faith

Don’t give up on yourself, or your stained shirts.

Bleach! (Clorox™)

I’ve had this happen twice for me. I got a stain with some chemical or food compound that everyone universally tells me is impossible to get out. That I need to either accept the stain as is or throw out the shirt. One of the first times was with one of my favourite white shirts when I cut open a glow stick and sprayed the flourescent liquid all over my shirt. The warning even told me this would happen. Pro-tip: don’t cut open a glow stick unless you are ready to be covered in hard to remove glowing liquid.

Now, the shirt got a weird glowing yellow splash on it. It felt that regardless of how much bleach I used or spray wash I put on it, it wasn’t going to come out.

Naturally, I couldn’t wear it anymore until I either fixed it or threw it out. My wife, and my good friend Joe simply told me to just throw it out, but I viewed it as a challenge. It’s a white shirt, the worst that can happen if I use too much bleach is it falls apart (and then gets thrown out) or it gets clean. I may as well condemn it to the trash when it’s actually unfixable, not just a bit dirty.

So, thus began my adventure with getting out stains. After many many washes, using many different techniques (soaking in bleach, coating stain in spray’n’wash™, washing in hot water, washing in cold water, beating it up, etc.), it actually came out. Every time a little more came out, and then suddenly the shirt was clean. I could’ve thrown it out, but because I had faith it could be cleaned or at least wouldn’t throw it out until it was totally destroyed, it actually got cleaned. I saved my dress shirt.

This is actually the shirt. It’s so kawaii!

Sadly, this happened again with a a favourite t-shirt I got in Japan. I think I spilled salsa on it, and didn’t realize it until it was well dried into the shirt. To make matters worse, I had run it through the dryer with the stain still in it.

And… this shirt was coloured and had a cute panda bear design on it. I couldn’t simply use bleach or so I thought, but at the same time, I was determined that I’d rather destroy the shirt (bleach it to white, have it fall apart, etc) before I threw it out. I wasn’t going to condemn it until it was actually destroyed.

Amazingly… it got cleaned after a few dozen washes, and it didn’t fade either.

It was a great feeling, actually. Both times I saved a favourite item, simply by not giving up on it.

These shirts were cleaned about a year ago, but for some odd reason it all came to mind when I heard the gospel reading at mass. The famous one most of us have heard where Jesus saves an adulterer from being stoned to death.

Specifically this line stood out to me:

“Woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?”
She replied, “No one, sir.”
Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.
Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”

John 8:10-11

It seems to me that Jesus is not saying that we shouldn’t ignore wrongs that people commit, or ignore the fact that we ourselves all have stains. This story is saying for us to not give up on ourselves or others. That we can all be washed clean. He doesn’t say she is without sin, nor does he forgive her sins. He says, “it’s ok, you are worth saving, go forth and try, and don’t get more dirty.”

He saves her from being condemned not for simply being unclean, but because they believed she was uncleanable.

I think we have been called to repentance because we don’t need to wear the stains either. We all are sinners (ie. that famous Catholic guilt), but that doesn’t mean we are all condemned.

So many people give up on getting rid of their habits that, in the end, make their and their friend’s and family’s life worse. Even more seem to think the Catholic guilt that points out these stains somehow makes them worse, that they can’t be cleaned, so why point it out. They get viscerally angry at those who can see the stain and introduce them to the tools that can be used to get out the stain. Yes, sometimes these tools are hard on us, just like bleach and spray’n’wash can be hard on fabric, but it’s possible to get it out. You just need to keep on trying.

And once you get it out, you are actually free and clean. You are actually forgiven.

I think that’s the great feeling so many converts to Catholicism say after their first reconcilliation, that’s the feeling so many Catholics who have lost their way don’t understand anymore.

In today’s easy come, easy go mentality, it’s easy to forget that. It just takes a bit more effort and you can get out the worst stains you can imagine.

And once those stains are out, you’ll have back your favourite thing.

You’ll have back yourself.

