Mantra | In querencia, be the catalyst who serves

This is part of a series of essays to explore workspace environments, beginning with lived experiences of unfair and unjust treatment. Previous essay, Peek-a-Boo and Pocket Pool. Thanks for your interest and feel free to contact me.

Sticks and stones may break my bones
but words will never hurt me. ~ wikipedia

Change agent.

When did having to overcome and navigate unearned unfairness become a skill to garner in workspace environments?

#namecalling - “This is how I learned that if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” —Audre Lorde

Stubborn.

This is among words that management and peers have used to describe my striving to resolve issues at work. Some instances overt, while others cleverly guised as subtext during daily interactions.

Insubordinate. 

Throughout my career, cognitive dissonance has occasionally prevailed. Favorable performance appraisals have been issued by folks who have discriminated, bullied, or harassed others and me.

Aggressive.

One colleague’s advice to me - “Stop being the nail looking for a hammer(s)”- a topsy-turvy, inside-out version of “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” which a friend akinned to —

“The nail that stands up gets hammered down.” ~ a Japanese Proverb

Metaphorically - am I the nail when I ask that workspace environments not be a hammer? that environments be fair and respectful spaces, where folks do not have to wonder if and when their civil rights will be challenged? where privilege is not wielded upon folks purposefully positioned not to prevail?

Do not take advantage
of those who feel they do not have a voice,
who feel that
being a contrarian is not a choice. 

#mymantra - In querencia, be the catalyst who serves. — Shirley F. Rivera

Gratitude to Isabel Lopez, who introduced querencia during her 2011 course, Foundations of Servant Leadership, for the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership (GCSL) program.

With Isabel Lopez in Indianapolis, 2013, Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership Conference

Isabel shared an excerpt from Georgia Heard's book Writing Toward Home: Tales and Lessons to Find Your Way - 

In Spanish, querencia describes a place where one feels safe, a place from which one’s strength of character is drawn, a place where one feels at home. It comes from the verb “querer”, which means to desire, to want.  

-- with the context of bullfighting, where a wounded bull may retreat -  

 ... a place where he felt safe and was therefore at his most dangerous.

Isabel required self-reflection throughout her GCSL course. One assignment - journal about our querencia. I recollected and wrote about overcoming toxic workspace events as far back as the mid-1980s. Simmering among my journal entries - negotiating salary disparities, navigating convoluted conflict resolution procedures, recounting racism, being mistreated, questioning sexism - to name a few.

#underdog - “When in this world the headlines read, of those whose hearts are filled with greed, who rob and steal from those who need, to right this wrong with blinding speed, goes Underdog!” — lyric excerpt to Underdog cartoon theme song

Written reflections of being mistreated were side-by-side bearing witness to other underdogs - folks put upon by systemic workspace inequities. Since then, querencia has fore-fronted my mantra, serving as a through-line among my areas of interest, showing up in life to support and serve others.  

Not a nail.

A place to reflect and draw upon one’s strength of character.

Catalyst.

A place to regroup and catalyze change.

Querencia.