Operators are busy. Your call will be answered in turn.

I reached a sort of Zen-like calm yesterday. I wish I could figure out how because maybe then I’d be able to replicate it. I came to the realization that I will always have too much job.

I am one of those people to whom responsibilities and tasks are attracted as iron shavings are to a magnet. Since graduating college I’ve only had one job where the workload was appropriate, and even that job had its busy times. I don’t mind the busy times, but I do mind being responsible for everything.

Epiphanies are often portrayed as blinding flashes, the inspiration coming like a bolt of lightning. This one was not. It seeped in slowly and settled down quietly as if it had always been there this feeling that no matter what I do everything will not get done, and that is OK.

Since no one will prioritize the tasks over which I have no control and for which I have total responsibility, everything comes to me on fire and must be done now! now! now! To a certain extent, this is a side-effect of human nature: everyone looks at the world through his or her own eyes and what is most important to the individual becomes, without consciousness or examination, the only important thing in the world. This is part, I think, of the reason why humans are so increasingly mean and self-absorbed. Would I go so far as to say that something, some thread, some trend, some combination of factors in the modern world has combined to turn society at large, or at least the dominant paradigm, into that of the sociopath (the one that divides the world into I and Not-I)? I don’t think so. (more on why to follow later) But I digress…

The one thing I do know is that if everything is an emergency, nothing is. And I’m trying to figure out when people stopped thinking for themselves.

Last fall we had a mouse problem in our office building. It happens. It’s an old building to be housing offices, and we’re in a residential neighborhood. As part of my new job I am responsible for building maintenance: making sure the roof doesn’t leak, that the trash service comes when they say they will come, getting the exterminator called when we need exterminating services. So, I did that and the nice man from Terminix came and put down mouse traps.

And instead of making sure there was nothing to lure the mice into the kitchen people kept right on leaving bread on the counter and cookie crumbs on the work table and dirty dishes in the sink. And they kept right on complaining about the mice.

Today I had an intern knock on my closed door to tell me he had a computer problem and did he see me about that. Now, I wouldn’t mind this so much if he wasn’t the grandnephew of one of our senior staffers, and if he were brighter than a footstool. But he is, and, sadly, he’s not. He seemed shocked that I didn’t hang up the phone and drop my sandwich (did I mention I was eating lunch?) to find out why “it won’t come on.” Later investigation proved that the principles of electronics applied: when in doubt, cycle power.

So how do I get back to that place where it’s OK that not everything will get done? How do I get to that place where I can not lose my temper when the office manager sends a call from a vendor looking for “accounts payable,” a department we don’t have by the way (that would be I code the bills and give them to the part-time accountant), without warning me it’s coming?

I don’t know but I suspect that if I just wait for it, calmly, that maybe, just maybe, that feeling might settle back in.