The Satanic Temple has seven core guiding principles called the tenets. This series of posts explores them, which may include what it means to me in my life, comparison to other belief systems, and so on.

VII

Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.

From https://thesatanictemple.com/blogs/the-satanic-temple-tenets/there-are-seven-fundamental-tenets

To me, nobility means being noble in quality, not some superior birthright. For example, having a moral character, aspiring to or demonstrating higher ideals, and/or presenting a calmly powerful personal presence.

Compassion was covered in the first tenet, and Justice in the second. I feel like wisdom is the natural outcome of living the fourth, fifth, and sixth tenets.

The most succinct way for me to describe this tenet is to be a confident, caring person who strives to think things through from others’ viewpoints to see the overriding best course of action, which may include using words for positive impact.

The actions part of this is a lot easier for me, to be sure. My spur of the moment speaking style is usually direct, blunt, and/or literal. As such, it’s easy for people to misunderstand me because they’re so used to reading into things that they overinterpret the words to attach judgments, meanings, and attributions that aren’t even on my radar.

I once had an argument with my boss because I said the sky is blue. She demanded to know what I meant by that, and why I’d say such a thing. Looking up at the crystal clear, blue sky, the meaning was so blatantly obvious to me that all I could think to say was that the sky was blue.

The most absurd thing about this story is that she was recognized as one of the best communicators in a company employing over 15,000 people. Meanwhile I was put on notice (several times) for being a horrible communicator.

Keep in mind that another boss, who also belittled me for being bad at interpersonal communications, thought that it was perfectly ok to joke about how her home is too poor to have an Elf on the Shelf. Instead, they have the w—- in the drawer.

So yeah, that’s perfectly acceptable, but saying the sky is blue isn’t?

What’s this got to do with nobility? Even in these conversations, I strove to express and interpret compassion, wisdom, and justice.

If my boss was that poor, the compassionate action is to empathize. The wise thing to do is question and guide. And a just course is figure out how to fix why a boss is so broke.

And so I did those. Or at least tried to.

What I learned was that enlightenment and influence are not highly related. Many co-workers mentioned how much they loved working with me, especially my refreshing, no-hidden-messages speaking style. But when it came time for managerial training, I was passed over.

Quite frankly, I think that it’s because these bosses were intimidated. I was placed at the head of a very important project with massive exposure. And I performed very well in this role. In fact, this project only started to fail when the boss started directing how it needed to happen. And because I was the face of the project, I’m the one who appeared to fail.

But then I was put on another high-profile project. In this case, the boss expected the project to fail and wasn’t paying attention to it. And I was knocking everyone’s socks off. I literally made this project soar. And it was very, very important for this initiative to succeed. The C-level eyes were on it, and thus on me. Not on my boss, on me.

It was always clear to me that the team, this project team that is, needed to succeed. It was always clear to me why it needed to succeed and what needed to happen for it to succeed. In this case, the noble thing to do is to work within the team to forthrightly do what’s needed to make the project work.

And I did that very, very well, receiving accolades up through the ranks to the CEO. Multiple teams wanted me to switch over to them. But my boss wouldn’t allow me to. At first it was because I was a bad penny that needed to fixin’ before going anywhere. When this was discovered to be a stupid excuse, she promptly switched to saying I was too valuable and the team, her team, not the project team, would fall apart.

This is why I think noble action is easier for me than noble words. The actions are things I can see, feel, and do. They’re things I can research and test. The words, however, usually have to come out rather nowish, not in a few days after everything’s been thought out and perfected.

All of these other office politics, whether I’m too valuable or a hot mess depending on the minute, seems like an utter waste to me. It’s nonsense, it’s personal power games. Who gives a shit? Just get the work done, and do it well. It was … weird. And tedious. And draining.

Unfortunately, though, I often run into the same perceived ignoble problem when quick actions are needed. I do what I think is the noble thing, but am unable to or don’t realize I need to communicate it in a noble manner, causing the action to have a less than expected, or even a less than desirable, impact.

So yeah, maybe the noble thing to do is to gracefully figure out how to move forward with my life in the shambles the 🚀 companies made of it when they let me go just because spinal surgery needed to happen.

Oops. I maybe might kinda sorta need to get a bit better at that noble phrasing thing, huh? 🤣