This is a Story of Dysfunction Masquerading as Enlightenment or at Least Intelligence

People often told me, when I was younger, that I needed to have thicker skin. They wanted me to have skin like one of those red playground balls so everything would bounce off of me without affecting me. They didn’t want me to feel anything. I wanted to feel everything. I wanted my skin to be translucent and transparent. To let things in and to let things out. To sift out what I wanted to keep from what was offered. To excrete what I didn’t want through the same porous membrane. They wanted me to pretend. I wanted to be authentic. They weren’t interested in my observations, just in my obedience. They were quite picky about who I should listen to, who I should obey, who I should believe. I wanted to make those decisions for myself. So I did. I was told I wasn’t a team player. It seemed to me that their definition of a team player was someone who spouted what they were told to spout. Someone who didn’t think for themselves. Someone who didn’t think. “Who do you think you are?” implied that I had no business thinking for myself or of myself. They expected team players to be willing to do unethical things for the good of the team. But it wasn’t good for the team. It was good for the people who ran the team. The called some of us team leaders. Those were the people who zombie walked to the beat of the prescribed team expectations. None of this was good for any of us except for the few people making most of the money and spewing the majority of the nonsense. People fell over each other spouting this nonsense back as if it were verbal mana sprinkled with Philosopher Stone dust. Intelligent questions were categorized as uneducated babble. Observations and discoveries were labeled “off track” or “derisive”. Some people’s eyes darted here and there like junkies looking for a fix. Their drug, approval from those in charge. Their role to play the part of someone totally convinced that all this fantasy was truth or at least reality. That the house of cards they were being asked to inhabit was earthquake proof and LEED certified. I didn’t stay. I worked hard to help as many as I could before I left. I offered golden nuggets. They called them turds. It wasn’t about who I was. It was about not being who they expected me to be. They were disappointed. It wasn’t that I was uneducable but rather than my thinner skin, my gossamer coating, resisted conversion like a chef approved, high priced, non-stick frying pan.

Cinse Bonino
2024