A blaring voice bursts from the office next door.
“Why have you not finished the booklets?” “ I told you over and over again, they need to be finished!” – “And look at seese T-shirts, you have eeeffen misspelt se nejmme!”
The more upset our Head of Office is, the more his French accent comes through. A young Lao lady stands with her back against the glass door. He holds up one of the T-shirts. His cufflinks blink in the sunshine. She tries to respond.
“ No, no. Novv guudd. We cannot use any ouff seese seengs.”
Her cheekbones tighten, but she doesn’t break.
“ Luukk what you have duunne”!!! “Seess is useless.”
The beautiful profile gives up because she knows what this is all about. It has nothing to do with booklets or T-shirts.
This happened 12 years ago, and I still regret not intervening.
I was new to the office. I did not understand what was going on. Those are insipid excuses because my instinct told me what I ought to have done. I should have knocked on the door, pretending to be stupid, and asked if there was anything I could do to help. It was not the first time our Head of Office had acted like that against one of his staff and it was not the last. And what I later found out: the real issue at hand was that the gorgeous young lady had refused to become his mistress.
The times I have intervened in similar situations, I may have bemoaned my behaviour. Flushing and waving my arms. Sounding like a screeching door in need of oil. Saying something that provoked without solving a thing. “Well, then everything is just fine, isn’t it??!!”
But I have never regretted that I intervened, only how I handled it.
In my last article, I wrote about the impact we have on others. About the fact that everything we say and everything we do has an impact. Whether we want to or not. And that you should use that impact to be a force for good.
Similarly, speaking up and intervening – more often – would move you further along the Road to Maturity.
Because every time you do the right thing, you make a deposit to your self-respect account. You will also earn interest in the form of well-being. You can walk a bit straighter and feel a bit taller.
I am not asking you to risk your job or to put yourself in danger. But we encounter so many situations that are far less dangerous, where it is just our hesitation (read: cowardness) that prevents us from speaking up or intervening. Like that time in Laos, I told you about at the beginning.
“There is never a good occasion for keeping your mouth shut,” Christopher Hitchens said, “you will always be sorry later if you keep quiet.”
(A variation of the quote above).
I can confirm that. And you will be sorry for a long time.
Use this quote as a constant reminder to yourself. A reminder of a life worth living.
