My Role Models

I am a learner. This was established with the help of The Strength Finder 2.0, so I have it officially certified by Tom Rath.  When I look back being a learner by character explains some of my past heartaches and disappointments. When the knowledge of my immediate family started to be insufficient to direct my development further I needed new role models. With my little experience, I had at the time, when I established or imagined that a person knows more than I do in some area, I put this person immediately on my mental pedestal. If it was a handsome man, I fell in love with him. Romantic little girl. Luckily or not, I have not met many men worthy of my affection, so my falling in love was not that frequent. This relates, of course, to times when I was in my teens. Sometimes I was not impressed by much but, as a true learner, I tried to learn new skills even such that were not worth learning. Like smoking cigarettes, for example. This was actually plane silly, but I was eighteen, so it was my job to be silly. At least in some areas. And the man that influenced me in this field later became my husband. I obeyed even before I made my vows. 

When I was in my mid twenties and had the brain like a razor (so sharp,  not always painfully cutting) I worked as a computer programmer. I was actually headhunted by one of the best consulting programmers in the country. It looks that I am boasting, maybe I am, but it is nice to realize good things that I did not comprehend earlier. Anyhow, this boasting is even relevant to the story I want to tell. The consultant, let's call him Tad, became my manager and I was happily programming away under his auspices. He was really a very clever person and at some stage he was sent to France on some sort of professional exchange. In his absence two of his friends and colleagues took over management of the unit. I was given Tad’s projects to complete. After few months the man came back in a rather poor state. I am not sure what his problem was, but there were talks about psychological or maybe even psychiatric problems. He supposedly behaved in strange way. Myself, I could not see much difference in him. He seemed a bit depressed and silent, but when we talked he seemed the same as he always had been. My political knowledge was none at that time, so I did not connect Tad’s situation with potential involvement in (or of) communistic secret service. There were some talks about Tad suspecting that his conversations were tapped even at home. I do not mean only telephone conversations but bugs installed at his home. Such things were done and feared in those times in Poland.

Now, I suspect that his assignment had a price of cooperation with the communistic government and that he refused it. This would have implications of losing a well paid job. He lost it. I do not know what had happened to him after that.  His friends and colleagues who belonged to the top three people in the company did not defend him and in fact increased their influence and income after Tad was removed. They were a married couple, who earlier I placed on my professional pedestal together with Tad. Something did not seem right even if I could not put my finger on it. 

The reason why this story came to my mind is the memory of my agonizing for months over honesty of the couple, value of their “friendship” for Tad and their value as people. I had great problems with seeing them as not perfect, after all there were my role models and that implied honesty and truthfulness. The world did not seem to be well organized or maybe it was only a glitch?  I did not know how to live in such a world, so I changed the job and suppressed the memories. Until now.