Vulcans and Klingons

I've said this before, and I guess I'm gonna have to say it again. My side of the family are like Klingons. This my husband and I agree on, with great pleasure and deep appreciation. I know without a doubt that should you mess with one of my siblings, they will rip your heart out with their (sharpened) teeth. My sibs think of me as the soft one, the weak one. This I know, too. Perhaps I am. Maybe not. What if I am just the quiet one? These things are all relative, you know.

My husband's family are like Vulcans. They are quiet and measured. Logic rules over the heart. If you mess with them, you might think you won; however, you will never know the jokes and disdain that will follow you for the rest of your life.

Here is the basic difference between our families. Klingons want you to know you've been destroyed. That's the be all and the end all. In T's family, the villain's awareness of their own destruction doesn't matter. Vulcans are not threatened by the continued existence of their vanquished and diminished enemies. What the miscreant thinks isn't important, and his/her awareness is inconsequential. It is an interesting difference, don't you think? 

We have tempered and changed each other over the years. I no longer walk up to strangers and tell them I like their hair. I rarely jump up from my airline seat to scream at the person behind me for kicking my seat. He has learned to apologize and works hard on the empathy thing. This is the truth: together we are better than we are apart. 

I still can't walk away from a fight, but I am now self-aware enough to wish I could.

Bon Voyage!

When you work for a large organization you are expected to fit in. After a number of years of putting on your game face every workday morning you become accustomed to being less of an individual. It starts to feel normal being one of many, of being part of a team. Individuality can be problematic in the workplace. Sometimes I felt being "professional" actually meant being generic.

It took a while, but eventually I surrendered to my place in the larger scheme of things. I settled into a job skill that seemed creative to me.  I made it work.

I am not complaining. I enjoyed working and I was happy to be part of something bigger than myself. However, I am relieved to be done with that part of my life. I enjoy being retired. I can finally be myself everyday, all the time. That is a big change from being a worker bee.

I love the character “Seven of Nine” from Star Trek’s Voyager. Voyager ran for 7 seasons, but the first three were a bit clunky. Seven of Nine was introduced in season 4, and absolutely "made" the series from then on.

As a young child she and her human family had been forcibly and physically assimilated into the Borg, an alien cybernetic society representing the ultimate workforce collective: The Hive Mind.

The Borg Collective organized their technologically enhanced workforce into teams of 9 "drones." Borg do not have individuality or names, but her team designation was Seven of Nine. Eventually the all-too-human crew of the Starship Voyager captured her and liberated her from the collective.

Before liberation she was the perfect employee, absolutely without individual will or personal reflection. The Borg Collective was a monster of efficiency! The post-liberation Seven of Nine struggled to rediscover what it meant to be human, what it meant to think or act as an individual. Seven did not always approve of the lack of efficiency that arose when one acted alone, but she was intrigued by humanity. She thought she would give individuality a try.

A dear friend of mine retired last Friday. Yesterday was the first scheduled workday she did not get up and go to work outside her home. I just asked her how she was doing and she said she felt "undefined."  That is the perfect word to describe the early days/months/years of retirement: undefined.  After years of being part of a complex collective effort what are we when we stand alone?

If her experience of retirement is like mine, it will seem like vacation for a while. Retirement isn't a vacation, though. There is still work to be done. You need to redefine yourself, not as part of an organization but as an individual.

An look inside the Apollo 14 Command Module at the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida