Text and Hubris

I had planned on eating my lunch in the park yesterday, but the rain put an end to that. Instead, I wandered downstairs and look for a seat in the work cafeteria. It still amazes how much like high school this place is. Here, I am a youngster. Most of my colleagues are in their 40′s and yet there are the managers sitting at one table, the go-getters at another, and the social butterflies at yet another. I note this as further evidence that the social divisions of a nation, a school, and a workplace are all the same.

With that cheerful thought in mind, I almost think of tossing my meal and heading upstairs. I think it would be easier than to watch this. I am hungry, though, and I can’t will myself to throw away food simply due to my own frustration. I sit at a table far removed from the rest, pull my sandwich out of the brown paper bag I’ve been carrying with me and commence eating.

They all talk at once. I listen and I watch and I catalog a hundred conversations about nothing. Jim is ranting about politics, George rambles on about his ongoing home repairs while Angie and Chad are whispering in the back almost too conspiratorially considering they are both married and not to each other. This latter issue would count as gossip here. I can already see the social butterflies, more vampires than butterflies, watching closely.

I know I should get up and leave. Upstairs there is nothing to do but log into the same systems and do the same thing I have been doing. The new technology has left us behind. Now, I work on 10 yr. old platforms that just won’t die. Now, I watch high school politics play out in a nearly empty cafeteria that used to house hundreds.

This is my life.

And yet, there is always that whisper in my ear. That echo that says,

“It doesn’t have to be…”