I sat in an all-hands meeting yesterday afternoon, stewing over a meeting that had just gone totally sideways for ten thousand reasons, all of which was someone else’s doing, when, mid-lick of my woe-is-me-wounds, I experienced a sudden shift in attitude as compassion and empathy for my manager spilled all around me.  He sat at the head of the table, his over-worked team gathered ‘round, and drummed out general updates that included the 1,001 initiatives he was currently tasked with and/or accountable for, all of which were priority numero uno.  His message was simple, factual, informative, even speckled with a playful joke here and there, and yet I experienced the weight of his words and responsibilities like concrete slabs being heaved out onto the conference table, dusting the room grey, blotting out faces, bowing the table legs.  How on earth does this guy sleep at night?  With each brick he shouldered over I head-tucked-shamed my internal grievances I had held against him—all of those red escalation-marked emails that remained unanswered were clearly mere pebbles in his concrete life.  As my singular world opened up just enough to see my manager as just another me doing just another job, all my ten thousand reasons things went sideways because of someone else lifted like a helium balloon, high-pitched in its forgery.  Somewhere in the midst of my own rubble I had misplaced my sense of collectivity and teaming, my values, my me and I trumping the we and us.