Ben East

I sat down to write my annual performance evaluation and for some reason the opening line of Love Actually came pouring out.

That isn’t right, I thought. So I looked it up.

“When I’m feeling down about the state of the world…” I typed into my search bar. Google spit back: “Get Professional Help.”

This is true.

“If your heavy feelings about the state of the world are bringing you down,” Google continued, “your mental health or (sic) could be attached to other things such as anxiety, depression, or trauma, tell someone you trust that you want or need help.”

Thanks to AI’s hallucinatory madness, I wasn’t entirely sure what Google meant. But I did get the picture: it was time to broaden the search. So I typed in “love actually opening line.” Google gave the following.

“Prime Minister: Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere.”

It’s a wonderful opening, perhaps memorable for me because I watch the movie every year, a great holiday tradition for my wife and me. Hugh Grant finishes the lines and in come the merry bells of Christmas Is All Around.

I can think of few better ways to accomplish the miserable task at hand than by lifting my spirits  with a comic send-up of gross commercialization. I need the inspiration of a shamelessly self-promoting jerk like Billy Mack (Bill Nighy), crass and lewd and jocular and inappropriate.

These evaluations we write every year require a similar posture.

Don’t get me wrong, our service matters. The work we do is important to a lot of people and makes a difference in a lot of lives. The same is true for most honest work, by the way, the work of teachers, nurses, garbage collectors, the waiter who doesn’t spill the soup, anyone who isn’t out there defrauding the public by inflating the value of his properties.

But does that mean our evaluations have to be full of hyperbole and bullshit? I don’t think so. I think an evaluation should tell a really great story about the work being done and why that work matters. It doesn’t matter because it’s the best or the most or the fastest or the done quickly and immediately and with no help from anyone else.

In any job we do, shouldn’t we rate ourselves on the joy we bring to others, on how our daily grind makes this world a better place?

I think so. This year, I’m writing an evaluation based on hope, on fulfilling the needs of others, and bringing more joy into the world.

Then I’ll try living up to it.

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