Put the Tape Back

My parents had shelves of music. Cat Stevens, ABBA, Tom Jones. I would sit for hours playing my favourite songs over and over, rewinding the cassette each time so I could hear the same song again.

Sometimes the tape would catch and I would pull out a long ribbon of brown tape, find a pencil and patiently wind it back onto the spool. Strangely, I had endless patience for that. What I had much less patience for was putting the cassette back in its case when I was finished. It seemed like wasted effort. I was probably going to listen to it again.

One day my dad asked me, "If you don't put it back, how will anyone else find it?"

I remember that question more than forty years later, perhaps because he didn't tell me I was wrong. And, from where I was standing, I wasn't. Putting the cassette away only to take it out again created more work. My logic made perfect sense. It just didn't include anyone else.

I've been thinking about that recently because I've caught myself doing a grown-up version of exactly the same thing.

I've always prized punctuality. If I say I'll be somewhere at 10, I think I should be there at 10. I've tended to see turning up on time as a small act of respect, an acknowledgement that the other person's time matters as much as mine.

Except lately I've noticed myself taking liberties with that.

I'll be in a conversation that feels important. We are getting somewhere, or someone is telling me something that matters, and suddenly the allotted time is up. Ending the conversation simply because the clock says 10.30 can feel arbitrary. Sometimes it even feels disrespectful to the person sitting in front of me.

So I stay for five minutes, sometimes ten. And then, of course, I'm late for the next meeting.

I can explain why. The conversation was important. It needed another few minutes. Stopping at that precise moment would have been artificial. All of those things might be true. But I've realised they're also versions of the same argument I made about the cassette.

I was going to listen to it again, so why put it away? This conversation is important, so why stop it now? In both cases, the logic works rather well until I include the person who isn't in front of me.

I've been thinking a lot about finding your place recently. About knowing what works for you and what doesn't, what you're prepared to accept and what you're no longer prepared to give away in order to belong somewhere. I've worked quite hard at some of that myself.

But I wonder if I've spent less time thinking about what happens once you find that place. Because belonging to something isn't only an experience I have. Other people have to share it with me.

That doesn't mean I think a company is entitled to my whole identity, every available hour or the parts of my life that belong elsewhere. I don't. But I am starting to wonder whether I've become more practised at asking what I should reasonably expect from the places I occupy than what those places might reasonably expect from me.

There is some obligation that comes simply from choosing to be part of something. Not necessarily to the institution but to the people alongside you. And maybe it doesn't have to be grand. Maybe it is simply noticing that the thing which is easiest, most efficient or most reasonable from where I am standing creates inconvenience for somebody standing somewhere else.

That is what I couldn't see as a child. Putting the cassette away took a few extra seconds and gave me nothing. I wasn't the person who benefited from it. Someone else was.

I think that's why my dad's question has stayed with me. It wasn't really about tidiness. At least, that's not what it became for me. It was an invitation to look at the same decision from somewhere other than where I happened to be standing.

More than forty years later, I still need reminding. Sometimes the tape is an actual cassette sitting beside the player. Sometimes it's the person waiting for me in the next meeting. And there are almost certainly versions I haven't noticed yet.

My dad probably just wanted me to put his bloody tapes away. But perhaps finding your place is only half of it. You still have to decide how you're going to occupy it.

How will you?

Put the tape back.