Life Lessons from the Hotel industry- Managing Obscurity

Life Lessons from the Hotel industry- Managing Obscurity

In a hotel of four stars and above, you will normally deal with people who have already made it in life. Not just any one is willing to spend $250 in just one night. These are people who have succeeded in business, public service or the corporate world. They are people with a Name and a Reputation wherever they come from. They have their degree of fame. They are “someone”. 

Every once in a while, we will get one of these “somebodies” who feel they should be exempt from a certain procedure because of who they are. They feel they should not be made to identify themselves by giving their ID, or they should not be made to pay for a certain service. Their argument will always have the line “Don’t you know who I am?” You will normally want to answer, “I have no clue who you are, so who are you?” Of course that would hurt their ego and the melee that would follow would only put your job in jeopardy. You have to pretend that now you recognize them and you are embarrassed not to have noticed them sooner. 

But let’s face it, except for very few people in this world, we all live very obscure lives. We are all very little known and we do largely insignificant jobs if we look at the big picture; we will never be put on the big stage to save the world! Even if you are the Kenyan President, and we assume all the 40 million Kenyans know you, you are still obscure in a world of 7 billion people. Less than 0.6% of the people in the world know you (It is like being known by only 6 students in a school of 1000 students). “Know you” is actually an overstatement, for most would probably know very little about you, and even if they knew much, what would it count for?

Yet the longing to be known, and to be popular, and to do something significant that will change the world is inherent in each of us. When we are consigned to obscurity, and a lot of time we are, our hearts ache. We long to move from the twilight to the limelight. We long to be important and significant. I think J.S. Porter captures that tension very accurately in his poem “the dream of fewness”

There’s too much of everything 
books, stars, flowers. 
How can one flower be precious 
in a bed of thousands?
How can one book count 
in a library of millions?
The universe is a junkyard 
burnt out meteors, busted up stars 
planetary cast-offs, throwaway galaxies 
born and buried in an instant 
repeating, repeating

We are buried in the infinitude of people and things. We bruise ourselves as we struggle to push our heads out, trampling on who ever we may to get our way up. We hope to stand out; that each soul may marvel at the very knowledge of who we are. 

But maybe we are not that much, may be even after we get all the fame we can get, we are still empty inside. May be we can be happy even in our hidden lives if we determine to. Here are the two little lessons I have learnt that have helped me manage my little hidden life

1) Learn who it is you must impress. It is a beautiful and liberating thing when you discover the people you must impress. When you discover who really matters, everyone else need not recognize you, everyone else need not cheer you. You can brush aside all those ‘dumb people’ who don’t seem to know who you are with a whisper to yourself “well, you are not the one I must impress”. Only very few people really matter as far as our happiness and well being is concerned. We should discover them, and must not waste our energies trying to pull around ourselves people whose goodwill will count for nothing in the critical moments of our lives. We must also not make a very common mistake; confusing the importance of the little circle of people who make our lives, and the larger circle through whom we make a living. We must not disparage the relationships that really count trying to sustain those that we can always dispense with. This is not to give us license to be arrogant and aloof when dealing with people we do not know. This is to liberate us from the vanity of needing recognition and prepare us for my next point.

2) Make your random encounters with people meaningful and pleasurable: You will probably never be on a stage with the whole world as your audience. You are however able to meet several people, one by one in the course of your day. These can be some of your most fulfilling moments of your life. Taking my point above into consideration, these are encounters that need not be faced with expectations or obligations. The outcome is inconsequential if it be negative. It could brighten your day and a stranger’s if it be positive. We have a proverb in the vernacular that says “do good and go your way”. Consider also this quote by C S Lewis

"When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then–that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it."

The good we do to people and the reciprocal good we receive is enhanced by the thoughts we put to it and how it interacts with our experiences. At the end of our lives, what may have been very simple and short encounters may actually end up being the encounters that changed the courses of our lives. Consider also this other quote (especially if you believe in life after death)

'It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct our dealings with each other... there are no ordinary people'

In our daily interactions, we are either helping or hindering each other in our quest for a decent and comfortable life. What about being that person who helps, and thus is forever remembered fondly by a soul he might never meet again? And if there is a “hereafter”, what about getting to the afterworld and meeting up all these guys who are so indebted to your enormous contribution to their now “glorious persons” through small acts of kindness that you cannot even remember.

When I think about this, I realize, even in my hidden life, I have a tremendous contribution to make. In my obscurity, and I need not get out of it, I could also make a contribution of eternal consequence… and I will not wait or seek the big stage to get to do it.