My boss had a Buddha* on his table.
It swayed all day.
Nodding at everything.
Committing to nothing.
The boss did too.
He nodded through presentations.
Through disagreements.
Even half-baked ideas.
We left his cabin, light.
Convinced we had been heard.
His memo arrived later.
Cold. Precise. Merciless.
Shredding everything we thought was agreed.
The nod was never agreement.
It was habit.
A way to buy time.
A way to be polite.
We stopped trusting the nod.
Soon, we stopped trusting him.
Years later, I caught myself doing it too.
Nodding in meetings I disagreed with.
Buying the same silence I once resented.
The Buddha* was honest, at least.
It swayed to the wind and meant nothing.
We sway too.
Pretending to listen.
When was the last time you nodded and didn't mean it?
"Drop a 🙂 if you've been the boss with the Buddha*.”
* A small correction for the curious:
That swaying figure isn't the Buddha. It is Budai, a Chinese monk, just a happy old man, amused by everything. Nothing to do with Gautam Buddha.
Fits the story rather well.
Reel version on Instagram.
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