Some Praise for the Mundane

Office life can be mundane, but there is nothing wrong with mundanity.

Having said that, there is no Rosetta Stone for human relations. If I go into the office, and I do not understand what one of my employees is doing or why, the channels of interpretation are constrained and limited, even if underpinned by that illusory quality of ‘common sense’.

This is usually adequate for us all to get by, but I am sure that there are motives and intents that are entirely untranslatable - alien, indecipherable - from one mind to the next. The office provides a mundane (see the Latin ‘mundi’, meaning world; hence the mundane is ‘of the world’) framework within which such delicately balanced relations are stepped out.

I think this is why nothing ever surprises me, in work or in life.

Certainly, no co-worker or employee can surprise me with their actions or their decisions. Another individual’s motivation and intention is far too opaquely formed to allow for predictability, so with little or no expectation of such a thing, why should I be surprised?

And yet, somehow, we manage to work and live alongside each other day by day.

This is more evidence of the endless, messy compromises that form the fabric of our lives. They are ragged, but enough.