2010 — (The Secret World of Arrietty)
If someone is willing to provide you with food and shelter, it is not because you produce labor, or because you can offer equal value through intellectual or emotional companionship. They are willing to provide simply because they feel pity for you. More likely, it is because your appearance is rare, small, and adorable, or because of innate disadvantages such as your gender or age that make survival harder.Would you avoid such a person and believe that they have humiliated you?
If the sole purpose of working is just to support a household, then it would be best if I won the lottery tomorrow and never had to work again in my life. Traveling every day, sleeping when I want, eating when I want—what would be wrong with that? By the same logic, if one day you encounter a fool who voluntarily approaches you and shows kindness toward you, wouldn’t that be as fortunate as winning the lottery? Wouldn’t exploiting them seem like the most natural thing in the world?
…If I ever meet someone who thinks this way, I can only apologize. I have always treated everyone kindly and consistently presented myself as considerate and pleasant.
If stealing is immoral, then being forced to accept this kind of “kindness” would trouble me even more. On the other hand, if someone tries to curry favor with me merely hoping that I will go easy on their work performance, and when I do not do so, they roll their eyes at me, then act fake and two-faced in front of others, attempt to pretending to be a plastic “sisterhood” with me, I find such people deeply disgusting.
When it comes to work, work is work. If an issue is related to my professional responsibilities, and I have already explained everything privately and in detail, yet people continue to drag things out, not even bothering to review the material before publicly insulting me, then of course I will not confront them directly, nor will I continue explaining. You placed the order, and now you no longer want it—so I will not force the sale nor swallow it back slicently. What I sell is my product, not my character.
Conversely, when I provide careful, professional, and publicly documented feedback on someone’s completed work after thoroughly reviewing it, certain small-minded individuals—who lack ability yet hold an inflated view of themselves—may quietly wait for another opportunity to undermine me by portraying themselves as victims. In front of others, they deliberately present themselves as innocent, naive, and unaware, creating the impression of, “Oh, she’s so mean, I’m being bullied again.” Yet in private messages, they continue to provoke me in a calculated manner, hoping to trigger an emotional outburst from me in public.
I would feel truly grateful if I were able to escape such an environment.
I thank God for not letting me fall into poverty and for allowing me to live without worrying about food and clothing, giving me the chance to rest for a while. I thank the Lord for teaching me another lesson, so that next time I can better recognize people who put on such pretenses. Regardless of how they speak, how they look, their education, family background, or professional credentials, I have recognized that the environment dynamic itself is very and deeply unhealthy.
I neither pity them nor hate them. I simply hand everything back and over to Lord Jesus.
Next time, I will not be so quick to treat a new colleague with kindness. No matter how afraid they appear of me or of a new environment, I must first confirm that they have sufficient emotional maturity. Otherwise, I will not speak privately with them. Everything will go through email. Or at the very least, if private messaging is unavoidable, I will keep my distance and carefully consider whether their questions are merely draining my time and energy before guiding them to learn to find answers themselves.
I will also be clearer about what my employer expects from me, and I will insist that those expectations be written down publicly and specifically whenever possible. Or, after writing them down, I will look for opportunities to read them aloud in front of as many people as possible publicly. Otherwise, I will keep pretending to be clueless, constantly double-checking everything. That way, when they later pretend to forget, I can also innocently present the record and show that the fault is not mine — I have not wasted your money or time.
Although behaving “naively” like this in the workplace is inefficient, if I am the only one thinking about the collective good, wouldn’t that indirectly mean I am accusing everyone else of quietly stealing from me or selfish? When I openly share my work, others freely use or take it, give me no credit, offer no return, and are then bitten back by those ungrateful opportunists who accuse me of providing poor results and putting them in a difficult position.
Perhaps I should reflect on whether I truly lack self-respect.
Although I joined this company because my abilities alone were insufficient and I hoped we could grow together, I never asked anyone to give me special favors. If my emotional needs simply wish for a healthier work atmosphere, and you refuse — instead insisting on pointing guns at each other’s heads — so that our incompetent boss or supervisor, who constantly and deliberately creates division and fosters an atmosphere of mutual betrayal to control us, so he/she can do whatever he/she want…
Then I am sorry—we have finally recognized each other for who we turly are. And now, for the sake of my own survival, I have no choice but to leave. Because we can never go back to how things were before. The painful lesson I have learned is this: “When I pray for peace but remain powerless, I should only come to your home and steal quietly.”
Only in this way can our relationship remain free of debt and repayment. Only then can people whose “capital scale” differs so greatly live without psychological burden, surviving separately in parallel worlds where the other effectively does not exist.
Although my nature has never been to intrude into someone else’s home as a thief, and I have always wanted to support myself honorably through my own production and contribution, the reality is that the inherent conditions between capital owners and laborers are simply there. In a world of survival of the fittest and natural selection, this is profoundly unfair, is it not?
When one side can destroy everything the other side has with just a single command or the movement of a finger, what value do we “small people” truly possess that allows us to directly demand equality in work, survival, power, and responsibility? And if I refuse to become a scheming salary thief, how, then, can someone as insignificant as me continue to survive in this ruthless, dangerous, resource-controlled, and fundamentally deceptive society dominated by capital?
