Layoffs, etc.

Last week my company laid off several people in its workforce. The number was comparatively low, less than 10 percent of the total. But for those let go, the percentage was much higher, 100.

I've concluded that there is no way that such a large body of humans can sync up their recovery process from such an event. Some teams were hard hit, losing half of their players, others were not impacted at all (like mine). Varying degrees of pain on the front end equal varying rates of healing on the back end.

Or do they? This morning while reading Anne LaMott's Traveling Mercies, I found myself thinking intently on the layoffs and the pain they caused. The challenge, I think, is becoming a bit more porous to life, internalizing the experience in a way that authenticates the human experience. It's so easy to place the perpetrator of pain far from yourself in order to deal with it safely. And in this case, those perpetrators are things like "the economy," "the state of the industry," and "myself."

When pain hits, it's a bit like deep-sea diving except totally unexpected. You're humming along with the rhythmic thwump all boats have and the surface tension of the water breaks, physics goes haywire, and you're forced to go under. Pain is what happens when life won't let you gloss over a thing. And there's something noble and beautiful about going under, even finding the ocean floor. Me, I have a primal fear of the water. If I were sitting in a dingy on the open water, I'd be more concerned about the statistical probability that something murderous lurks within killing distance--and is hungry--than the beauty of a horizon or the sound of schwapping waves. When life forces you to go under, you're instantly put in a place of factual crisis.

But it's what you do with the crisis, the descending, and hopefully the ascension that shapes you. Some people are excellent, perhaps too good, at the deep dive. In fact, they seem to have continual reasons for staying underwater, not the least of which is their new found friendship with the crabs. Than there are others, and I am of this group, who see the briny deep, the darkness, the unknown, and decide to stay where the sunlight still penetrates close to the surface.

The layoffs caused considerable sadness at our company. It's been revealing to see how people process an experience like this. Some head so fast for the ocean floor you would have thought they performed a pencil dive from an orbiting satellite. Others up the throttle on the boat to keep moving toward a distant and seemingly imaginary shore, unwilling to get wet. It seems to me that a middle way is best, taking my cue from my rudimentary knowledge of deep-sea diving. You have to descend slowly and ascend slowly so as to not get the bends.