the loophole

Last week I discovered that in following my rules it is possible to follow the letter of the law and yet not the spirit of it. The possibility that I could be technically in compliance and but not actually compliant had never occurred to me before. It's gotten me to thinking and, just maybe, understanding a thing or two about my service a little better.

I have inspection on Tuesday evenings and so on Monday, as I do every week, I made a quick check of my manicure. My nails looked fine to me and I decided that there was no need to touch them up or re-do them. But Tuesday morning, in better light, I realized that they looked a little worse for wear. They weren't going to pass inspection and I've had one warning about them before. I wasn't exactly eager to learn Ma'am's reaction to a repeat offense during inspection.

When it came time for lunch, I ran out to the drug store and purchased nail polish remover and a bottle of quick dry polish. An hour really isn't enough time for a proper manicure but I needed to make due. Off went the old polish and on went the new. I used the fan in my car to help dry them but when I looked them over again I discovered in horror that the polish had dried streaky. My nails looked terrible and there was no time to start again.

Enter a quandary.

My nails were polished – which is exactly what my rule states. And yet it didn't make sense that just having them polished was all that there was to the rule. It would seem that the spirit of the rule, the reason behind it, is that Ma'am wants my nails to look pretty for her. And a bad manicure is definitely not pretty. So, yes, I was technically in compliance to the wording of my rule but probably not in compliance to its true meaning.

What to do? If I was right, and I was pretty sure that I was, I was most certainly in error and had something to confess when I got home. But I wasn't quite sure what...was I assuming too much? Is it even possible to be both in and out of compliance at the same time? Have I been missing a key part of understanding what it means to be obedient all of this time or was I being too philosophical?

The difficult and uncomfortable decision: should I leave my nails as they were (which was obedient and technically compliant) or remove the new polish and leave my nails bare (which was prettier and compliant to the spirit of my rule)? Which would be the lesser of two evils – which would Ma'am be more pleased with?

I considered my options for the rest of the afternoon. I would have to commit to a decision and see it through but I didn't like either choice. Any way you added it up the equation included something that Ma'am wouldn't like. Trying to determine the level of her displeasure and repercussion served no purpose. It wouldn't change the fact that my manicure wasn't what it should be, wasn't what Ma'am wanted.

There were a couple of other options... I could exploit the loophole if it came down to it. I could argue that my rule doesn't specify anything about them being nicely polished. I could fein ignorance - pretend I hadn't noticed how bad they looked and wait for her to point it out. If the light was the same as it had been the evening before it was entirely possible that Ma'am might not notice how bad they looked. These options just didn't feel right to me – they're dishonest and designed to try to get me out of trouble.

In the end, I decided to leave my nails as they were and come clean about the state I considered them to be in. There was, after all, a chance that my assumption about the meaning of my rule was incorrect and, even if it wasn't, bare nails seemed dangerously close to willful disobedience. I would discuss with Ma'am what full compliance of this rule meant and be prepared for whatever discipline she saw fit without invoking a loophole defense. It was the only decision I could make and it was the right one.

In the future, to better serve and please my Ma'am, I think I need to be less literal and take a fuller, more dimensional approach in my thinking. I must look past the surface and understand not only what is stated but also what is meant. I don't believe it's enough to simply follow the stated rules – to be fully obedient I must also understand the meaning and spirit of what she asks of me and take direction not only from what is indicated but also by what is meant.