Smelly monkey bubble

Almost 10 years ago, when I used to share a blog with a friend, I wrote a post in which I compared employees of the mass media to zookeepers. I don't mean that as an insult whatsoever. You like to go to the zoo, right? You get to take a break from the routine of your everyday life and enjoy the animals. I mean, when the tigers and the lions and the monkeys look right at you, without any threat of death, dismemberment, or stampede, that's a pretty huge deal. Sure, it's a little bit stinky there at the zoo, but you get to walk away from it after a short while. So, visiting the zoo is a wonderful, awe-inspiring experience for you. But what about for the zookeepers? They're there every day. They've seen a side of the monkeys that they probably don't ever want to brag about. Maybe when schoolbuses full of excited children are touring through the monkey cages, the zookeepers are politely smiling while silently thinking, "Big deal. It's just a smelly monkey."

Throughout my career, I've worked at a variety of "mass media" places: a public television station, a newspaper, a closed-caption company, and now a magazine. I still think I'm a lot like a zookeeper. Sometimes when I tell people what I do, they erupt with excitement. I'm an editor and a writer. At the periodical where I work, a huge part of my job is deciding what ultimately makes it into print -- whether I politely send a contributor a "Thanks but no thanks" rejection email or whether I write the content myself. Sometimes I forget how much power I really have. Sometimes it's just like a smelly monkey to me.

That tends to happen when you get bogged down with details and politics and frustrations and trying to read your bosses' minds and wanting to punch people in the face when they tell you to hurry and wanting to strangle somebody for working too fast and now you have to fix their mistakes and wanting to verbally flog somebody else for having an extended personal phone call in the office next to yours or in the hallway right in front of your desk... all the while the clock is ticking. The deadline is here. The time is gone. If you won't get it done, no one will. Come on, Tirzah, look alive. The monkey poop won't shovel itself.

But it's all worth it when you get to see the finished product. There's your newspaper or your magazine in your hand; you designed its pages, and you think it looks pretty darn good. There's that TV show that you just put on the air with a push of a button, or there's that closed-caption file that you slaved for hours over; it's being broadcast to hundreds or thousands or millions of TVs now, and it wouldn't have happened without you. Of course it's possible that no one will ever know that it was you who did all that work. But you don't really care. Just as long as you produced the best product that you could, you know that you've done your job, and you can take great pride in that, in a good way. Just as long as the zoo patrons are excited about seeing the monkey that you spend 40 hours a week taking care of, you know that that's ultimately what matters there at your zoo-cage.

But sometimes the monkey can be seriously disrespected.

Reader, I probably don't have to explain to you how journalism, in its purest form, is very rare to encounter nowadays. Reporting just the facts, in a way that is objective and completely without an agenda, is incredibly hard to find. I wasn't a journalism major, and I've never been a reporter, so I don't consider myself to be a journalist. But I know what journalism is supposed to do; I know the purpose that it's supposed to serve. Unfortunately, that purpose is often squelched and tainted by greed, egotism, selfishness, etc. And I haven't even mentioned what social media has done to journalism. Seriously, why are you news websites allowing people to comment on your news story as if it were a status update on Facebook? You'll attract all kinds of haters who won't ever have the guts to communicate what they're really feeling to your face. And it doesn't seem to do any kind of edifying good to the readers to display those ignorant remarks on the internet, anyway.

People often talk about "the mass media" as if it were some estranged cousin who's goofing off in prison or something. "Hey, did you see what the mass media did this time? Yeah, I know. Their lawyers are hard at work keeping them off death row, so they're just partying away there behind bars. We're paying for them to go to college with our tax dollars. I think they even eat better than we do."

Yes, many of us in "the mass media" definitely do have an agenda. I'm not gonna lie. We communicate the things that we communicate because we tend to lean a certain way. Many of us lean very politically to the left and tend to embrace very untraditional things. (In case you don't already know, I personally lean very politically to the right (if you can get me to talk about politics at all, that is, because I'm really burned out on that particular subject -- have I told you lately how much I love my cats?), and my overt agenda is to tell whoever will listen about my relationship with God, which I hope is pretty darn untraditional. Sorry, but you won't be able to shut me up.) Frankly, if you would stop talking about "the mass media" as if it were the bogeyman, perhaps more of your leaning-very-politically-to-the-right children would want to grow up to have media-related careers instead of the more traditional ones like doctor, teacher, lawyer, etc. But that is just my observation and opinion. (See? Can't shut me up.)

But most of the time, we in "the mass media" are simply required to do our jobs, and we are doing so under a great deal of pressure from 1) our bosses 2) our deadlines 3) our advertisers 4) our potential advertisers 5) our clients 6) the readers/viewers that our clients are trying to kiss up to 7) trends that the world seems to be following 8) the fact that people don't want to buy newspapers or cable TV or a public-television membership as much as they used to. Ultimately, we're in a business to make money. Even chicks who work in "the mass media" gotta eat.

