I’ve been on a few calls this year where people haven’t been able to even feign enthusiasm. It’s the first time in my career I can remember when people have been this “over it”. I’ve been reflecting on this trend and have some thoughts about how we can all get through January. It comes down to poise. POISE. Or as Kramer said on Seinfeld, coaching Miss America…
“If you stumble, if you hesitate, you can kiss the crown goodbye! Now if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, poise counts!”
If this sounds unsympathetic it isn’t meant to be. It might also sound like I’m a 42-year-old man from a country famous for its stiff upper lip. English people learn rarely to betray emotion. It can land you in trouble to be too honest about what’s going on beneath the surface. It’s not a fashionable perspective to say we should fake it a bit.
I do understand the burnout. I get the exhaustion. Particularly when you’re working for certain causes. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the way we communicate, it’s that at times of real challenge, how we do it helps. In fact, it can be particularly helpful to act unflustered when the chips are down. Sidney Poitier died last week and I loved Charles Blow’s description of dinner with him:
As I approached the table, Poitier greeted me with a blinding smile, the kind that beacons and beguiles, the kind that makes you feel that you have known a complete stranger your whole life. He insisted that I sit next to him. Poitier was the center of gravity in that room, as evidenced by all the craning necks and slyly lifted phones trying to sneak pictures. From beginning to end that evening, Poitier whispered slick, salty jokes to me with the devilish satisfaction of a schoolboy. He was 87 at the time.
One can imagine how dazzling he would have been. And this is an actor accused of being an Uncle Tom for failing to embody more Black anger during civil rights. At the same time, as the Times wrote in its coverage of his death, he understood his role in history.
“It’s a choice, a clear choice,” Mr. Poitier said of his film parts in a 1967 interview. “If the fabric of the society were different, I would scream to high heaven to play villains and to deal with different images of Negro life that would be more dimensional. But I’ll be damned if I do that at this stage of the game.”
I’m also thinking of Betty White. She had the wit to die moments before People Magazine ran a cover story on her hundredth birthday. I can only imagine the trials she went through coming of age as a star growing up in Los Angeles. And yet.
There’s a difference between poise and keeping it all in. I recognize there are times when it can be strategic to air one’s wounds. I also know that stuffing one’s problems down isn’t a sensible long term strategy for mental health. But my suggestion for January 2022 is to compartmentalize.
Or, as a former news editor of mine put it in New Orleans: “Before you know it, Mardi Gras is around the corner. Then it’s Jazz Fest. Thanksgiving. And then, it’s Christmas all over again!”
Title image courtesy of Very British Problems on Instagram.
