Hurting Myself Today at Work

A couple of our wonderful granddaughters are part of a superb dance/theater company. They had their annual year end performance, and this festival included a company ranging from preschool to high school. The cast of high schoolers, after years of practice, were remarkably polished dancers. One troupe performed a modern dance interpretation to Johnny Cash’s version of the song, “Hurt.” The lyrics from the first two stanzas are below, and to refresh your memory, here’s a link to Cash’s rendition.

I had a lump in my throat and eyes welled up watching it. The way the kids performed was based on raw authentic awareness and feeling. They conveyed the essence of Cash’s song because they danced like they deeply felt the hurt so painfully captured in the lyrics.

“I hurt myself today

To see if I still feel

I focus on the pain

The only thing that's real

The needle tears a hole

The old familiar sting

Try to kill it all away

But I remember everything.”

I’m sharing this because it seems we have way too many people in pain around us. Too many of us are hurting alone. Since I focus on the workplace, I will concentrate there. Some recent data:

“Those who work in-office spend nearly a quarter of their time in virtual meetings, while face-to-face meetings account for only 8 percent of their time, according to data from real-estate company Cushman & Wakefield”

“Americans have tripled the time spent in meetings since 2020, data from Microsoft’s suite of business software show—leaving less time for the casual interactions that social scientists say foster happiness at work.”

“Among 101,000 people using the professional coaching platform BetterUp since 2019, 68 percent said they knew their co-workers on a personal level, down from 79 percent five years ago.”

“As the American workday becomes more faceless and scheduled, the number of U.S. adults who call themselves lonely has climbed to 58 percent from 46 percent in 2018, according to a recent Cigna poll of 10,000 Americans.”

Many studies show significant increases in workplace anxiety, depression and burnout.

So what can we do about it? First of all is the need for self-awareness, self-acceptance,and self-compassion. Recognize that we cannot go it alone. We all need help, genuine connection and care. We must also learn to sincerely see each other, know each other's stories and show up to be authentically seen ourselves.

I’m all for grit and perseverance. However, both sets of behaviors can co-exist: The courage to move forward and the vulnerability to ask for help, the compassion to set aside judgment and the personal care to offer assistance.

I wonder what the difference in mindset would be if leaders created greater conditions for more meaningful connection, rather than applying binary “return to work” policies? Would the experience be better if we chose face to face connection because of human investment versus the demands of human control? Obviously organizations have obligations to create value. However, we can put people first!

I know we all experience hurt, we just shouldn’t have to experience it alone.

The chorus:

“What have I become?

My sweetest friend.

Everyone I know goes away,

in the end.”

You and I all have last days. Why not go out with compassion and generosity to your teammates?

Think Big, Start Small, Act Now,

- Lorne

P.S. This song, originally by Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, then adapted by Cash, is complex and subject to much interpretation.

One Millennial View: You say, “The way the kids performed was based on raw authentic awareness and feeling… They danced like they deeply felt the hurt so painfully captured in the lyrics.”

I honestly wish high schoolers could just be talented dancers who performed the song because of its instrumental intensity, with all the fixings for a memorable, dramatic dance number. If the kids truly relate to that level of hurt - lyrics steeped in hard drug usage, suicide, and more - then what the heck is happening with our youth? I hope I’m over analyzing. My point is that we certainly all have levels of issues to address, and can’t always bottle up our struggles, however if our youth are deeply resonating with this much pain, then that’s not much to be dancing about, and we have to make moves to fix it.

- Garrett

Hurting Myself Today at Work

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