res gestae or a la recherche du temps perdu … and society

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‘res gestae’

latin for things I have done or “things done

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À la recherche du temps perdu

french for remembrance of things past

<“In Search of Lost Time” Marcel Proust>

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So. This is about things you do in life and the remembrance of things past and the fact that in today’s society you cannot permit things you may, or may not have done, become lost and gone.

Oh. And I imagine this has to do with business and building a resume and ‘marketing yourself’ <a term I abhor almost as much as ‘personal branding’>. I begin this discussion with a quasi-Life truth warning about how things you do, in the end, can blow away in the wind<if you are not careful>:

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“I spend my time building castles in the air but in the end all of them, and I, blow away in the wind.”

Don Juan of Austria

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Now. To be clear. This is not about not doing things, or not having the drive or passion or persistence to go and do, this is more about having actually done <things> and whether it matters if you tell anyone you actually did them or not.

Anyway. I just used a quote from Don Juan of Austria to make a point. He was a young man in the late 1500’s described as having an unquenchable appetite for glory and certainly a man of action. He was the leader, and victor, of the Christian coalition against the Ottomans in the battle of Lepanto at the age of 22 in 1571.

Yup. 22 years old. Oops. Only to die not too many years later of typhoid somewhere in the Netherlands <while seeking further glory & action>.

Well. We do not all have an ‘unqeuenchable appetite for glory’ <I know I do not>, but I do tend to believe that we all would like to have developed a nice list of ‘things I have done’ throughout our lives.

Glorious? Maybe. I think ‘meaningful’ would be a better word and thought. But here is one of the challenges Life throws you. It doesn’t really matter what you want or desire because society wants and demands something else. The whole world of ‘understatement’ and ‘being humble’ and ‘letting my actions speak for me’ seems to have disappeared.

res gestae proceed with curiosityI know … I know … that sounds cynical … but look around.

Self-help books scream “if you don’t tell anyone what you have done how will anyone <in this fragmented short attention span world> ever know what you have done … don’t fear telling people your accomplishments!!!!” <yes … they always include exclamation points>. Or … “you need to be your own best advocate … and don’t be afraid to tell people so.”

In addition, you cannot escape it in the business world because business management demands you to point out your accomplishments in interviews and annual reviews <at the same time demanding you never use “I” because that implies you aren’t a team player>.

Let’s be honest. Today’s world makes it difficult to be humble or quiet with regard to … well … anything, but especially your actions and accomplishments. Simplistically this happens because businesses want to pay people off of results, i.e., ‘responses’ not stimulus. Uh oh. That means you may be a catalyst, but you will get paid less than someone who ties themselves to results.

Sorry. That is today’s world.

Well. Let me take on this whole res gestae thought in pieces <or parts>.

  • Accountability in our lives <us common everyday folk>
  • Accountability in business life … possibly in Life in general … for leaders.
  • Defining accountability in interviews and in business <from a personal perspective>.

–          Accountability in our lives <us common everyday folk>

Personally I do not believe the majority of us have to show ‘accountability’ for our lives. I believe this mostly because most of us are just trying to do our frickin’ best without having to be accountable for all of our actions at the end of it all. Sure. We would maybe like to have a list of ‘things that I have done’ that reflects … well … a job well done. A measure of the overall effort we put in over time and at critical times <I tend to believe it is really really rare we would ever look back and say ‘wow … that was perfectly the best and I couldn’t have done better!” – note the shouting for affect>.

I tend to believe most of us will be pretty content saying we did the best we could.res gestae lucille ball

Ah. But its a ‘res gestae’ world. What have you accomplished? Where is the list of things you have done? Suffice it to say, this sucks.

–          Accountability in business life … possibly in Life in general … for leaders.

Now … leaders? Well. Yeah. They are accountable.

They accepted responsibility. They should be accountable and dammit … silly or not … I want them to step up to the plate as examples for the next generation of leaders and say “yeah … this is what I did … and didn’t do.”

As I type that … I will visit what actually got me thinking on res gestae … Roman Emperor Augustus. He was most famous for listing his deeds <Res Gestae Divi Augusti …. – Latin: “The Deeds of the Divine Augustus” –  is the funerary inscription of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, giving a first-person record of his life and accomplishments>.

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By its very nature the Res Gestae is less objective history and more propaganda for the principate that Augustus instituted. It tends to gloss over the events between the assassination of Augustus’ adoptive father Julius Caesar and the victory at Actium when his foothold on power was finally undisputed. Augustus’ enemies are never mentioned by name. Caesar’s murderers Brutus and Cassius are not referred to by name, they are simply “those who killed my father.” The Battle of Philippi is mentioned only passim and not by name. Mark Antony and Sextus Pompeius, Augustus’ opponents in the East, remain equally anonymous; the former is “he with whom I fought the war,” while the latter is merely a “pirate.”

