When people are talking about a shared commitment that they genuinely care about, you can see it. Their eyes shine.So it's amazing what a high tolerance we've developed for dull, glazed-over stares in our meetings and activities at work. It's as if we're treating ourselves and others as machines... and that caring doesn't come into it. Perhaps that's exactly what we are doing.Human beings are so full of life. It's a tragedy that we settle so easily for working in a way that's such a dull facsimile of it.
Seeing them again
People leave life without warning more often than we care to consider.If you really understood each time you say goodbye to your friends, your loved ones, your colleagues that you might not see them again, what space in your heart could you allow for:
resentmentbitternesscynicismgrudges?
Would it not be more fitting to fill with gratitude for their presence in your life? To be amazed that the tiny chance that you would coexist actually came to pass? To treat them with kindness?And if not now, when?
Characters
Are other people really people to you?Or are they just characters in a drama that has you in the central role?If you'll have them be people you'll need to give up using them or trying to force them to suit the story you think you're living out. You're going to have to allow them the space to surprise you - again and again - and you'll need to learn to listen for all the ways they're not how you expected them to be, even if you've known them intimately for years. You'll need to accord them the dignity of at least some of the time being a 'you' to your 'I', rather than an 'it'.If you do all of this, you can give up all the effort and vigilance it takes to have the story turn out always how you're expecting it. And maybe you'll also let people relax their attempts to have you fit in to their story too.
So much to do
When you're overwhelmed it's easy to blame how much you have to do on others. Yes, your boss, your colleagues, your customers and the state of the world all probably have something to do with it.But maybe it's time you started to look at your own part in your situation.The first question to ask is whether you're paying attention to what's important or are trying to do everything. Developing your capacity to discriminate, to determine what actually makes a difference and what's peripheral is foundational here. And it's often not so easy to tell. So you may have to observe the effect of your actions over time and talk to people who are affected by the fruits of your work as you learn the discernment you need.But, please, don't stop there. Because the way you take on every possibility that comes your way is born of the story you have of what it is to be a person, and what it is to work. You might be working at being:
a noble hero: able to take on all difficulties, courageously keeping everything under control, ensuring everybody sees your unassailable strength, never letting on the difficulty you're experiencing
the saviour: the only one who can do this. "I couldn't possibly put anything down... they need me"
a martyr: trying to hold the burdens of the world, keeping everyone from harm, sacrificing yourself by scooping up all that needs to be done
Each of these identities will be doing something for you that you value. They can play a powerful role in generating self esteem, giving you a place in an uncertain world, and defending you from shame and embarrassment. It may well be the case that your colleagues are playing similar roles too, or playing their part by working to have you to stay in yours.But each of them makes the space for discrimination very small indeed, and the possibility of putting anything down smaller still, because they call on you to push harder, go faster, and for longer in the face of difficulty.Each adds to your suffering by promising that resolution will come soon: that if you're strong enough, persistent enough, fast enough, sacrifice enough then eventually the world will stop making demands of you.Usually, it's the opposite that's the case. The world will not stop with its demands, and pushing on relentlessly until it does leads eventually to exhaustion and resentment.It's time you started catching on to the way the identity you have taken up is part of the very difficulty that's breaking you. If you weren't a hero or martyr or saviour, who else could you be?
Somnolence
How awake to your life are you, really?Can you tell what you're up to, again and again? What's actually happening in the world around you as a result?Who you're becoming?And what about your responses to life, to others? What do you know about what triggers you, and from where your habitual reactions arise?What do you know about your own courage? What supports and what diminishes it? And your love? Your despair, excitement, commitment, longing, rage, resentment and generosity?Do you know what brings you close to others, and what pushes you further away? What opens you to the world and what hardens your defences? What cultivates truth, and what denial? And what vitalises you, brings you fully and vibrantly to life?Without studying yourself, and studying life, you can easily sleepwalk through, awaking only when something big enough arrives to shake you out of your somnolence.And by then, many days of life's blazing brilliance might already have come and gone without you even noticing.
Holding Back
What is the truth that must be spoken that you've holding back? From who? For how long?Can you tell who your withholding serves? Are you sure that you're protecting anyone apart from yourself? And if you're only protecting yourself, what from?What healing would speaking bring? What new possibility?This then is courage: the conversation you offer as a gift to another even when you're afraid of how it might turn out for you.
