Trumped (Revised)

Trumped

The word trump first came into my vocabulary as a very young girl while overhearing my parents and their friends conversing at the “42” game table. 

Sevens are trumps.

Twos are trumps.

Aha!  She trumped you!

What I learned much later when I actually wanted to play “42” was that the person whose turn it was to start the next hand could and would determine what was trumps by laying a double of their choosing on the table.  From then on, everyone else had to follow suit.  And throughout the hand, that particular number of dots could and would in fact trump any other domino played.  Trumps were in essence the Joker from a deck of cards domino, and they were always wild.  Throughout an evening of “42”, the word trump would be used often, and the action of trumping would ultimately determine the winners of each hand.  So there!

 As a young female professional in the 90’s, I became aware of a similar system in my work-world whereby the one dealt the trump hand would likewise determine wins and losses.  At first, I didn’t really notice anything particularly out of order.  After all, I grew up in a relatively conservative time and space where men were naturally in charge of most work settings.  It was just the way it was. 

I worked in various institutions for years simply playing the hands that were dealt me. Eventually, however, the game was soon to change for me and others like me as we started not only to notice but to question the other rules of the game. Whether due to the specific work environment at the time, my developing awareness, or both, it became quite apparent that the game was rigged—the trumps continued to magically appear in the hands of the players in the three-piece suits.  Sure, we women figured some of this out early on and followed suit, wearing quite similar uniforms, and thus confusing many of the players.  However, even being suited up didn’t appear to be changing the playing field, and the blatant trumping became more and more obvious.

When I reflect on this dynamic, four significant occasions in my work history rise up to meet me:

I am sitting across from my boss, his enormous executive desk that separates us like a barrier reef firmly reminding me of “the arrangement”.  Seated to my left and to my right are three highly competent, successful, and respected colleagues of mine—all women.  Before going in for the occasional required division meeting, we regularly settle our jangled nerves and frustrated professionalism by laughingly calling ourselves “N_____’s Angels”, a reference to the 80’s TV show “Charlie’s Angels”, as a way to cope with “the arrangement”.  This pre-game pep talk of sorts at least reminds us of the reality of the elephant in the room, although we appear to ignore it as soon as the meeting is called to order.

Now I am sitting across a boardroom table from another boss, one who has encouraged me to take advantage of his open door policy and to express freely any concerns that might be negatively impacting my job and ultimately the organization.  Being the trusting, idealistic—okay naïve—professional I am, I diplomatically explain how “the arrangement” is negatively affecting the work and morale of the women on the downside end of the barrier reef.  This hopeful show of my hand is quickly and deftly trumped by patronizing words encouraging me to use my family therapist skills to make this unwieldy “arrangement” work.  Shuffle!

Flash forward to a new job setting.  I am presiding at another boardroom table, this time having what I believe to be a sufficient and worthy hand to play this new game effectively since I now wear the title of Executive Director. One would presume that my partner(s) at the table would be supporting my hand.  After all, aren’t we on the same team?  Perhaps not, I learn—as I am trumped mid-sentence and urged to

“Hurry up and get on with the agenda”

by the trumpster at the table.  Without a millisecond of strategic thought or planning, I reflexively turn to the trumpster and thrust forth my trump.

“That is not okay, D.”

And the reshuffling begins that very day, with all the high trumps in the hands of a few who are playing the game in secret locations and after hours, when I am nowhere around. And after nine months, the last month being the reveal of the back-room-game-players, I choose to turn the tables, turn on the light, cut my losses, and leave a toxic playing field. 

Some years later, after a brief foray into semi-retirement, I am thriving in a job that appears to be the perfect example of the formula for work satisfaction:  When what I love to do is what is needed most.  It is another setting where I am aware early on of smoke and mirrors, and yet I don’t want to admit to them—not yet.  So, once again, I play the hands that are dealt me, enjoying a game where I feel competent, calling plays as I see them, knowing I’ll win some and lose some.  At this stage of the game, I have so much less to lose.  After all, I’m a strong, capable, experienced executive who is bringing much to the table.  How surprising then, after eighteen months, I realize, as with Las Vegas casinos, the House always wins, and I am aware that I have been trumped in the most subtle of ways—by being likened to an exotic bird who will be sustained and therefore retained via expensive birdseed.  I play my last trump by flying the coup and freeing the aforementioned exotic bird. 

So there it is—in domino-black-and-white—four encounters with Workplace-Trumpsters.  Is this why, in addition to a host of other rational reasons, I am so viscerally affected by this current Republican-Trumpster who plays at politics in reckless, deplorable ways.  I know there is something familiar about his cocky demeanor, his charming manipulations, his scared little boy defensiveness, his incessant over-talking, and his profound inability to pay attention.  I’ve seen it before and I’ve been harmed in the past by participating in the dishonest games being offered so enticingly. 

