Lessons I've learned

Sooooooo, after 3 years of running a health centre, and raising the bar at which we operate, I look back and realise that the 'elite' team only functions when I am pressing them to function.  They don't want to work so hard.  They don't care about efficiency.  They are there for the 8am-4pm (all running off at 2pm).  They like the lyme when it occurs.  They like the freeness.  But they just don't share the vision.

I didn't want to leave a legacy.  I didn't want tales to be told and ballads to be sung, but I did want to leave behind a team functioning so optimally (given the lack of resources) that any successor will be forced to step up their game to offer the same level of service.  I wanted them to be more than the cliched government worker.

I also had manic grandiose ideas of changing the face of the community people.  I wanted them to lift themselves up to a different level.  That was a crack-pipe dream!  It is almost impossible to change a fractured community of 10,000,all struggling to shine or matter in ways that debase rather than uplift themselves, 1 person at a time.  Very little stuck!  The few who learned did so just to navigate me. Support staff didn't.

I don't see myself as a rose among thistles. I don't see myself as water to parched soil.  But I did think that my brand of manure could fertilize a few arid areas.

I did learn that the job didn't come with its own dreams.  Those I had to furnish.  I did learn that I didn't have to get sucked into the system, become part of the collective.  I did learn the meaning of throwing pearls to swine.  I did learn about counting chickens before they are hatched.  I did learn about pastor christening him pickney first.

But I also learned about patience, service, seeing God in my fellow human being.  I learned how cold I could be and how compassionate I could be, in the same day no less.

So although I can't leave as a conqueror, with task bested, with flag flying high, knighted for the endeavour, excalibur sheathed, I can leave older, grayer, wiser, a different man than I came.

I have learned.