Rain in the Morning, Showers in the Afternoon

Henry, an organizational consultant, seeks to find a balance between hope and despair, cynicism and idealism

Henry, a six foot two middle-aged man with a small paunch that he resents but can’t seem to get rid of, is standing in front of the mirror wondering where his hair went and why his toenails look thicker than he remembered.  Henry often does a detailed inventory of his various body parts as a prelude to getting into the shower and officially starting his daily routine.  Since the inspection has become a part of the routine, it is interesting that Henry does not include it in his official self-account of what he does every morning.  It’s as if he is taken by surprise each morning by the evidence of his aging process.  And there is a sense in which his not acknowledging this daily ritual is another aspect of his denial that he long ago left that stage of youthful vigor that he constantly tries to maintain as the context of his current self-awareness.

 

 He turns on the shower and enters the cubicle that provides the transition from sleepy resentment of daily consciousness into the forward moving impetus of his “responsible” persona.  The water washes away his world-weariness and ushers in his practical mindset: 

 

“What do I have to do today? 

Have I forgotten something important? 

When is my first meeting? 

How many carbs can I eat?  Should I eat? 

How much insulin do I have to shoot up?” 

 

He turns off the shower and grabs his big towel to begin the drying process.  This is followed by the usual suspects �" shaving, teeth brushing, beard trimming and pill taking.  Next comes the dressing ordeal �" do I have any pants that are not too tight?  I’ll wear my shirt outside my pants to de-emphasize my belly.  Henry dresses, checks himself one more time in the mirror (not bad), and moves into breakfast mode.

 

He checks on Sarah on his way to the kitchen.  She is in bed with her face buried in her pillow; she has thrown off her down comforter to deal with the menopausal heat that descends on her body every morning shortly after awakening.  The sight of her naked body sprawled across the bed elicits in Henry a stew of emotions:  lust and visions of mounting her and filling every available orifice; tenderer feelings of adoration and appreciation of her sweet and attractive body; sympathy and frustration about his powerlessness to relieve the discomfort caused by her body’s dysfunctional thermostat.  Sarah has recently stopped taking estrogen out of a fear of possible cancerous side effects and this has brought on all sorts of menopausal pleasantries, night sweats and insomnia being some of the worst because of the cumulative impact of sleepless nights.  Henry approaches Sarah to give her a good morning kiss; she puckers up immediately and greets his lips with hers.  (Things could be worse).

 

Henry settles on cereal (with strawberries) and coffee (25 grams of carb requiring 6 units of insulin).  Maybe a slice of low carb toast?  Yeah, OK (25 more grams of carbs, 6 more units of insulin) with just a little butter.  Great.  Now off to work but first kiss Sarah goodbye �" she’s snoring but rises immediately to greet his lips and wish him a good day.  Down to the car and leave for work.

 

The ride to work is fraught with major decisions �" go the short way with risk of heavy traffic on the approach to the bridge; go the longer way that avoids most of the approach traffic; or go the illegal way and cut in front of the long entry line.  Just as he decides which way to go and slides his key into the ignition, Henry remembers that he must pick up Graham, his new carpool buddy.  With Graham, Henry gets to bypass the entry traffic to the highway by using the HOV line.  What a feeling of triumph he will have as he whizzes by the waiting traffic.  And he is contributing to a healthier ecology; to feel virtuous and victorious is too much to ask before the day has hardly started.

 

Graham enters the car wearing the official high tech work uniform of jeans and a slightly ratty shirt; Henry wears a variation on the same theme.  Henry loves that he no longer has to dress up in a three-piece suit and can be comfortable at work. Of course, he does miss the opportunity to make statements about who he is through his tie selection; it is much more difficult to declare who you are through subtle choices of jeans and polo shirts, where the only real competition is about who can dress down the furthest by wearing the most distressed clothing; authentic distressing has brought the cost of jeans to the $100 level. 

 

Henry is wearing Calvins that have gotten difficult to button at the waist.  He swears to himself (again) that he will start a workout program tomorrow and begin to lose the 20 pounds he has recently put on.  Henry lost 25 lbs at the onset of his diabetes diagnosis two years ago to achieve a weight he had not been at since college.  While the diabetes was both a psychological shock and a narcissistic wound, the weight loss was a joy; Henry is very much his body image and finding most of his clothes much too large was a euphoric experience.  But slowly Henry has put his weight back on so that now he feels twice cursed �" by the weight and by the need to monitor his food intake, stick needles into himself 4 times a day, and feel guilty when he gives in to his passion for starch and sugar.  Henry hates to feel deprived and now he is either deprived or suicidal. 

 

Henry and Graham pull up to the office building they both work in.  It’s a high tech company in which most employees are in their twenties or thirties.  Henry and Graham are in their sixties so they get to experience their aging process continuously as they work with senior executives who are 20 years their juniors.  Many of these executives are also millionaires who have been with the company since they graduated college and who have been the beneficiaries of the company’s phenomenal success.  Henry and Graham are late arrivals and they, of course, have missed out on the organization’s heyday.  So they shuffle off to their windowless offices to start another day at work.

