It is impossible to convey the experience of visiting this waterfall through a single photograph; through any photograph, for that matter.
If you don’t hike the forest trail, if you don’t hear the first, distant thrum of the rushing stream, if you don’t reach into the cold water and brush your hand across the stones, if you don’t test the fallen log to see if it will bear your weight across the rocks, if you don’t watch and listen and revere both the stillness and the movement of the place, if you don’t swat the mosquitoes from your legs on the way back down the trail then, well, you cannot know.
And all of that took place in only a single one-hour window, late in the afternoon on the last day of July. What is happening there right now, I can’t possibly say. It is similar, yes, but it is not the same, and it would be hubris to claim, having been there once, that I know the place.
In that spirit, please consider the exercise of the annual performance review for what it really is, a singular statement of a year of work feebly attempting to stand as a representation of the whole.
It cannot and should not be done.
I implore you to treat each employee with the curiosity of a visitor to a wonderful new place. Each encounter is an opportunity to expand your understanding, but none ever completes it.
You might ask, “What will this visit help me to see that I could not see before?”
Plaikni Falls – Crater Lake National Park – July 31, 2019 at 4:21 pm
