christmas Eve. The problem is the “secret” aspect of the title. Generally by the time the presents are distributed by whoever is playing elf, the recipient is well aware of, if not the givers identity, certainly the contents of the gift and, boy! does this irk a couple of our number. “Why go through the pretence of secrecy when you end up telling someone exactly how you would like the allocated twenty dollars spent?” they stormed, “What about the magic of Christmas?”
It’s an utterly reasonable argument, but in a home where not a lot of money is allocated to gift giving, most agreed they preferred receiving something they liked over mission bin fodder or, even worse, a rubbish “joke” present. A fluoro plastic wig, huge plastic sunglasses and a chocolate bar to bump it up to the required amount spent: what a knee-slapper! No, it was conceded, better to speak your truth quietly and into the correct ear in this instance.
Not three days later the whole speaking the truth deal arose again, this time from that most mild-mannered of Homesteader, The Bean Counter. He had been summonsed by his off-Homestead work High Command for his bi-annual Review. In theory, these are a wonderful idea. It gives the workplace the opportunity to celebrate triumphs and readdress no-so-triumphs, dole out back pats and brick bats accordingly and, basically, review how the individual is performing from the perspective of The Boss. In practice, workplace etiquette is so tied up with what you can and can’t say, how you can or can’t say it, and an employers horror of acting in a way as to “create a precedent” that what you are left with is a mush of mumbled platitudes and bar graphs. “What would the harm be in telling it like it is?” we raged, “and what a waste of an afternoon,” The Bean Counter quietly added. We suspect that when it comes to employee reviews, the fear of being slapped with a personal grievance far outweighs speaking quietly and clearly.
Union Homestead 
The tree looks fabulous. We haven’t put ours up yet. Instead I’ve spent three hours fiddling/cursing and cajoling the lights on the outside of the house (do you do this in NZ? – lights on the outside?). Stupid things. The best I can manage is that half the total string is working – not the half on the road side of the house, the half on the side that only people who live here can see… Ah well, we’ll get the tree up this weekend perhaps and it will go well, and the lights will work, and…
The Desiderata…haven’t had cause to think of it in quite a while, but I used to read it almost every day – it was over the only water fountain in the school block of my boarding school, and I always thought how ironic that it opens with “go placidly amid the noise and haste” when the water fountain could only be accessed when the hall was full of bustle and mayhem. I have never paid attention to the “speak your truth quietly part”, before, but now it seems so obvious.
Performance reviews. Ours are a farce. I’m completely with the Bean Counter on this one. It smacks of a lack of courage on the part of the employer to not address shortcomings – perhaps because employers these days don’t seem to as quick to provide good training and support as they used to. Performance reviews are certainly not about truth, that’s for sure.
I used to bartend in the Navy, and yes, I’ve had my share of situations such as Renovator had to go through, but in my case I didn’t have to be diplomatic, I just had to pull rank. Nowadays, I serve books, not booze, but even so, it is amazing to me how belligerent, unethical, rude and just plain difficult some people can be – and still complain the next day. Never mind, isn’t he destined for a classroom in the near future? – he’ll be well equipped to deal with difficult parents…
Dave may be decorated, but I have to say, his expression says “bah, humbug”.
Thanks for your kind words on our rather eclectically decorated tree. The whole house light decorating is becoming more fashionable here, but apart from a couple of strings on our deck, we don’t do it. It’s painful enough tracking down the correct bulbs to replace the light strings we have on the tree without multiplying that by a houselot. Good luck with “Christmastising” your house this weekend 🙂
The Bean Counter also works in the service industry and some of the stories he comes home with are amazing! As you say, all this is setting The Renovator up perfectly for the obscene parents!
Yep,Dave is not one for hiding his feelings. He was definitely in Scrooge mode for the photo and had already savaged the Santa hat we were trying to encourage him to wear.
Your family’s attitude to speaking the truth must permeate the country. In a recent survey of corruption in public service New Zealand had the world’s best score!
Beautiful poem you shared there! If you don’t mind I’ll post it with your link, thank you for passing it on 🙂
Of course!