I’ll be wearing cuff links tonight. The bosses from Denver flew in and I’m booked for an hour-long presentation. That calls for the smartest-looking long-sleeved shirt with the crispiest collar. I'll be
slipping on the 5-grand pair of hand-made leather shoes that I've maintained for four years. We saw seven episodes of Madmen’s Season 5 earlier this week and it always convinces you to at least try to dress better. If clothes didn't make a man, clothes certainly made that show.
Its ten thirty and D. is still in a conference call in her Ortigas office – one of the few times her actual presence was required since she turned work-at-home. I’m prettied up and ready to go. My mother will stay with I. until D. arrives in about an hour.
I have to go. I. says bye-bye and I love you and I don’t need any luck. I've already won. That’s all I need tonight.
The bosses were onsite by midnight. Their plane landed just a few hours earlier. Only a shower at the hotel came between the office and the airport. I’m first to present to K., an E.D., and he is always in a polite, excited disposition but his questions always slice through any sweet or smooth talking so I always keep it honest while trying to be cunning. C., an SVP, walks in to the room to greet us, tells us about her connecting flights. She embraces K., then R., then walks towards me. There I was, awkwardly half-embracing an SVP who several other Directors advised me to stay below her radar. I’m not sure why they say that, as she’s been warm, analytical reasonable to me and I'm not even trying to suck up. Either I'm wrong or I’m lucky I don’t report to her directly. She takes her leave and I proceed with my deck. After a minute or two, C. slips back to the room and tells K. that she qualified for Boston. Now this is about me. And I’m a bottom-of-the-barrel manager who almost made a sub-2 21k.
I go through the rest of my slides, show how we climbed the numbers. It’s steady with good strides here and there. I didn't feel like I had to jump through a lot of difficult hurdles like I was expecting. I suppose it went well.
The most trying part came at the end of the day. Like a heartbreak hill feeling that's about to decimate the knees, I end up asking, who am I? Like when I read Socrates for the first time, I went through a guilty realization. Only this time I didn't imagine myself as a budding philosopher. And this is why: it dawned on me that I've made a career chasing numbers over dreams.Not even money. Just numbers that justified me to keep my job.
I drive home. I read a chapter of a good book. One chapter is a story in itself: generation after generation of dreams lost and won, triumph and desperation coinciding in an intelligible complexity as it is written in a lucid work of art. I figured that’s how it happens. Only when I come home can I tell how my own dreams are fascinating. How they are within easy reach and how they reveal who I am.
I take off my cuff links. To be truthful, they barely cost me anything. But if it locks in the dreams and the taste that simply can’t be purchased, they sure won’t look cheap.
