Tag Archives: life

Want My Opinion? Oh, hell no.

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Earlier this year I thought I was going to lose a longtime friend because he said I wasn’t “honest enough” with him. I only said good things about his writing, his opinions, what he was doing, etc. and he felt that just couldn’t be right. I couldn’t possibly like everything he was doing.

He said that it can’t be a really true friendship if we only say god things about one another.  We have to be able to say the good and the bad.  Truth.

Now, I have  another longtime friend who is at risk because, at her insistence, I gave my opinion about how she might beheld through an enormously stressful period right now by asking doctor about anti-anxiety medicine. Wrong answer.

She now thinks that I am belittling her and thinks she can’t manage her life well.

Then earlier today I asked my husband to “speak more deeply” about a topic. He was offended that I didn’t think he was already “being deep.” (We had barely started the conversation; I was wanting more).

So I guess I need to shut up.

Something I’m doing is offending people who are very important to me. Maybe I just need to go away, alone, for awhile.  Something is out of sync and the place to look first is in the mirror.

Shoot The Morning Finger

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What would cause you, young, late-20-something year old male, to “shoot me the finger” so aggressively early yesterday morning?

It was a sunny and not yet oppressively hot day.  I was standing with my bike in the bike path, patiently waiting for all the cars to pass the cross road.  I was stationed well back from the road so it was clear I wasn’t a threat to cars. I wasn’t going to somehow lurch out into the road causing you to brake or dodge me and my little bike.

I don’t even look like a cyclist.  I don’t have the spandex.  None of my clothes match.  My helmet isn’t event same color as my fifteen year old bike.  I don’t look like an athlete.  How could I be a challenge of any sort?

There you drove though.  You and your passenger seat buddy.  He was looking straight forward and it was his huge grin that even made me look at your car.  It was then that I saw you leaning over from the driver’s seat to shoot me the finger through the open window.

If you wanted to offend me you didn’t.  Your action was irrelevant to me.  I just wondered what is in you that would cause you to do such a thing.

The others cars cleared the road and I continued on the bike path. The little brown rabbit off on the side chewing his morning grass made me smile.

Marie Antoinette “Leaned In” and Look What Happened to Her!

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I’m skeptical about the book, Lean In, by Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and its affiliated women’s power movement. Let me explain.

I completely support the concept that girls and women should “lean in” and actively participate in “the conversation.” To be actively engaged in your life and not a passive bystander while others make decisions. To realize your full potential as a person…being as smart as you can be, exploring, developing ideas and initiating action, and so on. I believe in equal rights for all people, I just don’t think the world (not even the supposedly more “progressive” US) allows for fair and equal treatment and opportunities for women.  In fact, my direct experience is that if you are female and “lean in” you’ll have your head chopped off.  In some countries, literally.

In America, only 23 of the Fortune 500 companies have a female CEO; women only make 77 cents for the same job as a man who makes a dollar; and women have always held significantly fewer seats in Congress, and that number is declining.

When the economic crisis of 2008 was in affect, there was not a week when an experienced professional working woman didn’t contact me to say she had been “downsized out” of her company.  I didn’t know one man with similar circumstances.  When a man lost his job it was when the entire company went under.

While I have been fortunate to be a high ranking executive in my current and previous institutions, in both cases I am “training” my (male) boss. In both jobs, the man was placed in his position with the CEO knowing he was not skilled or prepared. I accepted my current job knowing this and taking the chance that my boss was going to become the next CEO and I’d move up into his slot.  (That didn’t happen) In my previous job, however, the CEO actually asked me to train a male “peer” who was later promoted to a level higher than me.

It’s not just me.  I know women all over the world who regardless of profession or age are “moved over or moved out” when they become more visible and more successful in their organizations. A good friend of mine from London, was the international director for an organization based in the US when the CEO began an obvious campaign to “improve the international presence.” She was allowed to save face and resign.  Rather than replace this very successful executive with an internationally experienced professional, the American CEO hired another American, a male with an “exotic sounding” name.

While I continue to hope that all people can have fair and equal treatment based on skills, experience and personal characteristics, I don’t see it happening.