When I was little, I used to work for IBM. Back then, actually, not that long ago, but another life time ago, IBM was one of the top 5 companies in the world, and I felt happy and lucky to be working with them. Out of 2000 applicants, they hired 2 people in this particular division, and I was one of them. But that’s a whole other story, but nonetheless, I didn’t want to do anything to screw it up. I made sure to conform, control, abide, respect, succumb…, you name it, to make sure that I “fit in,” and played by the rules, etc. so I could be “playing” the corporate game, least the game I thought or was told I should be playing.
Years later I could write a book, and maybe someday I will, about what the game was or is, and how I played it right and wrong and, and how it served and didn’t serve, and what was expected and not, and… But for the purposes of this post, I think I had established that I was playing it cool and stayed pretty down low, in more ways than one, to keep my job, make money, make my “superiors” happy and move up the corporate ladder.
And yet, some things were greater than I. No matter how hard I tried, and I did try very hard, and unfortunately some ways of being submissive came all to easily, thanks to having had a domineering Italian Dad, sometimes, aspects of me came out like personality tourettes, to coin a phrase. I didn’t even know when I was doing it, and I couldn’t even hear people when they were trying to tell me that “it” was coming on… my personality tourettes syndrome, (PTS).
I remember one particular corporate rally, a motivational speaker came and spoke to a couple thousand of us. This was a “motivational” speaker. And as I sat listening to this speaker, “motivating” me, I yelled out a “yahoo,” or “ye-haw,” or something like that, in the middle of the silence after the speaker had said something “inspiring.” I happened to be sitting next to one of the department managers, not mine, but mine indirectly, so I was wanting to be in my best behavior. But my PTS kicked in and “ya…something” came out of my mouth.
Without missing a beat, the manager turned to me shocked and with a cross look on her face, and abruptly told me to shush, and let it be known to me that this was not appropriate behavior, and then directed her serious gaze back at the “motivational” speaker. Almost as if it had been scripted, moments later the speaker told the audience that sometimes to liven up his life and the life of others around him, he dons a clown nose while driving in traffic to brighten up the day of those who drive by him, to make them smile, to get them out of their heads.
Interesting how IBM had paid thousands of dollars to have someone stand in front of them and tell them these things, when right in their midst, as one of their own, was an employee who did all this naturally, and he was being shushed and told not to behave in particular ways. As if this wasn’t perfect enough, as I was contemplating who the heck I really was, and what the heck I was doing here, the speaker asked all of us in the audience, to stand up and laugh as if we had heard something funny, and to not be afraid to act or feel silly.
As everyone around me got up, I sat there contemplating my next move. As I expected, the manager sitting next to me insisted I get up and do what the speaker had asked us to do. I of course, took the moment to say, “really, why now and not before? Just because he said it’s okay, now you want me to do it.” Something like that. As I write it, I can’t imagine how obnoxious and sarcastic that must have sounded, no matter how right I was. That was my STS, my, “Sarcastic Tourettes Syndrome,” acting up.
As I am laughing at my writing this blog and making up all of these toureete syndromes, I am realizing that these episodes don’t really happen anymore. Actually, it is not that they don’t happen anymore, they don’t have to come out in uncomfortable uncontrollable spurts. Why? Because I allow them, they are me, they are part of what I came to be and do and the only reason they used to come out in annoying and uncontrollable spurts was because I was, up until that point, holding it all in, holding it all back. All my excitement I wanted to share with the world, my humor, my silliness, my fun-ness was considered inappropriate and was supposed to be stifled, unless and until a “motivational speaker,” said it was okay.
I wonder how many people are out there like me who had/have a “tourettes syndrome,” to use that analogy, of something that they know they want to do, or of a way of being that is them, or of something they know they need to say? I wonder how many of them hold it in, hide, submit,…, because they feel others wouldn’t approve or that it wouldn’t be appropriate or… when in reality, it might be just the thing, the way, the reason they came to be here.
I am learning, that if we don’t get to express ourselves the way we want, that we “act” up in other ways, uncontrollably… and that is another blog post waiting to happen. But I would like to end with this as a fun example. I have a friend who is a funny comedian, Mike Marino. I laugh when he says the following, which is so true, “laugh people… don’t hold it in… it’s gotta come out somehow… if you don’t let it out through a laugh, it might come out in a fart!”