Seeing my value through the eyes of others

One of the assignments for my memoir writing course is to write about an incident that concerns me. The catch is that I must not have too much info about this incident. The goal of the exercise is to try to tell the story from the POV of other people, then to try to stitch the narrative together with my input thrown in.

But why would I write something like this? I am not the type to do art for art’s sake.

More importantly, why would you read something like this?

A few weeks ago, I came across one of my friend’s social media posts. His name is Daniel Aaron, life coach and yoga teacher extraordinaire.

His Facebook post had the poet E.E. Cumming’s quote in it, which read:

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

The instructor of my writing course suggested unearthing memories of years past as material for the writing exercise. But I deviated. I didn’t want to dig around my traumatic past, so I chose a more pleasant, recent experience instead.

Afterall, the main point was to highlight differences in POV, right?

Here’s the event I wanted to investigate: the company I worked for one year asked me to return after I left it to pursue my book publishing dreams. It took me five minutes to decide to jump back in, I almost did not hesitate.

I wanted to snoop around to find out what happened in the three months I was gone.

Perhaps by seeing myself through others’ POV, I can discover something valuable, something worth listening to and trusting, to paraphrase the poet.

Following the assignment instructions, I interviewed two people who shared the same experience (my three-month absence) but had different perspectives. They are Jhana and Jas, the two writers on my Writing Team.

Jhana is a single, soon-to-be-married woman in her late 20s; she lives alone (for now). Jas is LGBTQ and single. She just turned 20, and I took her in at 19. Her job with the company is her first and most stable one yet. The three of us continue to this day to be a good team.

Passionate multitasker that I was, I scheduled their two separate interviews after our staff meeting.

Now, let me share with you what I’ve learned:

• My colleagues missed me. I was valuable enough to be missed. Hence, I am a worthy human being. I’m the only one who keeps on saying I ain’t worth shit. (Stop putting yourself down, Melany!)

• I exerted a positive influence as a Team Leader. (I did that! I should be proud of myself!)

• My experiences as a mom taught me how to lead a team. Fourteen years of mom-hood helped me develop a matter-of-fact way of handling setbacks.

• I want to be a better supervisor and a friend. Because I can be both while staying true to myself.

As this essay presents me from others’ POV, I can see how I sparkle through my reflection in my colleague’s eyes.

At one point in the interview, Jhana said that when I hold weekly team meetings, she feels “seen.” The weekly meetings all but disappeared when I was away. My male Chinese boss would hold a meeting or two, but these were short, to the point, and professional, with no “Hi, hello, how are you?” in between.

I totally relate with Jhana. I need to connect with my workmates because connecting meaningfully with my colleagues is a human need.

And in the end, that’s all we want, right? We want to be seen, heard, touched, and needed. We want to matter to others.

Whatever mundane role we are playing, as workers, we strive for meaningful connections. Especially in a remote workplace like mine, connections are tenuous, and if not nurtured, are easily broken.