Spiritual, In a Demonic Sense
A metaphysical practitioner of peace and love. A hippie guru legitimized by a foundation of past life recall. The halo-wearer of Aquarius-Age books in print.
Ironically, the man of many names actually lived his life as a passive aggressive (but mostly aggressive) madman. As evidenced this fine morning at our digital startup, by the sound of page after page rolling off the fax machine.
Oh, not again. I eyed the machine. My boss nervously poked his head around the corner, peering with wide pupils at the rattling appliance.
The fax machine: an apropos medium for a writer. We lived at the dawn of the internet, yet email just would not do. Paper sent over the wire provided tangibility, something you could not just ignore. Heck, the machine remained tied up for 45 minutes just receiving one of the kook’s epic diatribes. That made it even more intimidating. You could nearly detect the smell of pseudo-legalese fodder hanging in the air, as acerbic words spilled onto the pages.
It is amazing that “fax” still exists today, notably in our broken medical, insurance and financial sectors, despite our seemingly advanced technological state! But I digress… back to our client, the Faxing King of the 1990’s...
For context in a previous tale, this client drove employees to moments of “Digital Deliria” and drastic self-esteem retaining measures. But why?
At his core, he was an author extraordinaire. A well-known and prolific writer of metaphysical books, that still remain as cornerstones of new age philosophy today. Ironic then, that a man in the business of being “fun loving and spiritual” was equally prolific in sending us 10-page faxes ripping us up and down.
Words of bitter criticism, hatred, blame, despair, depression – all flowered from the page in copious quantity. Manic adjectives flourished with little or no actual requests. The overflowing, demonic rants only served to destroy us.
We preferred to respond like normal human beings to these communiques. First: have a stiff drink. Then, place a return phone call. Mustering our calm, we’d carefully discuss the issues raised in the fax.
The only faxes we sent in return? Invoices. Approaching the machine with an invoice in-hand required a straightening of the spine, a deep breath, and stiff brace stance (for fear of what we might receive in return). We cringed and pressed “send”, innocently begging for sweet lifeblood to keep our digital startup going, and to meet payroll.
We were simply people who were willing to serve our client’s website needs, bending over backwards to make them happy.
But we, the far-from-perfect, seemingly rarely did for this man. It’s true: we often deserved a firm critique. We were all trying to just “figure out” how to build this new thing called the web. Fails were all-too-common. But this was an unwarranted level of abuse rarely seen – before or since!
How could a sometime self-help guru, of past life wisdom and spouter of meditative benefits, could at once live a very different mindset when dealing with actual people? The lunatic was nearly perfect in his hypocrisy.
What motivated him?: Wanting it all now, and expecting it to be perfect. But he was asking for expertise that no one had. His website was one of the first ecommerce sites ever built… to promote and sell his books. This far predated Amazon.com, when no one had ordered goods online ever before.
However like many maniacs, this man deserves a story, given so many bittersweet lessons learned:
- First: Peddling the fantasy of dreams and deeper meanings in life is more prevalent and desired in this world than actually living them. Indeed: for most, it’s just about the hustle. And hustle he did: building on folks’ hopes for a deeper life roadmap, and serving it up on a platter through his books (without actually living his own gospel).
- As such, matters of the spirit aren’t well-addressed by the preach of fallible human beings.
- In addition: on earth, “not all is as it seems”.
- And most importantly: when you’re down and “getting those faxes”, never give up! Thicken that skin to the nay-sayers… they’re all around, ready to tap your energy. Don’t give in to it. Keep moving forward.
I still value my life lessons from this madman. 🙂 And… he was the first, but not the last teacher!
As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.
Please “like” if you did on social media @DigitalDeliria, share, and post your comments. What did you learn from your most unforgettable client/customer “interaction-gone-bad” moment?
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