Earlier this week I spoke of compassion and understanding/discovering where other people are coming from, seeing through their façade to their fears or simply the truth of the matter.  After attending the event I spoke of and after the revelation of my boss’s fear, something else hit me: I’ve been annoyed at work because of how my team approaches problems.  Some people thrive under pressure or chaos (we may even have moments of pressure that bring out our best) but the human mind (and the human body) are not designed to function under pressure, fear, anxiety, or chaos 24/7.  I can’t do it.  When we operate from fear we forget what steps to take, we forget where we are, and we can’t see the way forward clearly.  Life throws us curveballs where we may need to act quickly, but that should not be the case in the day to day. 

I showed up at work and within 120 seconds (I wasn’t even fully logged in), my coworker approached me with that started as a question.  Now, I admit that I can be less rigid with my routine in the morning but I can’t stand walking into a perceived fire first thing.  This question was something I didn’t have a full answer to and it was posed as, “You said X,Y,Z and you’re the expert…”.  Sidenote, when you start a question like that it does NOT come off as needing clarification, it comes off as testing the other person.  Anyway, I explained what I knew and told her I needed to think about the rest.  See, my team has a history of asking questions that often have nothing to do with the person they approach, they assume it does.  So this question got me thinking about why this person assumes I know this answer which got me thinking about why she’s concerned about something in my area…which got me thinking that if she knew what needed to be done prior to asking me, then why didn’t she approach me sooner.

That’s when my nuclear bomb theory went off.  Asking someone something we assume they know can be akin to forcing a basketball player or web developer to disarm a nuclear bomb.  They aren’t going to have the slightest clue how to do it and that isn’t the safest time to test them on their ability to reason through something they haven’t learned.  Also, approaching EVERYTHING as a crisis, as if everything is going to blow up if we don’t address it RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND makes it seem like the world will be destroyed if we don’t drop everything and address your issue.  I can’t, nor would I want to ever live with that kind of constant pressure.  It isn’t worth it, in fact, it’s dangerous.  There is no reason to put that kind of pressure on ourselves.  Strive, face our fears, yes, but don’t create imaginary threats for ourselves or others simply for the sake of having things to solve. Nothing is that urgent my friend, and if we ever face a nuclear bomb that needs disarming, then we need to call in the experts.  We are not failures for not knowing how to resolve something and it isn’t our responsibility to know how to fix it all.  We have community for that.  Face our fears, do our part, and the rest falls into place.