When Fake Grass Ruined the Magic
When I was 6, we went on a family trip to Disneyworld. It should have been a kid’s dream come true.
Except I hated it.
I had this sense of things being fake, and I didn’t find myself jumping into the arms of the characters or skipping through the Magic Kingdom. Instead, I was disturbed by the color of the grass (they had dyed the grass this weird almost blue color). Everything seemed strange to me, and the tension humming underneath it all made me nervous. More than anything, I wanted a real animal to pet.
It was interesting because I was a very, very imaginative kid. I could lose myself in a book for hours. My best friend and I made our own magical kingdom and played there endlessly. My dreams were so alive and full of wonder, I wished I could dream them again and again. Different than Disney, my books, pretend world, and dreams all felt amazingly real, even if they were created in my imagination.
At the end of the day, I realize now in my 50’s, I never had any patience for things that were fake. I have always wanted real.
This means that I’ve been seeking real relationships, real connections, real information, real conversations and real truth (even when it’s not a fun truth), pretty much my whole life.
My interest in real interactions is how I ended up on the bleachers at my high school listening to the story of a peer’s abusive household, how I was the whistle blower as a young woman on the horse trainer who was mistreating his animals, how I’ve made my living my whole adult life off of having deep conversations with people recovering from the pains of life. It’s not all bad stories I engage in though, I’m just as fascinated and moved by stories of celebration, triumph and recovery.
My hunger for real extends to my new work, where I’m seeking real information about people’s experiences in the workplace. It’s fun to explore how our interpersonal dynamics play out at work. Towards that effort to get real information, I have a survey for managers, team leaders and business owners to take so I can get some real intel on how things are going at work these days. Please take it, if you already haven’t, and pass it along to anyone else who might have some insight. It’s totally anonymous and (really!) isn’t a secret sales pitch.
If you’re not a manager, team leader, business owner or otherwise inclined towards the survey, I’d still love to hear something real from you this week. What’s going well? What is important to you? What would you like me to know? I’m listening!
