I am often the first (or one of the first) to come into the office most days. I’d get in earlier than most and so I’d pick up the newspaper from the front door, and take it up to my office.
This morning, the papers were bunched together. Other tenants in this building have their papers delivered by the same news agency, I guess. So I picked up the bunch, picked out ours, and left the others on top of the mailbox pigeon holes.
As I did that, a surge of nostalgia swept over me. I suddenly recalled those days when I’d be up very early in the morning, pick up loads of newspapers, and go on a delivery run through the neighbourhood, through the streets of Kingsford and Kensington in Sydney. I’d do this several mornings each week, before I started the day as a uni student in UNSW.
That was one of the jobs I did when I was a student. I did other jobs. Print shop in the Law Faculty (working for a wonderful lady – Aileen Argue), arranging uni halls for exams, etc., moving furniture for faculty staff, a porter and cleaner in the Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick, and most of all, in the Sydney Fish Markets in Pyrmont. I needed to. So sometimes, I felt like I was either neglected or being taken for granted.
I sometimes felt folks from home thought I’d cope ok (including financially), so they never asked or offered to send money. I wasn’t unhappy doing those jobs, but I sometimes felt like I was being taken for granted.
I felt that way last night – being taken for granted – which may have precipitated my nostalgia while picking up the papers this morning.
Last night I got a couple of messages on my phone from a mate. We had made a tiny side investment some months ago. The message said he had sold the investment. The investment was in money now (having been out of it for a long time), and while I didn’t mind not holding on some more, I was annoyed he simply did what he did, without a word prior.
I felt like he had taken me for granted. Like I didn’t matter. Small as the investment was, it was a good sum of money (13 g’s in cost) and I would have gone along with whatever he had wanted to do. It also would not have mattered that the investment was still appreciating and the return would have been better had we waited. I would have gone along with whatever he wanted to do. But I didn’t appreciate being taken for granted – I had no idea he was going to do what he did. I felt like if I was a different business associate of his (among his many), he would have dealt with me differently.
There has been many occasions now, where I felt like I am merely a shadow in most situations. People look right past me. I don’t matter. I kept saying to myself I matter to God – He created me in His image and so that is how much I matter. That settles me.
Sometimes however, the less important (or significant) valuation gives me the tish. My mind allows, sometimes, the emotions to rule and I allow myself to feel the tish.
Ante 