On not disappearing against the wallpaper

I don't know how to tag this post properly. The reference in the title is to a post from seventeen years ago (yes, really!) where I wrote, in part:

I always start new jobs as The Quiet Guy ... you know, the one who tries his best to disappear against the wallpaper? Despite this, it always happens -- at every job I have ever held -- that one day I am introduced to somebody who says, "Oh, so you're Hosea. I've heard so much about you."

This post isn't about a new job. It isn't about new circumstances, or being around strangers, or anything like that. It's just a rueful reflection on my relationship with leadership.

Sometime in the middle of 2021, right around the time my salary and benefits ended from my closed work, the elected Chair disappeared from our local section of the professional society I belong to. I don't think she "disappeared" in any sense requiring the police, but at any rate she stopped showing up to meetings or answering emails. And I was asked to step in: "Hosea, you're a nice guy and you come to all our meetings anyway ... can you take over as Chair?"

Be careful whom you help. I'm still the Chair of that section today, over four years later, notwithstanding a society rule that you can only be Chair for two consecutive one-year terms before you become ineligible. But nobody else wanted the job, and our Regional Director said it's better to overshoot the term limits than to have no Chair. Anyway I have been trying—this year in particular—to get someone else to take on the job for next year.

Fine, that's nice, but so what?

Tonight in the UU Sangha that I attend, we discussed Sangha leadership. Ever since the Sangha was founded back in 2004 (long before I joined it), leadership was handled informally by Debbie and Janet. But now Janet is dead, and Debbie lives in another state. Also, she really, really doesn't want sole responsibility. So Debbie proposed tonight that we should form a Caretaking Council, which is the term used for the leadership group of a sangha in the Plum Village Tradition. 

What should this group look like? How many people should be on it? What responsibilities should it have? What authority should it have? All good questions. Nobody knows. So Debbie's immediate proposal was that we should form a committee or "task force" to review the options, discuss them, and then make a proposal to the Sangha as a whole.

Guess who's on the committee? 

• Debbie (of course). 
• One other member who has only recently joined this Sangha, but who has a lot of experience with the Plum Village Tradition in other places. 
• And me, Hosea. 
• Oh, and there's a fourth person who wasn't there tonight, but whom Debbie is going to invite.

It wouldn't have been my first choice to join the committee. But Debbie asked for a show of hands for who was willing (not "wanting") to help. And when I saw that there were only two others, I figured "Sure, why not?" Of course I'm willing to help, even if I'd rather not be bothered.   

In other words, at the same time that I am trying to get rid of my leadership responsibilities in my professional society, I am taking on (or "saddled with," if you prefer) leadership responsibilities in Sangha.

There is probably some kind of moral here, that I'm just too willful to see.