Are or Are Not.

I just forgot a Holiday. Yesterday was a holiday in Hungary, known (now) as the Saint Stephen's day. I say know because back in the Socialist days I believe it was called the "Foundation of the Nation" day or "Foundation of the State" day... or something like that. My knowledge of Hungarian History is FAR WORSE than my knowledge of Costa Rican History, so I'd rather not go into too much detail about this particular holiday, so suffice it to say that in this day Hungarians celebrate the foundation of Hungary as a nation/kingdom/state.

Hungary is quite a particular country in my eyes, as for some reason they tend to rename places, rename holidays or add new ones - maybe remove others - often based on politics. Thus within the lifespan of anyone, a street can change names three times or more. The Lenin Avenue became Elizabeth Avenue - which I believe was the name of the Avenue to being with - then there's Hungaria Avenue I wasn't aware of ten years ago. Most recently (a year ago) the Moskva square - which has hold the name even after the fall of the iron curtain, because that was it's original name to begin with - became the Széll Kálmán square, and the airport, so far called Ferihegy, became the Liszt Ferenc airport.

The particular case of the Széll Kálmán square is the one I'd like to pull forward now. If you've been there some years ago when it still was Moskva square, and then now, you'll realize that nothing has changed. The place is still dirty and swarming with vendors and shady elements that make you grab your purse tighter. It's the exact same thing, just with another name. Not a dime seems to have been invested to improve the square, clean it up a little bit, build it around with benches, place more policemen to make sure shady elements and drunk, high people stay away from bothering others. So what did we earned with the new name? Only a reason to spend money on changing the name of the square in the many tramways, busses and one of the metro lines that touch the place.

The thing with this square is much similar with the case of Customer Service, which I mentioned in the previous post. It has been named Customer Service, then Customer Care, then Customer Experience but it's always the same hell, the same uninterested person reading you a line instead of actually paying attention to your situation and trying to help you. However the square or Customer Service aren't the only ones that pretend that a change of name would make things better without making something effectively to change the situation. People do that too.

One of the most classical cases is marriage. How many times have we seen a couple doing really bad, a couple that shouldn't be together, but then they jump into marriage - say because they've got knowcked up - and pretend that with this change of name (the name of the type of relationship) is enough to make things go better. If Mary and John don't get along, Mary is superficial, spends too much money on clothes and cheats, and John is lazy, addicted to betting online and careless, becoming Mr and Mrs. Smith won't make them change.

Often we try to ignore the bad in our life by changing its name, which is contrary to being positive and trying to see the good in every situation. We would say "40's is the new 20's" instead of simply saying "I'm 40, I feel 40 and you know what? 40 is freaking awesome! You should try it too one day!". We mask things, try to soften them, smooth them, place them in a better light, change their nature with words, while we do nothing -  really nothing - about what bother us. We don't embrace nor we fight. We mask and ignore, and as we do this, we open the door for other, similar cases of name changing and word-masking to happen.

Another case is when someone works in a position and that position gets renamed, but the conditions remain, or - which is worse - responsabilities multiply, but authority and payment remain. Typical cases of this can be seen when a regular coworker at a team suddenly gets the position renamed "junior manager", or goes from "official" to "agent" (these exist in the financial world, and are not related to security or  chasing robbers). These "requalifications" often keep the salary at the same level, but burden the position with responsabilities over a certain project, a service or even a portfolio. the renaming often is an empty price, a fool trick to make people believe that now they are more important, and thus often they can be called on more tasks, can be packed up with more duties, for the same amount of money. Again, like the square things don't improve, and we really get nothing from the name change.

Let's open our eyes, see into the soul of things and voice our opinion. Don't resource to name changes - we don't need them - call things by their name and face them. That's certainly better than accepting a lie and pretend you are okay while you still feel the burn from it, right?