THE CUT LIST

I had innumerable encounters with the cut list. The cut list comes in various forms and appears on locker room windows and doors when you’re in high school. Sometimes the cut list isn’t posted anywhere because it’s just understood like when and if you weren’t picked at recess/lunch to be on a team. The cut list has on it the names of those deemed good enough; at least that’s how the list is perceived. It’s misleading because you actually DO want your name on the list. It means you’ve made the cut and are moving on.

I fought tenaciously to always make the team and not be the one for whom peers felt pity and I managed success in that…until I became an adult. Once I was grown, there were plenty of times when my ideas were dismissed in the workplace, my services no longer required and my presence merely tolerated. That’s probably the same as being cut from a team. So, enter the world of pervasive factors like budget cuts, attrition via seniority lists or nepotistic influences. You learn very quickly, perhaps as early as elementary school that being good enough doesn’t always keep your name on the cut list. At any rate, when you’re cut you learn that you’re deathly afraid of rejection and unfairness. When you get cut from the team, fired from the team, or downsized from the team the stock response is hurt, humiliation and a grim sense of betrayal. In our own eyes we’re never deserving of elimination. But whether we’re deserving or not may not be the issue. More important than why you were cut may be the discovery of what lies beyond the list.

And lest you ignore the cut list, be advised that your pedigree won’t shield you from it. Of late, names such as Mike Dunleavy, former Los Angeles Clippers General Manager/Head Coach and LaDanian Tomlinson, former running back of the San Diego Chargers made the list. Dunleavy found out via voicemail that he had been cut while Tomlinson was simply blindsided. Best believe that you usually know neither the day nor the hour that you’ll get the bad news but at day’s end, there’s more than one cut list that will bear you name in a lifetime. Be afraid if you’re never cut from anything. Chances are that you’re just really good at fitting into environments that don’t require you to find your own niche. If, however, you are like the rest of us expendables, take joy in knowing that somewhere there’s a roster with your name on it. Have fun finding it.