The Ministry of Happiness

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. ~ William Shakespeare

Happiness is Getting My Name Back

So massive change is underway. I have accepted a position at Paul Smith’s College in upstate New York. I visited campus last week and felt incredibly welcome, the people on campus seem incredibly nice and the campus is beautiful. The college is environmentally and natural resource focused so almost everything the college does is near and dear to my heart. One of the other nice things about the college is that it’s about forty miles from where I finished my undergraduate education and I still have some great friends as well as people I’ve known for some time, who live in the area and it will be nice to connect with all of them. Of course I have about three and a half weeks to wrap up my job, pack up my life and head across the country, so things are about to be very busy.

As you can imagine, there are a million thoughts screaming through my head pretty much constantly right now. Thoughts about what’s next, about what has to be done now, there’s a very long to do list. What to keep, what to lose, how to most effectively close my current position and those relationships. As all of this has been swimming around my brain, something hit me in the last couple of days, I’m about to get my name back.

I have an interesting history with my name. Growing up I was Mike. As I escaped the life I had growing up I felt that one of the ways I could be clear about being a different person, was by changing what people call me. So, as I started a new phase of my life, when people asked me my name, I asked them to call me Michael. When people shortened it I pushed back, not Mike, Michael and it worked. In my adult life I almost exclusively have been called Michael, the only real exceptions are my family and some people I’m still connected to from my youth.

Over the last twenty five years I’ve worked as a dean. So my title was Dean Kane, however, most people still called me Michael. A funny difference occurred once I started to work at my current college, pretty much everyone calls me Dean Kane. At one point a few years ago I started actually asking why people did that, the answers I got were the standard, that’s your title, it’s a sign of respect, etc… when in fact, for the people who said it, it wasn’t a sign of respect but a way to denote me as other. This is to be expected I guess when you supervise nearly every person you interact with every day. You’re not a friend, a colleague, you’re the boss. For some people that’s comforting, for some people it’s no big deal and for some people it’s an irritant and source of unhappiness.

There are people who call me Michael, the other deans, the people who are above me in the hierarchy of the college, but mostly, all day, I’m Dean Kane, and damn it I’m not Superman (IYKYK). My new position title is Special Assistant, no one is going to call me Special Assistant Kane, and so, I’m about to get my name back. Every day, in almost every interaction I will be Michael. It seems like a little thing, but it will also indicate I’m not everyone’s boss and I get to have more equal relationships with people. I am very much looking forward to this and to happier work days my friends. ~ Rev Kane