CONTRAILS

It's so weird how there are moments, just moments, when you can really see the vapour trails of pride in your attitude. Most of the time you can't see them at all, and then, suddenly, there they are, streaming behind you, crystallising into the air.

I'm talking about the destructive kind of pride of course - the stuff that gets right under your skin and tries to convince you that no-one else matters.

Well, today, I see its contrails. Someone struggles with a document table of contents but doesn't ask for help. My chest tightens; I could fix that! Someone else says something musical and I want to chip in and look good. Then a Big Cheese starts changing the slides in someone's presentation without them knowing, just before they present, and I hear myself whispering that I'd "refuse to present at all" if it were me! I reply to a group email; the sender responds to others in the chain, before and after me, but not me. Gritted teeth, tight chest, the engine rumbles on the wing.

These are all vapour trails: they're byproducts of being talented, opinionated, knowledgeable, and the self-pilot of your flight on Ego Airways.

So what do you do? How do you just let these things go? I don't enjoy feeling like this - to be honest, I don't even feel great about writing about it because in an ironic way, coming online and telling the world that I want to be 'more humble' comes across as exactly the opposite of humility. I could so easily be double-bluffing. But of course, once you go down that road, you end up in an infinite loop and there's nothing I can say at all.

What then? Bottle it up? Take it home? Keep quiet? Switch off the engines and let the plane tumble quietly out of the sky?

Nope. I think part of the answer is just getting better at the silent art of empathy, at listening, and continually searching for the best in other people.

Clearly I'm not the only person who can fix a table of contents. And just because some developers can (however surprising that might actually be) it doesn't undermine my job at all.

Similarly, knowing about music does not define my identity either! Who cares? I don't want to rob someone of the opportunity of finding out a thing, by blurting it out like an armchair expert. If the journey's been great for you, don't arrive at the destination and immediately build a transporter beam. Right? The view might not have been designed just for you.

The slide-changing manager is harder to cope with because that would genuinely fluster me. But I tell you what, after the first time, I'd work really hard to craft better slides for the next one. After all, it was sitting in a tutor's office with my work scribbled-over in red pen that got me writing in the first place! I'm not Hemingway, but I am thankful to Dr James and Dr Neely all those years ago.

And who gives a hoot about emails? We disrespect each other accidentally all the time online; it seems to me that letting go of 'being offended' from behind a glowing screen and a rattling keyboard, is the real skill, fit for the age. It's about time I learned how to do it.

Contrails become clouds eventually. They sort of merge into the sky in fluffy lines until you can't tell that a plane was ever there at all. Maybe that's a good lesson - seeing your vapour trails as part of the skyscape, made much more beautiful as the natural course of things takes over. And of course, at the end of the day, we all have to land and let the sunset paint the clouds regardless.