by Agnes a Paris
Wed Mar 15th, 2006 at 09:31:18 AM EST
There is an interesting humorous new section in the Financial Times "your workplace woes analysed by our new office agony aunt, Lucy Kellaway"
People send their queries or respond to someone else's problem.
Today a lawyer desperately wishing his job to be "meaningful" confides to Lucy.
I never wanted to be a lawyer but now I'm stuck
There is wisdom beneath the lightness of tone, and I thought it was worth a brief diary on the relevance and importance of sharing as we all experience moments in our work life when we find ourselves stuck and at a loss to carry on.
As Lucy points out, a predicament says at least as much about the person as about the situation in itself.
It is amazing how our perception of the outer world and the way we interact with people and handle situations is influenced by our own state of spirits.
When I get depressed journalism seems pointless, when I perk up the job starts to seem better too.
Sharing our problems is therefore useful in a sense that we get acknowledgement, which matters at least as much as the advice me may be provided at this occasion.
I do not mean that we do not seek advice in the first place, but getting attention is already part of the solution.
It is rather standard that people sample pieces of advice when facing a problem, and then come up with their own solution which is the result of a maturing process not necessarily reflecting the majority opinion of those who came up with tentative solutions. We all have experienced a friend or relative asking for advice and then doing exactly quite the contrary, and us thinking with slight bitterness : what is the point in asking for help then?
The clue is that the cornerstone of human relationships is sharing.
Typically, and once again, roughly put, men tend to focus on exchanging information, whereas women would be rather inclined to focus on sharing emotions related to a situation. Hence the frequent misunderstandings and communication twists.
Sharing enables us to formalise our feelings and perceptions, and thus to put them into perspective, to build up a distance to the problem.
Realising that other people may have experienced the same also matters as it provides relief from a loneliness feeling.
