Office angst

Stale office air circulated and re-circulated. The quick taps of polished heels intermingled with the slipper-slaps of the less formal. Colleagues passed swiftly between the separate sections in the office, smiling briefly at the other if their eyes weren’t glued to the papers they held.

The whirl of private minds overlapped in the vacuum of the insentient air, an invisible buzz of hive-like activity, a mild electricity that flowed through the veins and compelled fingers to type, feet to tap, eyes to search and search and find.

Willed by the collective mind, I found myself typing, taping and searching. Yet I was ineffectual. The surrounding buzz penetrated my head, waging war with a mind that stubbornly insisted on remaining under the warm covers of blissful emptiness.

So I flopped to and fro, willing the hours to pass, suffering from my rebellion against the corporate spirit, suffering in my bittersweet wallowing in unproductivity, suffering the censure, the stifled spirit, the divided heart.

Redemption emerged from an unlikely source. Barely a few weeks before placed at our reception area to replace its browned and dying predecessors, two beautiful potted plants with big waxy green leaves stood. Without sun or oxygen, with only the measly sprinklings of water the busy administrator could afford in between phonecalls, I thought it was a matter of time before these lives where similarly cut short.

In such barrenness, how could anything grow?

But they did. In my hazy wanderings, I noticed that new white-green shoots were pushing forth from the soil. Still furled like some chlorophyllic foetus, they gave off a glistening sheen of cool paradise, unawares of the busy nothingness that surrounded its fertility. Drops of moisture dotted its leaves like distilled crystals of peace.

I imagined that each time I walked pass, I touched a little the bubble of bounty and life that enveloped each plant. I imagined that I could borrow from its mini-atmosphere of growth and fertility as a balm of my mangled mind.

And why not? In this sterile spic-and-span of the office environment, everyone is entitled to a little slice of life.