The Buddha, the Boss, and the Nod

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.

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Grief: The Receipt Love Leaves Behind

Grief follows loss.  Always has.

But it's not just sadness. 

It's your brain buffering, while your heart sits empty. 

Confusion, dressed up as ache.

It shows up, when someone leaves. 

When a dream quietly dies. 

When life changes course overnight. 

Sometimes, it storms in. 

Some other time, it sneaks in, weeks later.

No timetable. 

No app to track. 

And it isn't only for the dead. 

Or a career that never happened. 

Or a version of you that quietly changed. 

Or a relationship still breathing, but nothing like it was.

Nobody sends flowers for those. 

Doesn't mean they don't ache.

Here's the thing: 

Grief is a receipt. 

Proof, something was real. 

Proof, it mattered enough to hurt when it left.

You can't return it. 

You can't get a refund. 

You just learn to carry it.

Talking helps. 

Writing helps. 

Sometimes just sitting with it helps.

Refuse grief.  And you'd have to refuse love too. 

Is that living?

If you could erase the receipt, 

would you erase what it proved?

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Learn And Grow With Teega

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