 

Henry’s office is in its usual disarray; papers and books on every surface, shelves piled with the discarded notes and ideas that at one time seemed to hold great promise, the spoor of a bureaucratic existence.  Henry sits in his chair, leans back and reflects on his to-do’s for the day.  As he begins to write these down on a random sheet of notepaper that will quickly join its comrades on a desk pile, Henry is interrupted in his deliberations by Claire, his colleague and office neighbor.  Claire is a bright, ambitious PhD / MBA whose simple aspiration is to rise in the organization and be recognized as a talented and valuable contributor to the organization’s success.  This desire to be acknowledged by the already acknowledged is the lifeblood of the enterprise; it engenders 12 hour days and tumultuous spiritual ups and downs as the behemoth either bestows its validation of one’s existence through bonuses, raises and promotions or denies these and, by inference, one’s worth and promise in the world.  All must bow to these deities who administer the organization’s benefices; they provide a critical source of meaning and direction to all who sign up to play.

 

Claire is also a rather attractive young woman, tall with dark eyes and hair and a willingness to scatter profanity through her speech that suggests an openness that delights Henry; the combination of smarts and raunchiness and bodily wares does not escape Henry’s attention and imagination.  He often considers what it would be like to make a move on Claire; his enthusiasm for such fantasies is cooled somewhat by his realization that even if he succeeded, the outcome would ultimately be awkwardness and a confrontation, once again, with the sheer everydayness of the reality of such encounters; the emotional distress, the banal physicality and the effort of taking seriously the hopes and dreams of a young aspirant to the holy grail of vice presidenthood.  Henry returns his awareness to the room and to Claire, feeling old and disillusioned.

 

“What’s up?” asks Henry as Claire climbs into one of the two chairs that Henry has salvaged to decorate his office and entertain his guests.  Claire begins to berate Fred, their bosses” boss, for his stupidity, incompetence and general inability to meet Claire’s high standard for anyone in a position of authority above her.  Claire has a long history of disappointment in her elders and she seamlessly moves her obsessive disappointment and rage from one authority to the next as the company stirs the pot of continual reorganization.  Henry delights in pointing out Claire’s need to hold on to unrealistic expectations about her superiors, which inevitably lead to disappointment and outrage.  He wonders aloud what Claire would have to think about if she stopped obsessing about the ineptitude of her various bosses. 

 

Claire stops complaining and reflects on Henry’s question.  While she is thinking, Henry too considers how his need to constantly undermine the meaning system and authority structure of his environment is a sustaining force for him.  He is not, he realizes, without passion for what he does; he focuses only on his impact on his clients and avidly resists the temptation to seek approval from his superiors.  He is also, he realizes, very hooked on his own physical attractiveness (or lack of such).  It is very important that others, particularly women, find him attractive.  And he is not indifferent to other’s assessments of his creativity or brilliance either.  His taunting of Claire has led Henry to consider what he is really up to in his life.  The discomfort this engenders quickly moves Henry away from his own reflections and back onto Claire, who is now responding to his question.  “You know,” Claire says, “I see that you are right about my constant harping on Fred’s and others’ inadequacy but it really bugs me that these people who are supposed to be providing a model and direction for us continually let us down.  You may be right that I have to give up my high expectations of these people but what do I do with the fact that what they do and don’t do has an impact on me?”   Henry’s response to this is therapeutic for both Henry and Claire.  He says, “ It may be that the only person who can be enough for us, is ourselves.”

 

Claire has heard this kind of wise man talk from Henry before, and, stoked up on her daily skinny triple cappuccino, she practically spits back at Henry, “That Siddhartha s**t doesn’t cut it anymore �" not in this century at least, Henry.  If you think that Fred’s capacity, or should I say “incapacity”, has no impact on you, well, think a few months ahead. What’s going to happen when ‘lame-a*s Fred’ stands in front of his peers and has to defend your performance? Fred’s peers also think he is a lame-a*s and his assessment of any of us won’t have any weight with the people who count around here. God, I never thought about it before, but working for a lame-a*s is worse than being a lame-a*s yourself. I need to find another job in another group.”

 

Henry loves it when his graybeard pontificating makes the young Turks in the office go red in the face. There is something so predictable about this choreographed moment.  He is the one with the hard earned wisdom, the one with a ready contemptuous response for anyone who suggests that the “system” has any credibility.  She is youth, impatiently searching for that algorithm of success that will open doors, remove ambiguities, and win favor for her.  Henry remembers being her age, but he sure was not wearing a suit then.  Fresh out of grad school, with a Ph.D. in social science, in those exciting years when SDS and the Black Panthers were planning the second American revolution, Henry remembers avidly debating whether it was more effective to organize the middle class or join with the working class to bring down capitalist society.    He chuckles to himself, remembering his concerns in those days (“Am I going to get drafted, emigrate to Canada or go to jail for burning my draft card?”)  Fast forward 25 years and here is Claire with her petty materialistic concerns about getting ahead. What will someone like Claire look back on later in life and see as being meaningful, he wonders….

