Butterfly

I have been employed by different enterprises, large and small. I never had the ambition to be a wild duck 🦆, though I typically ended up being seen, treated and described as one anyhow. How strange as I am someone who habitually avoids rather than looks for conflict. How strange to always end up being the person that the powers that be would love to hate, but can’t get beyond ignoring. It is hardly comforting that most instances only get to the stage of tolerating me while ignoring me.

There is no having friends for those not having enemies.

Wild ducks are “bad for business,” say the powers that be, enthusiastically supported by the business suits, the career hunters, the position addicts. Yet, every time I decided to leave an enterprise the drama couldn’t have been bigger. How strange that it was even worse “for business” that I would leave. Honestly, the expected disasters never actually materialized. No company ever went out of business over this maverick duck flying off.

Although I know a few people that prefer calling me a Scrum panda 🐼, wilfully choosing the path of independent Scrum Caretaker ultimately lead to me feeling more like a butterfly 🦋 today. Like a butterfly, I flap my wings. I observe, I create, I connect, I share. Like a butterfly flapping its wings I do it because it is in my nature, not because I envision specific consequences, big or small, or set goals or targets, hard or soft. Most consequences are inherently unpredictable anyhow.

More than often I see how my ideas get used and re-used without consultation, citing or other forms of attribution. I am flabbergasted by it. Likely unintended (people not thinking twice), but there is a smell of disrespect. Much worse is it when my ideas are altered, turned simplistic, changed into stereotypes, their sfumato masked and concealed in black and white boxes, when concepts are twisted, cut up, even butchered. That is… theft. No words can describe my emotions over this.

Regardless the lost art of attribution and the hurt it causes, I keep flapping my wings. Observing, creating, connecting, and sharing is in my nature. It makes no sense for a butterfly to stop flapping (or even try to). I’m not sure how that is for a wild duck.

It took time to realize, accept and embrace that most things take time, especially creating who you are. Is the tortoise 🐢 in me gradually taking control?

The toughest fight in life in the end is the fight of not having to turn bitter.

(Louis Paul Boon – “My little war,” 1947)