I have a lot of admiration for Ukraine right now, fighting against a much more powerful invader, where the odds don’t look good and there has to be a certain amount of luck and stubborn belief. It’s a classic underdog story that many of us love and I find myself reading other underdog stories, searching for clues on what makes someone smaller, less powerful win against a bigger foe. Two things seem to always be at play: 1. Complete belief that your cause is right, that there’s no accepting defeat or compromise 2. Knowing it will take sacrifices and suffering, but also knowing when the foe isn’t willing to make sacrifices.
During my first job at a European multinational company, a co-worker from America joined us. I was excited to have a fellow American and we became friends right away. I tried to help her navigate the Dutch bureaucracy, which was full of extra hoops to jump through. At some point she found out that our company had reneged on its promise to wave the Dutch rate of taxes (40-50%), due to her expatriate status. The reasoning was supposedly that the extra taxes were used to give us additional expatriate benefits like help with finding an apartment, language lessons etc. My co-worker was nonetheless appalled that she had been lied to and fought our company by refusing to sign the contract stating that she agreed to be taxed at the Dutch rate.So she didn’t get paid. For months. She brought in lawyers, who said she had a case but got bogged down in negotiating a compromise, when in fact my friend didn’t want to compromise. She wanted to get what she’d been promised.
I was impressed that she’d got without payment for so long, and of course hoping it’d work out, but also realizing that an army of corporate lawyers will likely always win against a backwater private lawyer.And in the end she realized she wasn’t going to win without years dragging on at vast expense (way more than her ratcheted-up tax rate). So she left the company, and I wondered why I never felt like my sense of principles or righteousness meant more to me. Did I just think you can’t win against the system? Or did I hope to join the system and then someday change it from within? Or do I just not care about principles enough, that life is more about surviving and trying to ignore the injustices I saw because they weren’t massively affecting me. What is it about someone that takes an injustice not their own? Or takes on an injustice that will cause them more suffering than the actual injustice?
Do I want that quality? In fact, maybe that quality is what makes life feel truly lived, that you are in the thick of it rather than merely observing and getting by.
I know I’m an observer. I want to get involved, but I also don’t want to sacrifice, because I’m not sure when the sacrifice ends and what am I left with besides principles? Which maybe is enough.
— siobhan
During my first job at a European multinational company, a co-worker from America joined us. I was excited to have a fellow American and we became friends right away. I tried to help her navigate the Dutch bureaucracy, which was full of extra hoops to jump through. At some point she found out that our company had reneged on its promise to wave the Dutch rate of taxes (40-50%), due to her expatriate status. The reasoning was supposedly that the extra taxes were used to give us additional expatriate benefits like help with finding an apartment, language lessons etc. My co-worker was nonetheless appalled that she had been lied to and fought our company by refusing to sign the contract stating that she agreed to be taxed at the Dutch rate.So she didn’t get paid. For months. She brought in lawyers, who said she had a case but got bogged down in negotiating a compromise, when in fact my friend didn’t want to compromise. She wanted to get what she’d been promised.
I was impressed that she’d got without payment for so long, and of course hoping it’d work out, but also realizing that an army of corporate lawyers will likely always win against a backwater private lawyer.And in the end she realized she wasn’t going to win without years dragging on at vast expense (way more than her ratcheted-up tax rate). So she left the company, and I wondered why I never felt like my sense of principles or righteousness meant more to me. Did I just think you can’t win against the system? Or did I hope to join the system and then someday change it from within? Or do I just not care about principles enough, that life is more about surviving and trying to ignore the injustices I saw because they weren’t massively affecting me. What is it about someone that takes an injustice not their own? Or takes on an injustice that will cause them more suffering than the actual injustice?
Do I want that quality? In fact, maybe that quality is what makes life feel truly lived, that you are in the thick of it rather than merely observing and getting by.
I know I’m an observer. I want to get involved, but I also don’t want to sacrifice, because I’m not sure when the sacrifice ends and what am I left with besides principles? Which maybe is enough.
— siobhan
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