 

As if she could read his thoughts, Claire continues her rant: ”or maybe I should get out of here altogether and do something meaningful like join the Peace Corps or make micro-loans to some women in an African village?’  Henry scratches his beard and responds, “Would that make you happy?  ”  As he says this, Henry inwardly cringes at his condescending tone and dismissive response to Clair’s wish for a more meaningful life.  He knows that his response was more directed at himself and his feeling that his life has lost much of the idealism and grandiosity that he once nurtured in himself and that his need to attack the “practicality” of Claire’s fantasy is really a need to curb his own disappointment with the direction his life has taken.  He reaches out to Claire to comfort her and his own misgivings: “But maybe we have a chance to do something important here if we can stay focused �" the people we work with affect the lives of many others who look to them for guidance and approval.  If we can help them be more empathic and appreciative of others, we stand to improve the quality of many lives in this organization and that is a really positive opportunity for us.”    Claire, ever a loyal disciple of Henry’s more cynical and sardonic persona, stomps out of Henry’s office with her parting shot: “Right.  And maybe we can also get them to sell their Porsches and BMW’s and donate the proceeds to world hunger.”

 

Henry returns to his computer, a little saddened by this interaction with Claire.  He knows there is truth to both his cynicism and his sense of possibility that things can be better and that he can make a difference.  He worries about his impact on Claire; he does not want to contribute to her bitterness and diiillusionment but he also does not want to be inauthentic or Pollyannaish.   He reaches into his desk to retrieve a candy bar that he hid there earlier in the week.  He eats it without tasting it while ruminating on the unreconciled beliefs and feelings that litter his mental landscape.

 

Looking down at the candy wrapper, he notices the $2.35 price tag for this 4 oz bar of organic, single-origin chocolate. Waiting in the cash register line at the supermarket over the weekend, he could not avoid reaching out to the rough hewn, sepia toned wrapper bar while waiting. He wonders what’s worse: paying so much for the chocolate, getting sucked in by the earthy wrapper, or not being able to even enjoy it?  Yet another fractal moment…those repeating geometric patterns which can be repeatedly divided into smaller parts which are smaller copies of the whole.  Not tasting the fine chocolate is another instance of Henry’s inability to either accept the choices he has made or to enjoy his life for what it is at a much grander scale. Sigh. His aggressive tone with Claire really is all about his own unquiet state.  He prides himself on his ability to teach, connect, understand and expand perspectives. His students remember his words, write him letters years later thanking him for his insight and ideas, but then he stumbles. Something tweaks him and his confidence freefalls. This is not quite a daily routine, but it happens with great regularity nonetheless. “I can be such an a*****e,” he sighs again. At moments like this, he would happily swap some of his wisdom for the simple ability to really savor the complex flavors in the chocolate and just taste it.

 

Claire has retreated to her office. She wishes she had relaxed more over the weekend. Her fiancé Todd and some of their friends went cycling on Saturday up in the Cascades and her thighs are very sore.  She saw very little of Todd other than his spandexed a*s as he powered ahead of her; she wound up shamefully walking her bike up to the summit. She was the last of the group of 6 to make it to the top and hated the feeling that she was last. Claire, subtly but ardently competitive, does not want to be last in anything. 

 

And before her second cup of coffee on a Monday, she has already swallowed a dose of Vitamin H, unsolicited advice from Henry. Does he really think he has the keys to the castle of life? Henry is smart, there’s no doubt about it. Rarely does a meeting go by where he does not say something that she is tempted to write down.  And he does care about people and has high standards most of the time.  So why does she look at him and see a Ford Pinto, a volatile vessel from another century?  Todd once met Henry at a Friday unwinder and could not believe that this was the guy Claire seemed to talk about more than anyone at work.  “Overhead…” Todd had scoffed when talking about Henry after the party.

 

The day proceeds for Henry, taking its usual course between boring meetings, uninspired memo writing and daydreaming.  Henry spends much of the day alternating between the reality of what the job requires of him and the fantasy of living a life that truly is meaningful and fulfilling.  He hates sitting on the fence between wanting more meaning and clinging to the security of the status quo.  He wants to leap off this fence into the void but is afraid that wherever he lands will be as empty as where he started.  

 

Henry gathers up his briefcase and papers he will fail to read when he gets home.  He waves good bye to Claire on his way out, considering one last time, for this day, what it would be like to get it on with her.  Then pushes forward to find Graham and go home to Sarah. 

 

Author's Note

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