by Sylvia Schlesinger
Many years ago, I held the position of Personnel and Office Manager for a mid-sized importing business. I reported directly to the controller, who, by the way, considered his title a summarized job description. Despite this fact, we got along because he treated me with respect and turned to me for input. I remember him fondly.
Despite these fond memories and despite working closely with him for seven years, one incident stands out. It came to mind the other day as I was re-reading something in Section II of The Avatar Course.
For his review, I had given the Controller a key letter I had written. Everything was acceptable to him except for my choice of one word. I had concluded the letter with my recommendation: “In light of...I feel...” My boss told me that feel did not sound professional. According to him it should be replaced with think.
I made the change but was disturbed by a sense that it was apparently unacceptable to be perceived as feeling. From then on each time I wrote something in my business woman identity, I had to stop when I naturally would have written feel and replace it (reluctantly) with think. It felt like I was out of integrity with myself, somehow telling myself that it was not okay to feel in the office. I had been given a picture, of what I should be to carry around when I was at work. I continued to use the word think so as not to create waves in what appeared to be an accepted attitude in business.
Several years later I took The Avatar Course. Upon returning to the business world after the course, now in a position with another firm, I faced the word feel from an even deeper, experiential perspective which one discovers during The Avatar Course. Again working within the parameters of the editorial edict to write as a professional, I felt the misalignment between my inclination to feel and the prescribed think stance. Then a realization hit: I believe.
Initially I would write I believe with some hesitation. Would this be acceptable in the business realm? Later it flowed from my pen naturally without any sense of creating a conflict between my professional self vs. me. I don’t know whether I discreated this dichotomy of selves, the idea that professionals prickle at the notion of feeling, or just created that believing was open to the reader’s interpretation.
Of course, the entire question was my creation in the first place. While it may seem a small matter that one statement from a former boss led me on an expedition in experiencing a separate artificial identity, one that never felt (there’s that word again) true to me. Avatar helped me to bring these separate selves together, in harmony. I no longer had to be anything but me. What a relief!
So I am left wondering: is it just a case of semantics, or is it more? What do you believe?Sylvia Schlesinger, New York
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