(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

I HAVE been needing to say something since the unexpected layoffs occurred in my company yesterday. Shock prevented me from doing so initially. Then came denial. I did not want to even think about the situation let alone write about. Now anger has entered. Now is a good time to say something.

It is frightening to see the hand that feeds become the hand that passes down reduced head counts and slashed budgets. It is disheartening when that hand, which recently offered encouraging quarterly progress statistics palm up, turns and backhands many who facilitated that progress. Now it is hard to trust that upturned palm, especially when it has slipped on the velvet glove of euphemism and vagueness.

HERE IS the thing. This layoff was not enacted because the company is losing lots of money at the moment. The reason for the layoffs is that senior management has an “aggressive” business plan for 2003. This includes increasing new business by 20% and maintaining 80% of the current business. In order for this to happen there needs to be more people on the “front lines” bringing in that business. However, budgets are being cut, expenses are being kept to a minimum. So, the number of jobs in less crucial areas will have to be reduced.

One can argue that this makes perfect business sense. It does. The company is here to make money. That is what it is all about. The goal is profit. The goal is an enlarged customer base. The goal is higher stock prices. On paper it looks good. Just wait until the year-end results meetings. This is going to look great in a PowerPoint presentation!

Yet, it all felt so clinical. The number to be cut was decided upon. The people were selected on certain criteria. They were informed quickly. It was all said and done by lunchtime. There was no consideration of personal issues for these people. It did not matter that some cried and some left in a rage, some slipped out quietly and some stayed steady through the day. The hand used the scalpel to perform a corporate facelift.

ONE of the most unnerving things was the way this was explained to those of us who still have jobs. It was not a layoff. It was a “staff action.” We are now in the “post staff action phase.” These people did not lose their jobs. They were “reduced.” The “resources were reallocated.” Most of the questions raised by the remaining employees were answered in vague ways with all of these euphemistically nauseating terms. The impression conveyed was that there are no guarantees, no one is really secure, and there could be a possibility that this could happen again. But of course this was not directly stated.

I think this is the issue that angers me the most. These people were not “reduced.” They were eliminated. There is a difference. People were not “reallocated.” Company resources in the form of dollars were reallocated. These are dollars that these people will no longer receive.

GIVEN the present conditions of our society, this is the wrong time to be told that you no longer have a job not because the company is losing money but because it wants to aggressively make more. Things are uncertain as the talk of war with Iraq drones on and on. Will it happen? Will there be more terrorist attacks in our own land? Will bombs start exploding on our buses like they do in Israel? Will we be able to put our children through college? Will some of our children spend the last moments of their lives bleeding on the sands of a Middle Eastern desert? Will anthrax strike at our post offices and snipers at our malls? Will North Korea start firing off missiles? If push comes to shove will we lose some of our allies? I just bought the last of the duct tape and plastic sheeting from the Home Depot. What do you mean I don’t have a job?

There truly are no guarantees in life. Things are always changing. There are ups and downs, twists and turns and spirals. How we try to make our own paradise here and now. We have been banned from Eden. Yet, it is in our hearts to maintain that paradise. However, it will not work. Paradise is lost. This is the day of thorns and toil, sweat and frustration.

It is a frustrating experience to watch adverse situations come upon those that you care about when know that you are powerless to change things for them. What a heart-wrenching thing it is to be willing to take their place but not capable of doing so. It is sad to think that some who may have become your very best friends are suddenly removed from your daily life. No one wants to see tears from a friend’s eyes. No one wants to see people have their hopes smashed.

I DISAGREE with this corporate action. My heart would not let me make such a decision. I think it is highly impersonal and poorly timed. If I were the CEO I would have came up with a different plan.

But I am not the CEO. And maybe I shouldn’t “bite the hand the feeds me.” Maybe. I’m not actually biting, just growling a bit.

(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

YOU SPOKE to me tonight unexpectedly. I did not come searching for you, nor even caring for you. Indeed, I sat by your side without much thought of you for nearly two hours. We hoped the jokes and nonsense would lessen the annoyance of amateur singing, just as we hoped the alcohol would curb the gnawing in our hearts. Beer, wine and enough smoke to choke half the state. You were there. But I didn’t care.

