Try to keep problems in perspective

Without a smidgen of shame I admit I am an enthusiastic comic page reader. Comics often start my day with a laugh, but I have always found important philosophy in them, too. The good ones make you think. The great ones communicate deep truths reflecting, and even shaping, our culture.

That’s probably why Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” has always been my favorite. He is funny, wry and acerbic. Often he stops my world long enough to force me to reflect on deeper issues. He did that one day in January when he featured an encounter with the self-absorbed, throwback hippie Zonker and BD, who recently lost a leg in Iraq. Zonker doesn’t want to go to work because he’ll miss some TV shows. BD opines that things are tough all over what with his horrible nightmares and his missing leg. We then see the two men staring at each other. In the last panel Zonker says, “OK, you win, but I’m hurting, too.” BD responds, “I’d forgotten how trivial life is back here.”

With that one powerful punch line Trudeau punctured our self-importance, our selfishness and our insular view of the world. He uttered a truth that reverberates through our families and our workplaces.

Families are ripped open by parents and spouses stationed halfway around the world and sometimes dying. Frightful tsunamis devastate South Asia. Weather calamities, poverty and drugs wash over our country and we complain about a boss who doesn’t recognize our brilliance or a co-worker who won’t do things our way.

So many of us not only go about our business as if tragedy is not befalling the world, we act as if our own little workplace melodrama is worthy of national media attention. We pitch a fit and rail to associates without any sense of perspective.

I talked to a man recently about resolving some serious workplace issues. I told him he needed to concentrate on sharing his ethical values with the people he works for in hopes of gradually educating them. I heard later that, the very next day, he issued an ultimatum to his boss that if things didn’t change he was going to quit. So much for perspective! It still strikes me that at that point in the disagreement, sharing, cajoling and patience would have been a far better course than an ultimatum.

I think that fellow worked his way into an untenable box because he overestimated his own value. And he failed to realize that when we escalate the importance of routine issues we actually trivialize them. There is no denying he had a serious ethical issue that needed to be resolved, but, by creating a win-or-lose confrontation, he made the legitimate problem secondary to his theatrics.

Another man wrote with this complaint about his superiors and his peers: “As a whole, members of management are just plain stupid and have no common sense.” I am afraid the sarcasm dripped from my response when I congratulated him on being the only person in his organization possessing common sense.

It seems to me this man has fallen into a trap we all encounter. He is convinced his way is the only way and that his projects and concerns just have to be the most important problems in the workplace, if not the universe.

We would all do well to clip out that Jan. 11 Doonesbury comic strip to remind ourselves that when people are dying and losing limbs in Iraq, and thousands of families have been ripped apart by natural disasters, our workplace problems are usually quite small. They are seldom life-and-death and we do real victims of tragedy and ourselves a disservice when we treat them as if they are.

Tip for your search: Get comfortable poking fun at yourself. When you start getting those feelings of self-importance and convince yourself your challenges are the most crucial in the world, engage in self-deprecating humor. If you don’t puncture your own balloon, somebody will burst it for you.

Resource for your search: “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith,” by Anne Lamott (Pantheon Books, 1999)