4. Power Dynamics: Then and Now?

For the rest of us, I wonder, how much has social status changed?

I just had a talk with an old friend yesterday, and we remembered, how difficult it was to survive in our secondary school, and how, ironically, it resembled the corporate world.

In business, especially in your typical office where subordinates and bosses rule and don’t rule, how different has it been compared to younger years? If you were fortunate or unfortunate enough to have been exposed to horrible power dynamics, how little and how much is the same?

You still got your ever-present ‘ocheseras’, the numero uno back-stabbers and fire-starters. And then you’ve got your best pal, or at least the person you think who’s got your back. If the relationship backfires, that’s even more disheartening. But in some cases, if not often, you still got your best bud supporting you, or cheering you on in OTs now, or science projects then.

You’ve got your bully, or bullies. (Sometimes the same jocks.) Boy, do they make a reincarnation or what. Worse yet if they’re the same set of people! (the latter idea was inspired by Hollywood, but let it be assured that the first is entirely based on reality, existing in different offices, as discussed and shared with my own friends.)

You have the hot, attractive female schoolmate, future tense, officemate, and the jocks, the bullies and the rest of the office population drools when she passes by. She could very well be the boss, perhaps the executive assistant of the boss, or one of the assistants. She could be anybody, yes; one thing in common though: boys want her, and girls envy her.

But isn’t it strange, how undesirable power dynamics could still exist in the realm of what ought to be the ‘adult’ world? What does it tell us?

Assumptions: that ‘adulthood’, once reached, cannot be equated to maturity.If you find yourself exposed in a scenario where your office feels like a blast from a horrid past, then something’s wrong with the group you’re working with. Or, you haven’t changed one bit.

Then again, is that a bad thing? What you were then, and what you are now? How far have you gone? Changed? Reached? Accomplished?

Are you less forgiving, or even more considerate? Your virtues, values and principles, have they added up, improved, changed? How?

Do you find yourself in a favourable position, where morality is at stake, how did you react before, and how do you react now?

The things is, as much as we want to redeem ourselves from a possible unfavourable past, or a pallid one, or improve further from a great one, we can’t control the growth and reaction of others, not as much as we can control ourselves.

The only sure control and improvement you can reign on is yourself.

So I ask myself sometimes, how was I then, and how am I now?

Quite surprisingly, from separate people, they tell me,

‘You haven’t changed.’