Caught up in my own pity I looked for the acknowledgement of a friend in so many eyes around the room. I found no friend. So I imagined what it would be like to be with that with the black hair and rosy cheeks. She didn’t care either. But there was the one singing, the one with the cherry lips and sparkles on her shirt. If only I could be who I am not so she might like me. Thinking myself insane I came back to my senses.

You sat by my thoughtlessness for such a time. I could not have cared less. The temptation to stop caring for myself was staring me in the face. So who the hell were you?

THEN you spoke. At first I thought it was the alcohol. Then I realized it was your heart.

You spoke of a three-year-old girl that you were proud to acknowledge as your own daughter, though she was the child of a man who gave her no love or protection. With increasing wonder I listened as you told me of a woman. Though you said not the words, I heard that you loved her. In your slurred speech it was clear. You loved her. I understood.

Tonight I would not have known you from Adam. Your voice was nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the noise. While still uncaring I endured your first few lines. But when our eyes met I saw your struggle. I listened closer. Something you said reached down deep within my own heart. Then I knew you, Adam. I knew you. For brief moments we shared an ancient language the words of which neither of us could remember.

She broke your heart. I felt the pain inflicted. I saw your wounds freshly bleeding as my hand returned to the scar upon my own chest. I left my hand there as the tears swelled then subsided in your eyes. Men don’t cry. But some have been hurt enough to listen.

You told me that you were only recently parted. There was the heartache as you looked into your beer as if you saw her face there. You drank to the bottom as if that would rinse her away. The look on your face was proof that she was much to deep for that. Few were your words. Enough said.

MY FRIEND, Adam, I understand. I know that pain. I know its depth. I know how it feels to weep in solitude until the tears burn like blood in your eyes and you vomit your heart from the back of your throat. You think, “Surely she will be moved by the sight. Surely her heart will melt. Her hardness will relent and we shall awake as from a bad dream, just a trifling disturbance in the night.” Yet in the morning you awake with arms empty in the coldness of solitude.

Oh Adam! I know! How often have I awoke in the middle of the night! Sweatless. With the taste of her lips lingering in my memory. The scent of her skin fading from my fingertips. The sensation of her hair wisping across my face for the final time. All that we once shared turned to salt upon my cheeks. Hours I spent with my face on the floor, clawing. My existence was a weight I could not bare. Crushed and beaten I lay there as the dust that I was, no longer a man. She mocked me then. She dealt the mortal blow then despised me for not enduring it like a god.

You see, I know. I understand. I feel.

NOW I do not love her nor miss her. It is as if it never was. Still I suffer the longing, the desire, the need for intimacy and reflection. I no longer feel the absence of “her” but of something even larger. Something that even in a perfect world caused the Creator to say, “It is not good for Adam to be alone.” Before the world went crazy and our hearts were broken, He knew what we so feebly tried to communicate tonight. He already knew. He knew there would be desperation and clawing.

But does that make it all right and fine tonight?

Hell no! In the distance, as I drove, I saw the lights on the mountain towers. Blinking red. Luring me back to days that I swear are from something I read in a book. I couldn’t possibly have lived through them! Yet I did. Oh God, you know I did. I lived and I died and I gave up my heart as I drove through the mountains of states unknown. Mile upon mile of weeping and praying, agonizing and wondering. Why God? Why? If it is not good for me to be alone, why the pain? Why the separation? Why the total disregard? Why the refusal to acknowledge and accept the love I willing gave to her? Why?

With no answer and no immediate comfort I drove on. Mile upon mile upon mile. Just to finally see her and be ignored.

At hand there are no complete answers. That is why I could only speak to you by my hand upon your shoulder tonight. Near perfect strangers you and I are. Yet I know you, Adam. Tonight we stood with Eden at our backs, our faces set into the wind, and questions in our eyes which our tongues know not how to utter. Not animal. Not angel. Somehow like God. Yet frustratingly not. In the span of seconds we found ourselves worlds removed from paradise, drinks in our hands, basking in the dimly lit cigarette smoke, with the echoes of a hauntingly familiar bygone day of wholeness hinting between the karaoke lines.

There are no complete answers. But sometimes we understand. Sometimes we catch a glimpse of who we are.