Tribal Happiness

I have been thinking about things today. This is quite a common thing I know but a few things have come together...

Last week some colleagues bought some music in for us to listen to instead of the radio. It was good but not quite what I wanted to listen to so today I took my turn. I liked my music but it was pretty obvious that no one else was feeling it. My enjoyment of my music went down hill very quickly and i ended up putting the radio on. I think this relieved one or two of my colleagues. I kind of hope we don't do the music thing again but I suspect we will.

We listen to a local radio station and I don't think a single one of us really enjoy it. We have a few old rockers, a young dancey thing or two, some older easy listening types. I kind of like it all but not as much as my own music. I was kind of edgy in my music tastes when I was younger and I guess not everyone loves my tastes even now, even when I pick things I thing they will like. I liked things in that kind of area around grunge, goth, trance and punk. very much a child of the precise time I was in my late teens, a frozen snap shot of what the coolest alternative scene was at the time.

We have to listen to this station though, or one like it because it is more important that none of us really hate it, than none of really love it. I like some of the songs, occasionally there is one I love and I reckon all of us would say that but probably not about the same songs.

In school and college we divide up into tribes often due to tastes and interests. At work we are forced together with people that we perhaps wouldn't choose to be with, that we might have nothing at all in common with. We end up behaving in particular ways to get on with this mass group we may or may not actually want to spend time with. Not many of us really enjoy work, and even if we do, I doubt we enjoy it all the time.

I mostly like the people I work with and we have a real laugh but we are not at all alike. We can't sort ourselves out into tribes so well at work. We can a little by our choice of job but it isn't perfect and other factors apart from interest are in play.

I had been thinking about writing this and then I got home and read barry's post today about the effect on us of happy people around us. A happy next door neighbour is likely to make us more happy. So is a happy friend or sibling living close by and a happy spouse definitely makes us happier. Even a friend of a friend who is happy has a knock on effect. Apparently it is probably a proximity thing.

The only people this doesn't work with are colleagues. A happy colleague doesn't make us happier. is this some side effect of the artificial tribe thing? Maybe if we chose our own colleagues they would affect us more.

Some how this just makes me feel that the rat race is so phony. Even the society it creates doesn't somehow work right. I am not saying this is so everywhere, some workplaces might have a genuine bonding into a tribe.... Not sure mine does... Not really...