Agendas

   A couple of weeks ago I was headed off to work and Doralyn asked me what my day looked like. I listed off the things I thought I needed or wanted to do. At that point, the list became my agenda. There was great comfort in having an agenda that seemed effortless and manageable.
   Upon actually arriving at work, however, my agenda went right out the window.
   I work with people who are intellectually challenged and the first person I went to see presented me with a t.v. which had been pulled out from the wall, a mess of wires and cables leading from it to a brand new dvd player he'd bought on his own. Nothing worked.
   When it comes to technology, I am as intellectually disabled as the next person and was of little assistance in this case. The overriding situation, however, was the conflict of agendas. My agenda included taking this gentleman for breakfast as this was our once-a-month routine. His agenda, obviously, was being able to use his dvd player.
   I was much more annoyed at the agenda conflict than he was. My annoyance, coupled with my hunger and lack of tech ability, made the situation unresolvable. We managed to still make it out for breakfast and while eating I was able to come up with a line of action for this man to follow. Doing so allowed him to hook up his dvd player successfully.
   Unless you are a single person who is self-employed, you are going to run into agenda conflict on a regular basis. Even if you do fall into this category you will still occasionally find your self in this conflict with drivers in cars, store clerks, bank managers, customers, crossing guards, repairmen, spouses and pets. In short, any other person with a mind of their own. And an agenda.
   The trick in dealing with all this is simply to realize that we all have our own agendas and that what a person is saying on the outside may belie what they are actually thinking or planning on the inside. Of course, behaviour over a period of time will give you the truer measure of a person.
   It's really not possible to walk around without an agenda of your own, they pretty well help chart a course for your day, week or even your life. Having an agenda which somewhat meshes with the important people in your life, however, always helps. They don't have to always be totally in sync but just realizing where they might diverge will get you through a lot of rough spots.
   At work, agendas can be an issue. Any time you have a large group of people who are supposedly all gathered to accomplish the same goal you're going to have to deal with agendas. Where I work, one of the agenda issues we face on a pretty well daily basis is similar to the one I described above. We, as support staff, spend time with people whose agendas can be widely variant. We have been given what seems like, both to them and to us, an unspoken power over their lives. Throughout the work day we encounter situations where it is quite easy to impose our agendas on the people we support. Realizing this and remembering not to do it are vital. It is also vital to watch what goes on with other people and point out where you think there might be a perceived agenda issue.
   A very quick work-related agenda issue story---a few years ago one of the people I work with called me at home to say he'd fallen in the bathroom, hit his head, and that he was bleeding a little. I had to drive more or less across town to go and investigate and on the drive there was desperately trying to figure out how to mesh our two different agendas. It was my day off, I had stuff to do, could I get by with just applying a band aid, etc., etc. He greeted me at his apartment door and when I took a look at the ear he said had been bleeding, I realized that he had somehow almost severed the top half of it right off and that it was only really hanging there by a fleshy thread. At this point, no real issue with agendas! In an odd kind of way this was kind of cool because when I saw his ear any sort of agenda burden I might have had on the way there flew right off my shoulder. Nine hours of emergency room waiting later, he was all taken care of!
   As I mentioned before, sometimes the trick is just to remember that yours is not the only agenda in play out there. Nowhere is this likely more apparent than right in your own family. There are as many different agendas as there are family members and if you're going to pick one to try to more or less be in sync with then I would suggest concentrating on your spouse's. Enough said, as this is likely a whole new blog topic somewhere down the road!
   Good luck, hopefully, with your agenda and trying to follow it. There's a true skill in realizing when it can be altered and when it is something which really needs to be adhered to. Don't give up your principles along the way but, at the same time, you are not alone in the world either. Not only is your agenda likely going to differ from the next person you run in to but that person's perception of what the issue even is could be totally different and wildly divergent from yours, or even a lot of people's. So take this into account and, every once in awhile, experiment with flipping through someone else's agenda for a change!