When I was a little girl, I don't ever remember saying, "When I grow up, I want to work in the mass media." I just wanted to write. Then when I got older, I also wanted to edit. After I began to follow God around like a lovesick puppydog, I ended up getting jobs in "the mass media." That's how I got here. I hope I don't stay here for the rest of my life, but I'm learning a lot, and I sure am thankful that it pays the bills.

So, I was reminded of how powerful (or how hated) my job is when I attended an important industry event earlier this week. I was listening to a presentation in which the speaker was communicating some highly technical information on a very specific industry process (I wasn't assigned to report on it, so I wasn't taking notes, but I was listening and smiling politely). In the middle of his presentation, I don't remember his exact words, but he scoffed a little bit and said, "The mass media keeps saying that this industry process is the next big thing, but in the end, we're still going to need people to evaluate the quality of the process." I kept smiling politely. If the speaker had known that a member of "the mass media" was looking right at him, would he have chosen his words more carefully? Would he have scoffed? Would he have cared?

At any rate, had very good credentials. He had worked in the industry for at least a couple of decades, so he knew what he was talking about.

But I've noticed -- at least, in my opinion -- that that particular industry is a peculiar one. As dependent as it is on modern technology, it can be very out of touch with the rest of the world. People tend to work in that particular industry for decades at a time, so they kind of operate in a bubble of sorts. Awhile back, I heard that the trend nowadays is to change careers every five years or so. I think anytime you change jobs, you grow at least practically speaking because you expose yourself to a new perspective. I think that's a healthy thing.

If you don't expose yourself to a new perspective every once in a while, you could get into an unhealthy rut. You could live inside a bubble, in a bad way. Outsiders could peer inside your bubble, realize that they don't want to join you inside your I-already-know-everything-about-everything bubble, and stealthily float away from you.

If you live inside a bubble, in a bad way, you could begin to believe very peculiar things. You could believe that reprimanding an employee by emailing him/her and CCing everyone else in the company "so that everyone can learn" or "so that we all can share the experience" is supposed to be normal. (The truth is, it's highly unprofessional.) You could believe that inviting your employees to openly praise or critique everyone's project is supposed to help everybody in the company improve. (The truth is, it alienates your employees.) You could believe that everybody is exactly like you, so you don't think it's offensive to ask a new employee if he/she has a green card. (I mean, come on.) You could believe that your precious little monkey is perfect, smells like a rose garden, and will always be better than all the other monkeys at all the other zoos. (But who wants to visit a zoo where the air is thick with the nauseating stench of monkey poop?)

So, the truth is, if you spend enough time maintaining your monkey at your zoo, you could forget how wonderful your monkey really is. Is it really just a smelly monkey? Or is it a miraculously living creature, and you of all people have been given the charge, the honor, the incredible responsibility of taking care of it?

I think living life in God's Kingdom can be like that, too.

"You who laid the foundations of the earth, so that it should not be moved forever, You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At Your rebuke they fled; at the voice of Your thunder they hastened away. They went up over the mountains; they went down into the valleys, to the place which You founded for them. You have set a boundary that they may not pass over, that they may not return to cover the earth." (Psalm 104:5-9)

On my drive home today (from my mass-media zookeeper job), I realized that God -- the most powerful Being in the universe -- favors me. OH, MY GOSH, THE ONE WHO CREATED THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE FRICKIN' FAVORS ME!!! I am struggling right now to find words to describe this. The Omnipotent, Almighty God -- the only True God, who is real, who is there, who WAS, who IS, who IS TO COME -- wants me to succeed. He wants me, period. He is more than likely the busiest Being in the universe, and yet He is always available to spend time with me. He is the biggest Person in the entire universe, and He chose me to be in His family. He wants to be my Friend. He wouldn't have created me otherwise.

And He feels that way about everybody, not just me.

So, during the drive home, a few tears came to my eyes while some awe crept back in. I think maybe sometimes when you've spent some time "working" for the King, it can be easy to forget how awe-inspiring, how infinitely wonderful, how truly big a deal it is to actually be in His Kingdom. Sometimes He hands you a shovel and says something to the effect of, "Hey, little shepherdess, can you please help Me shovel some sheep poop? There's plenty of it to go around."

I don't want to just be another zookeeper. I want to stay in awe of the One who created the animals, the One who created the earth, the One who created me, the One who created the "Zoo" in the first place. I want to continually be amazed, refreshed, and restored by my God, the Shepherd who will never stop taking impeccable care of me.

That's my Daddy. He's the One who I follow around like a lovesick puppydog. He's the One who keeps renewing me. I don't want to create my own bubble and begin believing very peculiar things about my own little world. I want to let Him take me by the hand and continually lead me into new perspectives.

I think that will always be a very good thing.

(Sorry, but you won't be able to shut me up.)