Live to Work or Work to Live

In a professional career you come across all sorts of people but none have as much impact on you as the supervisors your work for.  They can make your professional life a pleasure and they can make it hell.  This year I am marking my 28th year on the job and with all sincerity I hope to stay around just just four more years.  Aside from loved ones and a few good friends I think 32 years is enough to devote to anyone or anything.

My first two supervisors were illustrations of various styles.  The first was hell.  She was a demonic memory that made me question my initial decisions in life.  The second was a motherly personality never wishing to push the envelop.  After the fourth year of the second supervisor, I was convinced I might need a complete career change and contemplated trading my mind numbing cubicle for an academic life.  It was my third supervisor who changed my life.  She gave me wings by inviting me to work for her for close to six years on the  southern side of the world. Da Luz Furtado brought me to Bolivia and showed me what it was like to work for a person filled with kindness, professionalism and a code of morality among all others.  The environment I entered when I first reported to the office where Da Luz would be my boss was a miserable one.  An Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) Investigation had descended on the office over the mismanagement of four supervisors once known collectively as the Mambo Kings.  All four were of Hispanic descent and led much more by the happiness of their male member than by a sense of right and wrong.  The office was filled with alliances and closed door interviews. Side deals were being made between the various people under investigation. Vacant attempts of expressing friendships were slung around by those involved in desperate actions to consolidate their positions in the face of relentless OPR questioning.  It was like nothing I have ever experienced and truly hope to never experience again.

With eyes wide open I quickly realized that there was one person in the office above all reproach and that was Da Luz.  Those being attacked loathed her for it and by extension did not care for anyone close to her.  I cast my lot with her and never looked back.  In twenty - eight years of service I have not met a finer person with personal character that comes even close to Da Luz.  She is an often overlooked credit to us all.  A person not afraid to take a stand for what is right, unfortunately constantly hurting herself and her own career in the process.  The respect I have for Da Luz is enormous and I sincerely love her for all that she is and what she represents.  Da Luz is retiring this year.  It is a day I knew would come but I never wanted to imagine would arrive.  It is yet another moment when like an elderly person seeing those they have known die around them, I feel like I am further being left behind.  There are times I wonder who will be left to say goodbye to me?

Working for a law enforcement agency is odd.  The actual enforcement officers are forced to retire at 57 and prior to that, allowed to retire at the age fifty with 20 years of service.  The reason for this is that statistically I guess they die sooner.  It is the result of life and job stress adding up.  Very few of the men and some women I knew were not divorced.  In the modern world of my agency I am not sure this is true anymore.  It certainly was with many of the agents I have worked with over my career.  Late nights, undercover work, supervisors and terrible pressure.  Watch an episode of Narcos and you will start to understand.  This is the agency that I came into as a young man and have watched leave as I grow older.  It has been replaced by endless bureaucracy and self serving agendas.  No one takes risks anymore and the mission is often secondary.  What we were for better or for worse for the first part of my career, we are no longer.

The net result of these early retirements is that people leave quickly.  Sometimes it feels like the blink of the eye.  You establish your friendships and personal relationships and as quickly as they came, they are gone.  The support network you hope to cling to in your own career vanishes in an instant.  As an an analyst subject to 30 years of work or a minimum age of 56+ I have found myself feeling like a ghost in an entity that has come and gone.  All in all I realize we are lucky.  I can only imagine those that by necessity or obligation must continue on into their 70’s and 80’s.  When I was a young man working in Washington DC I used to see this elderly man push a cart around.  Sometimes I would see him enter the elevator at the same time I did.  He was hunched over the handle of his cart and mumbled to himself.  As I watched him I quietly prayed that would never be me. 

As I wrote this essay I suddenly felt like I was writing some kind of eulogy but in truth it is just a bookmark.  Da Luz is closing a chapter and starting a new one.  Her previous chapter I have been a part of and in the next one it remains to be seen if I will be mentioned or simply a footnote.  Da Luz’s life will transcend this institution we have called our home and she will gift her loyalty and character to the everyday world she enters.  

I don’t know if she will have a formal goodbye but if she does I am sadly too far away to be there.  I truly love her for all that she is and I know that as she leaves the door of my world she will be there to open it again and welcome me when it is my turn to step through it.  Godspeed my friend.  The air that you breath will soon become sweeter and the sun that touches your skin will soon feel a bit warmer.