And yet, I have lived long enough and learned enough life lessons by now to know that blaming others for my distress, while initially invigorating, is ultimately a dead-end street.  So, I encourage all strong women to join me in recognizing where we have perhaps participated in the care and feeding of these hollow, desperate men/women. (Believe me, trumpsters manifest in both genders!)    By honestly acknowledging our complicity, we can see it for what it is—something in our collective DNA that invites us to see a naked emperor and yet claim along with the other blinded sycophants that he’s fully clothed.  I mean, what would happen if we told the truth over and over and over again?  More and more women are! In the story of the emperor, it was a little child who emboldened them to admit to what they had seen and known all along.  Believing is seeing!

When I reflect on where my susceptibility to trumpsters is rooted, I have to take a good long look at one of the dearest men in my life—my father.  Daddy was a product of the Depression and World War II, and he was the oldest child in a family where alcoholism and addiction prevailed.  I, in turn, got my own dose of these features as the child of an adult child of an alcoholic.

Daddy was playful, charming, generous, creative and loving—and he was controlling, perfectionistic, and insecure. So, I learned early on that when Daddy asked me to do something, it was for him—and perhaps for his very survival—that I was doing it.  It was a combination of adoration and pity that made his requests so powerful. They were requests for performing—singing at age 2, playing the piano for church at age 8, succeeding at school by virtue of good grades and leadership roles, and being a good girl by virtue of not dancing, among other things. 

It was in my pre- teen years that the familiar enjoinder, both spoken and implied, that used to work—Please, just do it for Daddy (now an obvious trump)—began to really bother me.  And, it no longer worked in the same way it had for so many years.  I might go ahead and do it, but it was accompanied by silent, seething resentment.  It was all I had in my good-girl repertoire at the time.  I see now that within my healthy resistance, I beginning to see Daddy for who he truly was at the time—a precious, though flawed individual who needed me to make him feel good about himself.  (We all do that in some form or fashion to our children—no exceptions--until we choose to learn not to.)  So, my pattern was to do what I did not want to do in order to protect myself and this apparently fragile man, simultaneously loving and resenting him, and finding passive-aggressive alternatives to maintain my integrity and not play the game. 

Well, fast forward and guess what!  As much as I thought I’d individuated from that Daddy-Pleasing-and-Rescuing pattern, somewhere deep down inside, muscle memory was still alive and well.  It has been humbling, to say the least, to confess I have carried my little girl ways of trying to please and rescue the men-in-charge in my life well into adulthood.  It’s actually quite embarrassing to admit this. I’ve had to offer amends to little-girl-self for letting my fear of not being enough carry me into several situations where this pattern prevailed with inevitable pain as the natural outcome.  And yet, with every new game table, every new hand dealt, and every subsequent opportunity for trumping and being trumped, I’ve become more forgiving of the men in my life who have forced me to grow up—and to speak up!  I’ve also become more aware of how much resentment can become my silent default position.  Who me--mad?

How interesting that I would choose a mate-for-life who was much more likely to offer others at the table his winning hand than to suffer their temporary displeasure should he actually win (except with his poker buddies). This is, of course, a huge generalization, but it offers me the following observation:  Is it possible that I harbor some of those same insecurities and therefore display the very trumpster behaviors I detest?  (I rush to defend by saying that we probably all have a place on the trumpster continuum.) And yet, I must confess my own competitive nature and desire to trump any perceived trumpster who would try to keep me down. It has been my survival response to the DNA in my very genes.  As always, it takes one to know one. And, as strange as it sounds, it’s somewhat comforting to finally acknowledge that.  It’s a huge burden to have to stay in defense mode all the time.  Coming down and joining the rest of humanity is quite a relief.

It has been said that activism without humility is just a lot of noise.  We have to understand what it is in us that leads us to so vehemently resist and even deplore another.  Once we get a clue, I believe we are better able to act out our healthy concerns consciously and without self-righteousness.  By seeing the trumpster potential in myself, I can better identify the pain and suffering that lies within it.  I can call a spade a spade (mixing metaphors here) and yet seek to appeal to what might be in the best interests of us all.  My anger becomes useful when it is tempered with compassion.

As much as I hate to admit it, we have all participated in creating where we are and what we’ve become in this political season of 2016.  I can claim incredulity not so much at the fact that we have this Republican-Trumpster-without-Clothes, but that there are thousands of good people who truly need to believe he is clothed.  I must remember that we all have cultural DNA that helps explain this apparent phenomenon. 

And, still, I must not hate.

 I must not scapegoat.

 I must say what I see and then defer to compassion and a power greater than myself to hold us all—together—in a time that is fleeting and on a planet that is always spinning beyond our feeble, self-centered ability to control it.

Being strong doesn’t mean you have to stay and fight

all the battles and petty arguments that come your way.

Being strong means you don’t have to stay and respond to rude remarks.

Don’t retort by throwing insults back at them.

It’s what they want.

(to validate their terrified little bully-selves)

Keep your dignity and don’t lower yourself to their level.

(the level that is not their God-given truth but their temporary defense)

True strength is being adult enough to walk away from the nonsense

with your head held high.