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Faith, trust and disorder

Simplified scheme of an organization
Simplified scheme of an organization (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had an interesting and thought-provoking conversation yesterday with a good friend. I haven’t talked with him in many years, and since we last spoke he has worked up the ranks in his business to a project lead position. It really put a lot of things in perspective since I have been hanging around with many CEOs, MBAs, and other business school/well-connected folks who have worked hard, but have worked up the ranks in their business through more entrepreneurial/less traditional routes.

From the people who worked up through those routes, many of the biggest personal issues I’ve encountered with running a business they take in stride (Dismissing people, handling hostile clients and doing blind sales.) Oddly though, many of the the pieces of running a business that I have little problem with, they have found difficult. So, naturally, I had a lot to learn from them. Even if, in the end, ethically I disagree with some of their methodologies or their philosophies behind their actions.

However, the conversation I had with my friend brought back to the forefront of my mind the biggest part of running a business (especially small business) to me. If I wanted to be sole contractor, making money simply by doing the development myself or providing high level security work, I would just go and work for a larger organization like IBM, CN Rail, Google or Amazon. I actually remember working for Car Accounting at CN Rail and loving it, and I have very fond memories of my days working as an IBM business consultant under the AERIS banner. I’d make a relatively stable income, and generally be pretty OK with it.

But, business is more than that to me. Never fully figured out why, but I really enjoy giving people the opportunity to work on projects they never thought they’d be able to work on and find ways to take the awesomeness from those and make it work to improve the ROI (or organizational processes) of our clientele. It was hard to reach considering some of the ups and downs I have had in hiring, but there is a deep pleasure in having faith in someone and having that faith fulfilled.

Giving a project to someone who really wants to do it and do an awesome job on it, and then seeing them create something beyond your wildest dreams. That’s a pretty awesome feeling. It’s the 1+1 = 3 phenomena. I, alone, could not accomplish this, and neither could they alone, but combined, through faith in each other, we are able to produce something more.

Now, business doesn’t run on faith. Business runs on product, profits and financial statements. So you need to have one other piece of the puzzle – trust that they person you employ to do this job will be able to not only do an awesome job, but stay on task enough to build a product that supports them and the larger organization moving forward.

I’ve always found, contrary to many of my more atheistic friends, faith is easy; trust is hard.

Especially when your trust is betrayed or, worse even, entirely proven baseless.

That leads to disorder, not only for the organization but also for yourself. You need to re-examine your core beliefs and try to find out why you had this trust and what you missed that showed how that trust would be betrayed. You need to restructure the organization (sometimes at heavy financial and personal cost) to prevent such a failure again (that is if the failure was something massive.)

And you need to find a way to move forward. As hard as it may be.

So, we return to my friend that I enjoyed a lovely dinner with last night. His organization has some serious issues that need to be sorted out. The dysfunction is so inherent that individuals who are clearly skilled and capable of doing the work are being dragged along by the chaotic maelstrom that happens when organizational trust is betrayed. Trust goes both ways, you see.

It’s possible if I read this 10 years ago, I’d scoff at it. However, now I know it’s immensely true. These structures in corporations, non-profits and other organizations exist to allow for products and progress to be made. When you as an employee have no trust or faith in your leaders to lead, you will betray their trust in you to do what you have been hired to do. In the end, you both get disorder. You are a miserable employee, and your employer is stuck trying to decide what to do to make the engine work again.

This doesn’t mean you should put up with hostile or toxic business environments, far from it. It means that if you are unhappy (for any reason) and you can walk away, you should do so. Don’t betray the trust of the people who put you there.

However, don`t also assume that the chaos and disorder around you is due to a bad strategy by those who are doing their best above you, and most importantly trust that what they are assigning you is not entirely without purpose and void.

Their job is to ensure their department does it’s job and, in the end, that the organizations continues to be successful and sustainable. Sometimes they fail, yes, but don’t aid them in that by failing to keep up to what they expect of you.

Otherwise you just in a self-fulfilling maelstrom and more and more will get caught until someone pulls the plug on everything.

KJR

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