Always the Mystery

The longer I live in Thailand, the more I realize how little I understand but also appreciate how much I learn.  Here is ever the mystery. 

As I hinted in my last entry, in the Land of Smiles, I do see before me people behaving badly or just not knowing how to behave themselves when facing difficult, unknown or unwanted situations.  My man of last week sat with anger for a month because his social junior handed him a document in the wrong way.  Incredible! 

There again, I am on the bus to work this morning and once again I see a conductor, a lowly, poor woman on the social scale here in Thailand, act with great social control.  What did she do?  She barked out her order to standing passengers to take empty seats and they did, silently and without question.  Back home, they might tell her to stick it.

Anyway, back to my senior manager at work.  What he told me more than once and with deep feeling was that this went against Thai culture which makes clear demands on how you deal with your senior.  Over such a minor happening, the anger sat with him and turned into hatred for his junior.  I have to say that after being here 10 years, I still do not get such behavior but it is here.  As for hating a person for such an affront, that just boggles my mind. 

I try to make sense of such an issue in life but I can't and my mind can easily become disturbed in trying to put it together.  So it is best to approach in a more healthy way, standing back and accepting what I can and cannot do.  There is no way I can act alone against culture.  So I decided to leave such a hot, workplace issue and personal problems of the manager in the hands of my boss, the bishop.  As he told once very wisely - Let Thais deal with Thais.  And so I did.  It seems to work, making life livable for those concerned.  This does not say that it resolves anything - it just lets ones face the day. 

Then I see how I behave badly in different ways and for different reasons.  I remember my own bad behavior and acknowledge how no one is better than or above another. 

In a stressful work situation with the affronted Thai male senior, I act in my role to listen to him, show some concern and deal with the situation as best I could, but as the "boss".  My failure was to take on the mission to create perfect order.  This was doomed to failure and this approach had disastrous affects on me personally outside the encounters I had with my man in my work scene, I saw how I was acting impatiently and becoming anxious about what next in my day.  None of this was the way to go. 

It then struck me yet again that it is okay to be vulnerable and fragile.  I have to give myself permission to be human.  I may be the boss in this work situation or the priest, being the shepherd, but I also need others to be a priest, a shepherd to me.  I think we are shepherds together, looking after each other as needed and that situation of need will arise for all of us, one way or another along the way.  We are all in the same boat and no one is ever the captain very long.

Then I read Pope Francis today.  He agrees with me, wise man that he is.  He said in this week's general audience:
How many times we say: "But he is a sinner. he has done this, and that ...".
And you? Each one of us should ask himself: "Yes, he is a sinner, and I?"
We must not be afraid of our miseries.  Each one of us has his own.