Tonight I listened to This American Life. The episode was 536: The Secret Recordings of Carmen Segarra. The story is also available at ProPublica. What struck me is that the people she worked for her told her that she was wrong, but she stuck to it. She had confidence in her own perceptions, analysis, and conclusions. I admire that.
It seems to me that I spend a great deal of my life telling myself that things are okay just because other people insisted they are okay. It started in 2006, when I told my doctor I did not feel well and she said I was fine. I have been feeling okay the past few years. Now it is about other things.
I tell people I don't like my job and they tell me I am lucky to have my job.
At my job, I say that the stuff we have to put up with is wrong, and my boss acknowledges some of the wrong aspects of it, but basically we still have to conform to it. The person in power gets to decide what the rules are, even if his interpretation is different from the actual written rules.
And then the things I'm involved in outside my job -- the time bank, the radio station, and Morris dance -- are poorly run, but I just bend over backwards trying to work with people.
And in general, the world is not right. Poverty, the criminal justice system, education -- they are not right. But I can't fix them. So I just try to find a way to live with the non-rightness.
Carment Segarra did not try to live with the not-rightness.
She lost her job as a result.
I admire her.
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