Thousands of years later, ancient pains still resonate with our modern hearts
Earlier this fall, I visited New York City for the first time and had the pleasure of watching Hadestown on Broadway. For those who may not be familiar, Hadestown is a modern retelling of the Greek tragedy Orpheus and Eurydice woven with the tale of Hades and Persephone. It won best musical at the 2019 Tony awards and continues to captivate audiences 6 years after debuting on Broadway.
This is a story that has been told for thousands of years. A story that still captivates our hearts and still makes us throw our hands up in frustration at its ending even though the world looks very different than it did when the story was first written. At its center, the very human emotions of love, fear, greed, and doubt.
Hadestown was told in such a way that I could apply it to so many of our modern day struggles. The scenes of Hades treating people in Hadestown like machines and telling them that it’s for their own freedom were particularly striking to me.
Another, much different example caught my eye while doomscrolling (I guess something good can come from doomscrolling after all). This post highlights academics from thousands of years ago complaining about the same things that academics today lament about.
At the heart of so many of our issues is just our humanity. This is not something to be fixed or optimized but simply understood.
The tech feels like a safer problem to tackle
This past week at work I had a couple of different people ask me about what they believed to be technical problems with Teams. Once they told me about their respective issues, I understood that they were dealing with human problems that no tech tweak was going to fix. I think that people default to blaming tech because it feels like the safer, easier option. Why wrestle with the problems we’ve been dealing with for millennia when there’s a software update just around the corner?
A recent Harvard Business Review Ideacast reveals that investing in humans is essential. Of course they focus on profit in their message but I wanted to highlight the human issues. Data from 7,500 businesses revealed that key factors for employee happiness included friendships at work, feeling empowered, feeling listened to and having employee time respected. Just simple, human-centered, concepts.
Doubt comes in
To be completely transparent, I’ve been struggling to come up with another blog post. What started as a break from writing became a cycle of doomscrolling and doubt. Doubt caused me to second guess what I’m doing in this space. Does it even make sense to ask people to work like humans when there is so much propaganda touting the genius of machines and asking us to produce at all costs?
Strangely enough, I’ve taken comfort in the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice and its retelling in Hadestown. Doubt is something that we humans have been struggling with forever. To ground in my humanity means to accept that doubt comes in. To act like a human means to keep trying and learning.
By writing this post, I’m looking my doubts in the face. I will keep sharing my voice and my belief that work can be humane. We can work in ways that honor our humanity. In fact, we must.
Leave a Reply