Needing just a little attention
Isn’t the ability to deliver within the deadline and the quiet acceptance of limits of budget, time, resources and manpower attentiongrabbing enough?
The phrase “low maintenance” is often used in connection with landscaping gardens. It is an option offered by the architect for grounds that need little care and attention. They can be left pretty much alone for long periods with just occasional looking into, or even just left to the elements. Such regular chores as watering, pruning, and spraying of insecticides are hardly necessary.
Low-maintenance gardens feature plants like cacti and other succulents that require little tending. These may also consist of neatly arranged pebbles in black and gray that need even less attention, ready to be trampled on and otherwise buffeted by the sun and rain but retaining an aesthetic appeal.
The garden as metaphor for personal relationship is overdone. How many wedding homilies have alluded to this imagery — that love requires constant care like a garden that one cannot leave alone for weeds ( temptations) and caterpillars ( creeps in society) to choke and destroy. The daily care and nurturing applied to plants must then characterize a relationship.
Growing things has also become a metaphor for a good life. The parable of the sower tossing seeds that fall on rocky or fertile ground is a variation of the garden image with its absorptive capacity for divine guidance. In this parable though, we are the recipients of divine words and counsel. The one doing the pruning and eventually consigning the weeds to eternal fire is the Constant Gardener.
What is one to make of a low-maintenance relationship which seems to need little thought or care? Romantics will overlook a pair that hardly holds hands, content to sit together, and occasionally chat — did you buy the wheat bread?
Still, the low-maintenance relationship can last longer. There are no musts and shoulds, just going with the flow and communicating to coordinate schedules or discussing which car to buy and what color. There still remains the possibility of delight and surprise when sparks occasionally fly and planets collide.
In the corporate world, a low-maintenance executive is not much appreciated. The rule that “the squeaky wheel gets the oil” prevails. So, a non-squeaker tends to be bypassed for promotion and often becomes the victim of credit grabbers. It is the high flyer who advertises all his (and other people’s) achievements that gets singled out and moved up.
The low-maintenance worker is considered merely dependable. When his name comes up for a possible promotion, comments revolve around his being gray and dull. Is he passionate about his job? Does he bring charisma to his organization to shock and awe the bystander? Credit for his achievements has already been usurped by others.
Isn’t the ability to deliver within the deadline and the quiet acceptance of limits of budget, time, resources and manpower attention-grabbing enough? Just because a person is not whining doesn’t mean he is free of problems and challenges. He just handles them quietly and without fanfare.
Low maintenance often entails a higher investment at the start. The expensive car leads to fewer service headaches in the future. The low-maintenance worker has already invested experience and hard work in previous jobs so that his expectations are more realistic and his ability to handle crisis already well-honed. He doesn’t need constant stroking and dangling of carrots to make him move.
Going back to our garden metaphor, isn’t the low-maintenance landscape as appealing as the care-thirsty and needy orchid wall? The rock garden with its natural pebbles is the apex of serenity and beauty in the Zen culture. After all, there is the need to occasionally rake the stones, making sure they are always properly aligned and moss-free, and that no mud seeps too much between them. They exude a certain peace with the flow of yin and yang.
Low maintenance is not the same as no maintenance, which is absolute neglect.
There is a leadership style too that is low key. It shuns the bombastic approach of the self- promoter who needs the adulation of the crowd and a thick collection of press clippings and blog hosannas.
Whether intentional or not, the lowmaintenance lifestyle and approach to life is bound to result in being neglected. Then it is time to quietly do something else… somewhere else.