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There is an interesting scenario happening in my office lately. More and more people are putting up a piece of white paper written with a black Chinese character on it and tagging it at the partition of their cubicles. This piece of black and white paper is believed to be extracted from a Chinese Calligraphy.

The Chinese character is called “Ren” which means endurance or tolerance. If you look at this Chinese character carefully, it is in fact made up of two words, namely knife and heart. The word “knife” is sitting on top of the word “heart”. This means that we will suffer from acute agony as if a knife is stabbed at our heart while practising endurance. Nevertheless, we still have to persist in our endurance practising in order to gain great achievement. So, you need to endure if you wish to achieve something.

Why is the Chinese character — “Ren” so popular in my office recently? I guess you might be curious to know why. Well, the results of the annual increment and performance appraisal have just been released. As usual, some people are happy and some are angry with their annual increments. Those people who have got their promotions or got fairly good increment are usually the happy ones. Whereas, those people whose increments are lower than average or no increment at all are the angry or miserable folks. 

Some of my colleagues have been complaining about they are over-worked but under-paid. They are full of frustrations. There are also people who are jealous about other people whom they think are less capable than them and yet got the promotions. What they can do is to put up the “Ren” character at their cubicles to protest. They face the character everyday to remind themselves to endure or to tolerate. This is also their silent way or tactic to show their unhappiness to the big bosses or managers and hope that they could get the hint. Otherwise, they might quit the company soon before it is too late. You see, office politics are prevalent in the company that I’m working in.

Yesterday, one of my colleagues came and scrutinised my cubicle. He was curious to know why there were so many people displaying the piece of white paper with the black Chinese character at their cubicles. He was wondering why I didn’t follow them. I told him that I don’t have to show off as I don’t involve in office politics. This is because the Chinese character — “Ren” is already resided inside my heart.