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Some examples of deeds <or accomplishments> he listed:

16) I paid cash to the towns for the lands that I assigned to soldiers in my fourth consulship, and later in the consulship of Marcus Crassus and Gnaeus Lentulus

17) Four times I assisted the treasury with my own money, so

20) I restored the Capitol and the theatre of Pompey, both works at great expense without inscribing my own name on either. 2 I restored the channels of the aqueducts, which in several places were falling into disrepair through age, and

25) I made the sea peaceful and freed it of pirates. In that war I captured about 30,000 slaves who had escaped from their masters …

Well. While I worry that this can quite easily turn into self-propaganda I do see the value in leaders having ‘deeds.’ Do they write them themselves? Yikes. I don’t know. I would prefer some unbiased people providing the list, but I do like the fact that as a leader they are accountable. In addition, maybe this is where I am different from other people, I am okay if they sucked as a leader. I do not believe we demand this list to crucify them <or worship them>, but rather simply to learn. The fact that their ‘deeds’ were underwhelming or they under delivered on what was set out upon in the beginning is not the point. Huh? For a variety of reasons good, or great, Leaders do not succeed and just as often some people overreach and attain leader positions and are not really leader types. But if we do not demand that leaders list their accomplishments how can the next generation better assess whether they should lead or follow?

Augustus may have been a toga wearing blowhard, but he sure had an impressive list of accomplishments. I ahve no clue whether he was a good leader or not, but I do like the fact we have something to view  as a ‘res gestae.’

res gestae value everything          Defining accountability in interviews and in business <from a personal perspective>.

Well. Let me begin with an interesting factoid – res gestae is a legal term:

 “Facts which, though not in issue, are so connected with a fact in issue as to form part of the same transaction, are relevant, whether they occurred at the same time and place of at different times and places.”

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … facts which may be proved, as part of res gestae, must be facts other than those in issue but must be connected with it. Though hearsay evidence is not admissible, but when it is res gestae it can be admissible in a court of law and may be reliable evidence.

Anyway. This is whole res gestae and interviewing <or business in general> is an interesting topic & situation for me. And before I wrote this section I had to go for a run and ponder what I would say.

Here is a truth.

I am naïve about this whole res gestae and interviewing and business thing. Yup. I have been in the working world for over 25 years and not counting the gobs of interviews I had to do to get my first job I have had 8 interviews in my entire career and had 6 offers from those 8. And I have had 9 jobs <yes I got 2 jobs without interviews because they were old bosses reaching out and hiring me>.

I don’t interview. Well. I just haven’t, jobs have appeared.

That said. In an interview I imagine if you are investing in res gestae you only have to provide ‘reliable evidence’ as to things you have done — including some hearsay. In other words you can make shit up or create some very very tenuous links with regard to what you have done. But, in today’s interviewing world, you are increasingly being demanded to step up and list your accomplishments. Hearsay, tenuous or direct … whoa … provide no list … and no job offered. That is the equation in today’s business interviewing world.

Me? I won’t do that. Well. I certainly would struggle to do that <hence my hesitance to go out and interview>. Combine that challenge with the fact that, well, I know everything … and nothing. Let me explain. As a generalist I know a little about everything and not a lot about anything in particular. I imagine I am more of a catalyst type than I am an ‘accomplisher’ <at least in my eyes>.

So. I have a double whammy challenge in today’s world – I am a generalist <when the business world is endeared with specialists> and I don’t really accomplish anything <but organizations accomplish things around me>.

Bottom line? res gestae girl explorerThis whole topic is a tricky one for me personally in Life and in interviewing.

I don’t get, nor like, the whole concept of even listing ‘things I have done’ even in a resume.

I imagine I should be quite thankful that I have avoided having to go through the interview process a lot. I suck at listing ‘what I have done.’ The few times I have interviewed I suggest ‘situations in which I have been involved have tended to end in positive places.”

Inevitably I get the follow up question(s) … what did you specifically do? How did you contribute to that success? … in other words … res gestae … you are demanded to give ‘the list of things I have done’.

I don’t.

I won’t.

Ok. Res gestae and this whole personal interviewing thing. I am relatively sure I have done some meaningful things, but most likely not any more meaningful than a bunch of other people.

So how do I resolve this in my head? Geez. Shit. I will suck in interviews <because I won’t ‘res gestae’ like many others … or invest any time and energy in remembrance of things past> and I simply will hope that others will recognize that I provide value in some form or fashion. I will not play this game. It is quite possible that I am being foolish. But I also tend to believe in the long term … which permits me to remind everyone of the quote I opened with … “I spend my time building castles in the air but in the end all of them, and I, blow away in the wind.”

If people demand that I list all the castles I have built <in the short term> which will all inevitably blow away in the wind <over time> … I just cannot. How big is an accomplishment if it simply blows away in the wind one day? And I certainly doubt I am good enough to have built any castle that the wind cannot blow away some day.

Ok. So <the conclusion to this rambling observation>.

res gestae conformistI can hope when all is said and done, just as Shakespeare did in his plays, in the end maybe I will simply ask for a “pardon “as his actors did if you don’t enjoy the show called my Life:

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber’d here

While these visions did appear

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles do not reprehend.

If you pardon, we will mend.

If you believe that Life is a stage and we play our part <as I do in most cases> than I will take a bow and hope everyone will recognize I played my part as well as I could. That is all I hope that people remember about what I have done. In business, interviews and most importantly life.

Yup … after taking a bow … I will <as Shakespeare did> offer a good night unto you all. Give me your hands if we be friends … But. Please don’t ever ask me for a list of things I have done.

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Written by Bruce