Image by Steve F at Wikimedia Commons
What people think
One of the most necessary liberations comes when you discover that what other people think of you is not the same as who you are. When you can stop identifying yourself with the stories and assessments of others, you can also free yourself from the constant inner pressure to appear as you think people want you to.But once you know this, you have to understand that other people are not the same as your stories or assessments either. That means that whatever you think you know about them can only ever be partial, one angle on a situation way more complex than you've allowed for.It means you're going to have to learn to be way more imaginative and listen much more deeply, if you're ever going to understand what's going on when others are involved.
The way you drink your coffee
It matters, the way you drink your coffee.Snatched on the way to the train, identical cardboard cup, usual order, sipped absently: anonymous, repetitive, soothing, numbing. Just another prop to get you through the day.Or, chosen with care and sensitivity to meet this morning's particular mood. Conversation with the barista. Settled comfortably, in the corner that called to you. The heat of the mug warming your cupped hands. Savouring the smell of the roast, the bitter-nut taste in your mouth. Allowing memories, thoughts, plans and possibilities to stir. Emerging fresh, stirred, enlivened into the morning air.We become what we do.Living a life of numb repetition or awake, alive attentiveness are each available to us at each moment, in even the smallest of daily activities. I-It, or I-You.Which are you up to today?
Photo: Justin from Lincoln Park, NJ, USA (Coffee Cup) via Wikimedia Commons
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Studying your life
So much of our life is unknown to us.One way to see that this is so is to write.Start simply. Choose materials that are inviting to use: a good pen, paper with satisfying weight and colour.Set aside ten minutes to write every day.Write, not to be read, but for discovering. Write without stopping, or editing, or changing anything. Keep the pen moving over the paper. Write, write, write. Write everything that comes. Leave nothing out. Change nothing.Write what's most surprising or uncomfortable. Write as if, for these short minutes, it is the most important, as if your life depends upon it.And when ten minutes is up, just stop.Over time, you'll discover much about yourself that you never knew. You'll spot patterns, see how much changes, and find out what's been right in front of you but which you'd never looked close enough to see.And in doing so, you might just open up a world of possibilities you didn't know was there.
Image by Antonio Littero
Meeting the shadow
In Ursula Le Guin's stunningly beautiful novel 'A Wizard of Earthsea', the young wizard Ged unleashes a terrifying shadow into the world by mistake. Stunned by his power, he stands paralysed in shock while the shadow's claws cut deep lines into his face before disappearing. From then on, he lives a haunted life, forever running from that dark alter-ego that threatens to engulf him.It is only when Ged understands that running can take him no further, that it leads only to exhaustion and despair, that he has the courage to turn and face what is after all his and his alone. Instead of running from the shadow he becomes its hunter until the two meet face to face far beyond the edge of the known world. And through this he becomes the greatest wizard his people have known.So it us with us. Born whole and shimmering into the world, we quickly learn that parts of us are not welcome in our families, communities and wider culture. It's a necessary and painful transition as we push away what cannot be tolerated by others, and are left wounded, but acceptable in the eyes of those around us. What we've denied in ourselves becomes shadow, always present but mostly held out of sight - at least to us.From then on, most of us flee the shadow, such are the strong feelings it evokes in us, choosing lives, work and identities that keep it far away. Typically we find ourselves cultivating one side of each of life's opposites while the other side becomes alien and undesirable to us. And for a long time, this may serve us and those around us very well.But, like Ged, in the end living a full and courageous life always involves facing that which we've pushed away, that which we took to be impossible for us, that which we judge, that which stirs up fear or shame.
Those of us who have lived only in calmness need to find out about rage.
Those who have lived to be seen as good must find out how to cause trouble.
Those who control must start to let things emerge.
Those who wait must learn to act, and who launch always into action must learn to wait.
Those who blame themselves must learn to cherish, and those who blame others must learn compassion.
Those who try to keep the whole world safe must risk, and those who risk everything find out about safety and solid ground.
Those who cannot but keep all the options open must find out how to commit.
Those who live only in the intellect must learn about love.
Only when, like Ged, we can embrace both sides of life's great polarities, can we bring ourselves fully forward, bursting with life and with our greatest contribution yet to come.