Day 105 – Trust & Deception

Welcome to Day 105!

If one were to try to find the silver lining on betrayal, what would that look like? Apart from paying off some cosmic karma which may or may not exist.  Is that we become more distrustful?  That simply flies in the face of the Osho Zen message conveyed by the card of The Fool.

“You deceive him, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trust you.  Then you will say that he is a fool, he does not learn.  His trust is tremendous, his trust is so pure that nobody can corrupt it.”   

My trust is not that pure.  It hurts when you trust and you’re constantly betrayed.  In a work sense, there certainly is the perception that you are less astute and therefore not likely to be taken seriously. 

You’ve probably guessed. Yes, there was figurative blood coming from my back as the invisible knife which was being positioned over the past couple of months finally found its mark.  To add insult to the injury, they expected me to help!   On the surface my reaction to the betrayal was probably greater than I was feeling.  Sometimes, I forget other people would view my outburst as more than it was intended to be.

Okay, it’s not like this wasn’t expected.  This was the way the other project manager’s felt dealing with “them”.  In the past, my interactions with this group had been minimal. 

At first, my ego, pride and flattery were used to lure me in.  Led to believe for some reason, my effort would be helping out and providing a big favour.  The new area has a different style of project. When moving to the new area I begged, on their behalf, to let me continue the project as a favour to me (and them). The new boss generously agreed.  Keeping the project, however, meant other team members would need to cover the tasks not being done by me.   

When the betrayal, in the form of withholding key information needed for me to deliver and discovering other teams had been instructed to withhold information from me.  Other areas and me, advised not to communicate with each other until plans had been finalised.  Only to discover an external source had been engaged to do the work I was expected to do, and they had received all the information.

Before the news had been received, I had engaged vendors to supply quotes for the work that had already been done.  The betrayal would not nearly have been so devastating if it were just me.  I can take a hit to the ego and pride on the occasion it needs it.  But the new area had suffered. The vendors had suffered.  The organisation that was approached to do the work meant “my” company as a whole suffered because it usually overprices for the market.  The people who had to put up with me calling for information had also suffered.

This is where my guilt hits high because of my gullibility and naivete.  The betrayal of me led to me betraying those around me.  In the end, everyone will understand but the frustration and sadness for the loss of time is still there.

From the ego perspective, where did I go wrong?  From the pride perspective, I’m usually good at reading situations, how did I miss this one?  Was I blinded by the appeal to me helping out when needed?  In this at least, in this The Fool will remain.  Helping is what I like to do, if help is required.  If it’s not, happy to leave it alone.

In the end, the betrayal helps identify areas to work on.  Areas of ego and pride come to mind immediately.  The appeal for help, will continue to draw me in and I’m happy being seen as a sucker for it.  Also, working through the betrayal helps build techniques for letting it go.  It could go the other way and foster mistrust but seriously who has the energy to maintain the rage – not me.  Just to be clear, I’ll pretend for a while 😉.

Okay, let’s see what the cards have to say!