Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We tend to inflate events when we participate in them. We do this at our peril in professional as well as personal situations.

1. The 2020 election was one of the most important in history. And I voted in it.
2. The pandemic was one of the biggest events in the history of mankind. And I lived through it.
3. The experimental results last week were more important than anything preceding them. And I conducted the experiments.

Hmmm. See a pattern? The truly big and important and wonderful things all have one thing in common: and I was there.

The Presidential election of 1900—the first of the century—a pittance. McKinley and Bryan? Really? Nothing there. It ushered in the American century: the Wright brothers, Coca Cola, Elvis, Disney, Hollywood. Small stuff, huh? And I didn’t vote in it.

Well, maybe we exaggerate our presence in some of these things. But that isn’t important.

Go back to item #3 in the list above. This “And I was There” concept applies to professional situations. Conferences I attended, experiments I conducted, books I read, books I wrote, conversations involving me: do these professional events overshadow ones where I wasn’t present? Do all significant ideas involve me? Does someone else’s idea pale in comparison?

Ego. Self. All that psychological stuff. Meaningless. I mean sure, those folks are nice, but they aren’t, I mean they don’t, oh, and I wasn’t there. I wasn’t one of T H E M so their ideas aren’t. Hmmm. Maybe there is something to this.

And it must be important because I was there.