Sue Me

I am going to start this post with the following disclaimer:  This blog is my experience.  I don’t mean it to be factual in any way, it is simply my interpretation of the events and my personal situation.  In no way do I vouch for the accuracy of these statements, nor do I intend them to be accurate or absolute.   

How about this for open book honesty… I’m being sued.  Or so they tell me.  I haven’t seen the documents, but I am a party, along with the Company I used to work for and that company’s primary Owner, for a lot of money.  And it looks like others may follow suit.  Of course many would advise that I don’t bring this up, especially in this forum, but I’m pretty sick of all of the world’s secrets.  And I want to write about it. 

I, again, haven’t seen the suit itself, but I’m basically being sued because I worked for the Company that stopped paying bills for work done by Contractors.  Now, the Company didn’t have any money itself, but was being funded by the Owner of the company, for whom I worked.  I signed the agreements with the Contractors that basically said the company would pay them a certain amount for the work that they were doing.  Working very closely with the Owner, I asked the Contractors to do millions of dollars of work over the course of a couple of years. 

Finally, one day the Owner decided not to fund the company any more when it became apparent that the Company would not be able to attract outside investment quickly, which means there was no money to pay the Contractors for the work that they had been doing over the two or three months previous to the decision not to fund anymore.  The Owner was habitually late in making payments to the Contractors, mostly because he had always hoped to bring in an outside investor to fund the company and pay the bills.

And so I am being sued.  Likely, there is no legal case against me.  I was just an employee doing my job.  I could not have known that my boss would stop funding the Company, and I therefore could not have known that the company would be unable to pay its bills.  And now the Company owes a lot.  The Contractor and the Owner both took risks, as did I, but we all knew we were taking risks.  Sitting in the hammock and taking a walk on the beach this morning at sunrise has led me to the following conclusions (subject to change after my mid-morning surf session):

The complexities of the world and the rules of society have taken over personal morality, accountability, and self-respect, but most importantly have allowed us all to survive in this world without becoming spiritual beings.  The laws of a corporation have basically taken over as morality for business interaction.  The Owner is able to have his company make promises to pay without any personal responsibility for those payments.  He can hide behind the corporate veil, having lost all feelings of personal commitment because the law says he doesn’t have any.  The Contractor knows this, of course, and makes its own bets hoping that the Company will grow and give more business to the Contractor, at the risk of losing man-hour money if the Company fails (as this one has).  In spite of knowing this risk, the Contractor has chosen to sue the Company and the Owner and an employee to try to get some of this risk money back.  So, who’s to blame here?  Both the Owner and the Contractor have hidden behind the law, as so many do, and feel completely legitimate because lawyers tell them they are.  Nobody is to blame... they are both doing just as you and I have told them is appropriate given the laws, rules, and norms we have created. 

I have recently realized how many shortcuts society tries to give us to act as spiritual or moral beings.  Religions worldwide seem to provide us with rules that mimic how we might act if we actually were spiritual.  Secular laws provide us with rules that mimic how we might act if we looked truly inside ourselves to find our personal morality.  Societal norms provide rules of how we might treat each other if we had taken the time of find experience the oneness of the world spirit. 

But these religious and secular laws can never be perfect.  They will never measure up to how we would truly act if we actual were spiritual beings.  Perhaps this is due largely to these rules allowing us to survive without ever becoming spiritual.  Without becoming spiritual, we all lose love, we rely too heavily on intellect, and we are swept away by our emotions.  The cycle continues downward as more and more laws are required to make up for this loss that the laws created.  And so we end up with an Owner who feels no personal responsibility for commitments of his own Company and a Contractor who acts as if he never knew the risk he was taking when he decided to do work for a development company with no tangible assets.

I believe that there was a time and place for religion, and then secular, and then societal laws, but I hope that those times are coming to an end.  Call it what you will: The Great Awakening, the Age of Consciousness, the Second Coming.  I hope it arrives soon.  I envision a time when we can rid ourselves of all of these imperfect rules and laws and norms because we have become spiritual beings, connected to each other not by external forces but by a common thread of love, respect, and beauty. 

As for me… I learned some good lessons.  I knew the game in which I was operating, and in spite of not feeling good about hiding behind laws, I continued.  I continued because I was afraid.  It took me years to figure that out, and I am glad I did.  This game is not for me.  And I guess now I am paying the consequences of even being involved in it.  And I accept those consequences. 

Regardless, as I wait for the Second Coming, I hope the Contractor drops its suit against me.  I did nothing but provide them with an opportunity to make a bet.  They chose to make the bet.  They tried to hedge by getting the Owner and other companies to guarantee payment, which was refused, and they proceeded anyway.  I hope that the Contractor starts to take some personal responsibility for the choices he makes.  And I hope the Owner of the Company does too.  In the end, I just hope we all move from hiding behind these imperfect external rules and focus a little bit more on what our gut tells us is right and wrong for us.  

In the meantime, I'm off to go surfing with my dog.