Table Your Chair and Get Moving
Photo credit: Boardroom table at RBC Capital Markets office.
Once upon an eon ago, I was burning out trying to figure out why my career wasn’t blossoming into some kind of Netflix-type “Powerful Woman Gets All She Wants” limited series. I was working tremendous hours, dedicated, loyal, and some might say driven. Perplexed, I sat down with a colleague to try and get some insight on this stall. My very well-meaning colleague said to me, “Elaine, you have a seat at the table. You just have to sit in it.” Those words blew my mind at the time. It had me thinking how awesome it was that I was being allowed a chair at the coveted “table.” How honored I should be. I have made it. I have arrived. I only need to sit down (metaphorically) and roll up my chair to the table. Own it. It’s my Christian Louboutin-themed chair!
Fast forward 15 years. For someone sitting at the table for over a decade, eating the same so-called progressive nuggets and imbibing all the corporate Kool Aid one would want, you’d have thought I would be heavily weighted with opportunity, knowledge, and power. The reality is somewhat disappointing.
But I do have some insight. Are you ready, Filers? Hear me loud and clear: the table is a hindrance. Yes, I said it out loud. It’s a construct devised to ensure I’m drinking from the same trough, rowing the same direction, and being allowed to feel the sheer weight of rubbing shoulders with the Big Dawgs.
The table has ensured that we are competition for each other, ladies. A kind of messed up and highly animalistic game of musical chairs if you will. The table has limited seats. You must fight or be awarded one. You must take it. Sit in it to keep it, and never get up, to be viewed as “arriving.”
Pardon me, Ms. Emily Post – but this a BS etiquette ruse of epic portions. There is no chair. There is no table. And I’m not competing with anyone for either.
Once you start to see the reality of this, it really starts to blow your mind. There is a deep realization that while you’ve been sitting at a specific table, things have moved and evolved forward in other spheres without you. That you may have been left behind. Again.
Don’t despair.
Tables don’t have wheels for a reason. It’s so they don’t roll. Therefore, they don’t move. And I’m a mover. The 2.0 type. I evolve, learn, and grow. I want to be better than I was yesterday and am always seeing a pathway to how much better I can get. To see others around me not as competition or superiors, but as teachers. Sometimes even as guides and mentors.
Then I did what any self-respecting, #MOXY girl would do. I quietly slipped away from the table. Opened the door of my Elaine 2.0 and loaded her up with all the things that put me on the path of integrity, success, and growth. The hum when I press the start button is the sound of my heart and foot lightly tapping the gas knowing there is no sitting still at any table again. Ever.
And then I did what any phenom of a Femme Filer would do:
Got in my lane and took the hell off.
Epilogue
Five years later the majestic wheels on the Elaine 2.0 caught a flat. As tires sometimes do. After some angst over what type of upgrades to get on said tires, I reflected back on that Table I had left some time ago. It made me remember that things don’t change unless we do. Unless I do. Forget the new tires. Elaine 5.0 is ready.
Drop the flag, and get out the way!