Working Waltz ***

If possible, on your part, live at peace with everyone. ~Romans 12:18 (HCSB)

We all have those people that we have to “dance” around because of personality and character differences. Sometimes there is that one person in particular who tries your dancing shoes until they’re nearly worn out at the end of each week.

Some people thrive on negativity and drama, and they will pull anyone else down to feel better about themselves. This can be infuriating, but we understand that many people have chronic medical conditions or come from very insecure backgrounds. We make certain allowances because we know deep down people are often in pain and/or lack decent self-esteem. The saying is true that “hurt people” hurt people, but we also know that another saying is true, “Just because you’re in pain, doesn’t mean you have to be a pain.” These people definitely test our practice of Matthew 18:21-22 on forgiveness.

Sometimes people treat their jobs just as a paycheck, and we recognize that this can be a healthy mental approach to a job. It can often mean that people don’t take emotions home with them that pertain to work situations. However, some people have the approach of doing as little as possible to earn a paycheck, and they will NOT do their jobs any better than they feel like doing them. To put it bluntly, they’re lazy. Consequently, other people can’t do their jobs if the first group doesn’t do their jobs right. This particular quality affects anyone involved with the work of these individuals. We learn and do many things in a trial by fire because of how lazy others can be.

Unchecked laziness causes problems for other people, and bless their hearts, these lazy individuals just seem clueless to why everyone stays mad at them. Eventually, people just reach a breaking point. It might take a while — even a very long while — but they will eventually break. This then requires the other employees to “do-si-do” back and forth between these individuals to keep the peace. These cooperative employees struggle to keep the very fine balance just so things can get done. Eventually, cooperative employees find themselves hiding in their offices trying to avoid everyone because they’re close to reaching their own breaking points.

It is all part of the “working waltz” – the moves that keep the board balanced on a point so that it doesn’t tip too far one way or the other. Some people aren’t as sensitive to imbalance in the emotions around them, but some people are so sensitive that it can ruin a day when things are off balance. Sometimes we just have to take a break from the people who are quite out of balance emotionally themselves. Fellow employees will just keep dancing often because of just one employee but what an exhausting waltz.

The best we may be able to do is to work on not being so affected by other people’s emotional swings because we can’t control whether someone else is emotionally unpredictable. We also can’t control our coworker’s work quality, but we can control the quality of our work. We keep on doing our jobs to the best of our abilities because we don’t want to have the same negative affect on others. We take care of the things that we can and hope to be a good example for our troubled coworkers. It’s just proof that we’re all always in progress, and we’re constantly practicing our figurative dancing skills.

What I’m reading right now: Cress by Marissa Meyer, Goliath Must Fall by Louie Giglio, The Daniel Plan by Rick Warren and Dr. Daniel Amen

Listening to right now: At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon

Book of the Bible I’m currently studying: I Chronicles (yes, all the begats – but there are some interesting nuggets of info in there as well)

(Reviewed 12/11/23)