Stereotypes, archetypes

I came through this poem of mine from a few years ago, and though it brought back some memories of why I felt like writing it, the details are not so clear anymore. Nevertheless it stood the test of time, and means just as much to me. Even though back then I wasn't working in call centers or service desks, but obviously felt the same way about my job. The only thing that's changed is that in those days I talked of myself as useless, but also did that with some irony. Now it's more than apparent to me that it's these kind of jobs which unfortunately seem to be the only ones available for some while, that make people feel totally brain-washed and so useless, not deserving any creativity, instead making them abandon even what they have. Well, hopefully we don't feel that way of our lives, as that's something else, even if we have to spend so much time of what we have at work.

The other reason why I found this poem interesting was that at this place I work now, where some people have just brought their friends as colleagues, I found them looking, but more than that, behaving in this or that way very similarly to some of the folks I made friends with at an earlier point of my life. Of course, that in itself doesn't make them be really like my own friends, however it made it easier for me to socialize with them, feeling - and that was the tricky part - that I knew them to some extension. Later on this sort of illusion also made me feel like stepping back when I learned their other faces.
Anyhow, this is the poem.


Stereotypes, archetypes

(do we have to close the circle yet tighter, when we aren't given much choice at all)

i'm nonfunctioning highly
not up to the standards of this society
i'm not an intellectual
don't know much of your morals

i won't be the one you expect me to be
don't play television quizes
don't look like your commercial models
 
i am a simple human being

and if you ask me how i'm doing not
i'll answer how i am doing
coz i'm sick of being sick
only wanna be myself

and yet i can be with you
can be someone else, too
and you can be me, if you want to
 
i don't regret, i don't refuse

i'm not really from this world
rather speak with my words
stay in the books i read
when i was a child, so sad

in the horror stories of ghosts
where i learned to face my fears
there i went to meet my hosts
was not ashamed of my tears

and if my friends meet my other friends first
and they say it felt like they met before
i don't think of reasons, don't feel that thirst
as i gave up on searching, not anymore

now i'm sinking back into myself
all the powerful twirlpools have left
and i'm regaining something again
that's obviously part of the game

The sound of silence

I was told several times since I started to take calls in my new job, a telephony service desk, that I should speak up. Funnily not by the customers they understood perfectly what I told them. It was a colleague who rejected to help me with the learning, but fortunately there were many others who did help, and still don't feel it is a burden for them. This colleague however is always eager to find something wrong in what I'm doing, and emphasize it. I had to write this down for myself more than anyone else. Most of all because I like his kind of humor and first I mistaken it for a sign of an easy-to-get-on-with personality. In truth it's a whimsical one, but this is not the story.
I was about to tell what I found interesting with speaking up and listening. It's like relationships, those involved always depend on each other, and everything goes both ways or nothing goes, and there's no relationship. So no matter how loud I talk if the one I'm talking to wouldn't listen, and instead is focusing on what they're telling me. Thus even if I want to help with my answer, with no attention my words won't reach them. On the contrary if they're really interested, then they give it an ear, and by listening can easily understand what's said.
So to catch more attention or any at all we might raise our voices, but even doing so, could only make the other half do the same which then result in an argument about nothing. Both parties might talk about the very same thing, but feeling more important than the other, could think that whatever they say can only be true or make sense, thus don't even think it might easily match their talking partner's opinion.
In the end it all comes to communication again, like many things I write about here, in my blog. Maybe this goes on a different level, somewhat deeper than talking with words, and finds the frame of it, the so called metacommunication. That is to find out whether we really listen when we talk to someone and ask them, or prefer to hear ourselves, and so can only miss the very meaning of a conversation.

There's a bridge in my mouth

It doesn't lead to another side, save another side of me I haven't known myself
It could be the Bridge of Sighs 'cause it caused me some trouble though no-one crossed it
But there's a tooth living underneath it, and it seems like it's got stuck down there
Like a poet who left everything just to find the meaning of the very life he's living