The white dove 🕊

My problem is that if something sounded like work, I often put it off until it was too late. Then I went in the next morning and was humiliated by my teachers for not having done my homework.

It's not that I didn't care, or that the punishment was not horrible. To the contrary, the humiliation was supreme and if I could go back and unwatch that movie or undo that work avoidance, I would. It's a form of self-loathing that made me hate myself for having been so stupid. The teachers were disappointed in me because they knew I was better than that. They realized that I could and should be doing much better than I was.

When the next homework was due, I would do it, all over again and hate myself, all over again.
The obvious result of this was I was constantly being punished, and I hated myself and of course, I flunked and tanked. Big time.

Nothing really changed that much in the real world.

I still find myself, unable to prepare for the mornings meeting or presentations. When TV and music and chatting with friends fills the time until there is none left and I am forced to face my failures with nothing between the covers.

In these moments, I am a child again and I dread the humiliation. The stakes are higher in the grown-up world, but the embarrassment is the same.

It's like old times except for one thing.

I get in front of the board. Suit pressed, well groomed. I still my mind, and reach into the hat, and pray like hell. Stick my hand into the proverbial hat, and when I take out my hand, lo and behold, a white dove!

The audience is, as always stunned.
What they don't realize is that in most cases, so am I. 

I am left, exhausted and exhilarated with the high of having pulled off a miracle.

Where in the past, I was swimming in self-loathing, I now bask in the glory of the shit I just pulled off, and I love myself.

My greatest fear these days is that one day, maybe even one day soon I will pull my hand out of the hat and I will come out empty handed and the game would be up. I realize at some level that given the number of times I have pulled off this trick, I am bound to fail, but for now, I am really in awe of the power that makes this happen.

In school we were given mundane tasks to do and judged on how reliably we did them. And those who did their work every night, got a pat on the head, the next day.

In life however, the mundane tasks in the corporate world are done by an army of worker bees. When people call for me they don't expect me to do the mundane. They call me when all the mundane processes have failed them. And they need somebody who takes a different approach. Somebody who's mind is fresh and not stuck in the groove of his training and qualifications. What they need is a crazy guy who gives them a crazy arse idea that is so ridiculous that it actually might work. And that, my dear is exactly what comes out of the hat.

The White dove .

M Parak 2017