May 5, 2020
Culloden Battlefield sprawls across the moor, fluttering flags peeking out from the bracken. Tangled bushes speckled purple move gently from the wind that carries the smell of Loch Ness. Koos lunch at the fringes and seagulls call overhead. I stand atop a bluff overlooking where the MacKleod family made their last stand; the yellow and black family tartan flashes almost gaily atop the family grave cairn, a squat monolith that holds in place forever what the family died to claim.
Wild thyme grows underfoot, an herb sacred to the Highland Scots. Drinking a beverage made from thyme to confer courage before battle, the smell invigorated hearts and braced senses. I bend down and finger a leaf, breathing in a spicy breath. It’s a small thing, but I’ve found it’s the small things that make the difference between good and great, praiseworthy and memorable. A cup brewed before battle and drunk down in one gulp, a scrap of tartan tied to family, blood, and country—small things, yes, but so much more.
I felt the need for a cup of thyme brewed before battle as I met with my supervisor for my mid-internship evaluation. I had given him the assessment form from the course a few days before; he had teased me (“What’s this? Only goes to four, Abby? What happened to five, then?”), but gave it back completed and folded neatly in two. I kept the paper closed to my eyes until lunchtime, but eventually had to smell the thyme and open the form, wincing at the numbers. With Arthur’s Seat’s peak towering through the window to my left, we met in an alcove off the main corridor to discuss my results.
I had been working with the Scottish Parliament as a parliamentary intern for two months. The fall colours had ripened Edinburgh; the tones of spiced pumpkin and Samhain decorations hung in the windows of the shops along the Royal Mile. I had gotten lost in its wonder and its streets, the wynds connecting one twisting street to another. I walked history-drenched streets daily, passing St. Giles’ Cathedral’s spindly spires and the tomb of Robert Louis Stevenson as I wound my way towards the Parliament. The modern lines of the building were different from the proud stone edifice of Edinburgh Castle, but the nationalistic zeal for Scotland was the same in the people who had built them, several hundred years apart.
My job description at the Parliament was open-ended; my day’s tasks had ranged from picking up a tailored wedding kilt to welcoming a delegation from Tibet, writing a speech about the right for Scottish self-determination to giving a tour of the Parliament building to Glaswegian school kids. My supervisor’s accented words were at first unintelligible to my foreigner ears; I was electrified by the cadence of his “wee braw blether,” and worked to “ken” a few “pure barry” words of my own. I had met weekly with my assigned Member of the Scottish Parliament, a lovely woman who wore politicized brooches and was no “feartie” –coward—when it came to pressing for the SNP’s position in the Chamber.
Working to be the best I could be, I presented my shiny, Americanized work habits as badges of honour. I showed up on time, wore ironed clothing, said, “Please,” “Thank you,” and “No, after you,” when getting into the lift. I completed tasks when given as I thought they should be completed. Thus, the scores on the feedback form had surprised me: where I expected a gold star, I had received a scribbled “fair.” My meeting with him was terrifying; I was vulnerable, standing without armour in the line of attack. The smell of the thyme felt so very far away.
I asked him questions about how I could improve, braced to be wounded. He said I was over-efficient and because I didn’t slow down to listen properly, I made mistakes and didn’t give the task the time it needed to do it—the job, the tours, the welcoming of the Dalai Lama’s friends—right.
It was the politically correct styling of “sloppy,” and it stung.
I walked home from work dejected. It’s a painful process—finding out that the things you thought were the most marketable about you—my efficiency, for one—were actually set-backs that annoyed your colleagues and hindered the work. It was the end of October; I found myself feeling much as I did in month two of my mission—alone, failing, and flailing for the security of the known. The colours of fall were suddenly menacing, the lights that snaked down Victoria Street less bright.
Edinburgh had lost its charm, it seemed, in the face of my failure. I despaired for an hour on the floor of my international student flat of ever reaching the end of the internship, wondering if it was worth it to continue. Websites for a plane ticket home were open on my laptop next to me, ready for a desperate purchase.
My flatmate, Luisa, a tall German with a ready smile, nearly tripped over me when she arrived home. I merely moaned and shifted my body on the floor so she could park her bicycle inside.
“What are you to do on the floor?” (Luisa was learning English, and it was our nightly ritual to chat so that she could improve.)
“I’m a failure,” I mumbled from the carpet, breathing in the scent of lemon bleach and Edinburgh damp.
“What are you to fail about?” Luisa’s face showed her confusion; her ready smile was hidden away.
“I was called sloppy today, and I’m apparently not good at my job, and I think I’m toast.” Luisa’s nose screwed up in confusion, so I amended the metaphor. “I’m not going to be able to finish.”
The toast snafu forgotten, Luisa was quiet as she reached for an apple in the pantry. Then, as she walked from the room, Luisa said, “Well, I am not the good at English. But I will not get the better until I try, hmm?” The room was quiet as she left. The rain pattered on the window pane. I pulled my laptop towards me, said goodbye to Air Lingus Flights as I closed the Internet tab, and pulled up a Ted Talk about sucking it up. It was time to try to get the better.
I went into work the next day determined to try. No longer would I go day to day lost in my own vision of success. I quickly came to realize that if I was going to be as good as they wanted me to be, I needed to know what they wanted me to be. To know this, I had to listen.
And listen I did. I double-checked with my supervisor on every instruction given. It became vital to me that I understood others as they wished to be understood. I listened, and every week’s end, I asked my supervisor whether I’d shown improvement. As I did this, my supervisor’s words ceased to be charmingly unintelligible; I began to speak as he spoke because I had sought to hear him as he wished to be heard. Wee Scots words started blooming in my conversation; seeds of shared purpose grew in the cracks of my previous misunderstandings. I focused on the small things—listening, being respectful, looking for their point of view so that I could see through it, too. Slowly, the small things improved.
But it wasn’t only the small things, was it? Or rather, it was the small things leading me to understand that what I was missing was one big thing, as overarchingly key to professional success as the Scottish sky was grey. I had lacked empathy. I began to see my colleagues as my friends, their work as my cause, their passion as my mission. Empathy—this capacity to understand what another person was experiencing from their frame of reference—was why flags still waved over Culloden, why tartan-edged wreaths sat below grave cairns, why thyme sprigs still meant courage and listening meant caring. We wish to walk a mile in another clansman’s kilt.
I stand now, watching empathy at work in the people walking the battlefield. The view is different here than when I stood on the bluff above. I can more fully hear the guide, smell the peaty heather, feel the history that seeps through the rocky ground. The people are listening—to the land, to the tour guide, to the wind that whistles much as it did 273 years ago when the Jacobite Scottish clansmen took their stance in empathetic support of each other’s cause. Brushing past wild thyme as I walk, I sense the bravery it lends my heart as I approach my next step, and the next. I am listening, now, too.