How little I knew then

It's Earth Day.  I believe the 45th Earth Day to be exact.

For it's first two decades Earth Day was something that happened in the background of my life.  I have always been an outdoors person, so I love nature; I just didn't love it in a proactive way.

On the 20th Earth Day I was home recovering from surgery.  A local television station was reporting on Earth Day activities.  As part of the coverage, commentators reported that residents of the small city in which I lived at the time recycled enough materials for fill the large university stadium seven times. Wow, I thought.  That's a lot of recycling.

Until then, I hadn't recycled.  Since I eat mainly fresh fruits and vegetables and very few packaged or canned goods, I had never thought that I would have much to recycle.  The news story grabbed my attention.  So that day, I dug out the recycling bin.  I thought that even if it took weeks to fill, at least I'd be doing my part.  It seemed like the least I could do.

Much to my surprise, when trash day came the next week, the recycling bin was full.  The next week, full again.  When the third week ended, the bin was full again.  My imagination was captured.  I wondered what else I might do that would help.

My shift to consciousness about sustainability has been a slow one, more characterized by paying attention, mostly to small things.  After recycling, I started reusing paper grocery bags.  I discovered that I could use the same ones over and over and over again.  They just kept on functioning.  Once I was curious so when I got a new bag, I wrote the date on the bottom.  That bag lasted 50 weeks.  Before I was paying attention, I probably would have gone through at least 100 bags in that time.

Then I read how negatively meat production  impacted the environment.  Gradually, I became more conscious of what I ate and how it was produced.  First, meatless Mondays.  Then meatless a lot of other days.  Sometimes months without meat.  I didn't miss it, and I genuinely think I felt better most of the time.

As I read more about sustainability, I learned how living in a multistory building conserved more resources.  I moved to a city, near a Metro line, and I only occasionally drove my car on weekends. Then I got rid of the car.  I walked, took the Metro, or cycled around the city.  I felt better physically, and I felt really good that  I was doing my part.

Over the last 25 years, I've probably learned as much about intentionality from my gradually evolving commitment to sustainability as anything I've done in my life. Now I carry empty plastic bottles home so that I can recycle them. One decision at a time I've chosen to show how much I love our beautiful planet.

Burned out, compassion fatigue, or ???

As I've worked my way through the stack of half-read books on my nightstand, Give and Take by Adam Grant has recaptured my attention.  When I lost interest in the book, Grant had been sharing stories of individuals that were givers, takers, and matchers--those who attempt to giving and taking. Grant's research indicates that those who are givers are more successful over time. Made sense to me. Yawn! I generally tire quickly of books that share too much data, and that is exactly what occurred with Give and Take.

When I went back to the book to see if I would abandon it or dig deeper, the last half of the book called to me.  Yesterday I read more.  "The Art of Motivation Maintenance" was compelling. Grant described that, while givers tended to be more successful over the long run, some givers burn out while others, like Energizer Bunnies, seem to find an inner reservoir that keeps them going.

In the late 1990s a colleague and I wrote two cover articles for Family Practice Medicine, a journal for physicians who practice family medicine.  One was on burnout.  I loved the cover artwork of a charred landscape, devoid of life except for a single daisy in bloom in the foreground.  The image so spoke to the feeling people suffering from burnout often have of feeling almost dead and struggling to keep what remains alive. The other piece focused on compassion fatigue, a related condition suffered in the giving professions. I've read and thought about these topics a lot and had some success coaching those who struggle with them.

Grant's more recent research on these topics was new to me. Grant describes "Otherish Givers" and "Selfless Givers."  While it might be intuitive that Selfless Givers would be less likely to burn out, it is actually just the opposite.  The Otherish Givers are ones that, when exhausted by giving, give more. When they are exhausted though, they give somewhere else, and they give to a program that results in a personal reward or pleasure.  In other words their alternative giving recharges them. It's been too many years for me to remember my clients circumstances exactly, but I do believe that the ones I recall were the Selfless Givers, who didn't recharge.

All of this is timely personally.  Over the last few months, I've really been feeling burned out with long hours and client groups which demand more and more of me, leaving nothing for the things that bring me joy. Well, duh!  Grant would say that this is just the time I need to find some joyful giving to recharge me.

The funny thing is that in just this week, I've flirted with five different volunteer opportunities, and each time I passed on them because I thought I needed to be better at protecting my boundaries and saving time for myself.

As counter-intuitive as it seems to me, this recharge by giving makes total sense. Rather than just picking whatever opportunity presents itself, I want to be thoughtful. In each case that Grant described in "The Art of Motivation Maintenance," the alternative giving activities that burned out givers chose were to programs about which they had personal passion.  It seems to me that the personal passion they had is what allowed the alternative giving to be so rewarding to them.

As I write this, I have pondered, when was the last time I felt energized by something I was doing. In the instant that I had the question, I knew the answer.  For over a year, I wrote this blog almost every day, and I had a small (50-60) following, scattered around the world. Although I was often challenged to fit the writing into my schedule, when I did so, I found the time deeply rewarding.  I can only assume that what I wrote must have had some value to my readers as well, since they kept coming back.

When the work has been more demanding, one of the corners that I've rounded has been writing for this blog, and I am pretty certain that doing so is the very thing that could have been recharging me. Not only am I giving value to a small group of people, but I am using a natural talent to do so. That recharges me and brings significant joy into my life.  Finally, I learn so much about myself and what my intentions in life could/should be by working through these ideas with my readers.

The answer to the question inferred in this title, "Burned out, compassion fatigue, or ???" for me must be "Write!"

Rejoice!

A young seminarian spoke at services this morning, and she called on a scriptural passage that included that there had been rejoicing.  She explored how often in scripture that we read what is around the rejoicing, but don't really consider that the rejoicing itself is as important.

Leaving the church in downtown DC in the middle of the "peak" weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival, I couldn't help but think of her words as I looked at nature rejoicing around me.  I wish I knew the names of all of the blooming trees and bushes, but suffice it to say, they were exploding in a range of whites and pinks, accented by the yellow of forsythia all about.  I stopped and chatted with a homeless "friend" after leaving the Metro, and as the warmth of the sun bathed us, we talked about how wonderful the singing of all the birds.

Those who have read this blog for a while know how excited I get when nature produces splendid displays.  Astrologically, I am an earth sign.  I don't follow astrology all that much, but I wonder if that is why I am so impacted by nature.  I know there is nothing that makes me feel closer to God than one of these explosions of nature.

Today, I can't help but wonder whether rejoicing with nature isn't similar to the scriptural references to rejoicing.  We get caught up in whatever is happening on stage and totally miss the splendor of the sets the establish the tone for our lives.  I am going to be very intentional this season about letting all the "stuff" that is going on in my life be less important and allowing the rejoicing of nature around me be what is truly important.

Working empty

Last week I did good work with a leadership team.  They learned a lot, both about material I presented and about themselves, individually and as a team.  It was "good" work--not "great" work.  Certainly not "inspired" work. 

I used to do a lot of "inspired" work.  I showed up.  Before others arrived, I meditated and prayed to "empty" myself.  I asked to be an instrument of God's love.  When people arrived, I worked with them.  What they brought up was the agenda.  They inevitably led me to questions which took us to where the work needed to occur.  Oh, I'd done work before the event.  Usually, I'd interviewed participants and often attended a few of their meetings, but the most important thing I brought to the session was my emptiness.

That was all when I was self-employed.  I was free to be empty, and I was free to be "inspired."
Then I went to work for other employers.  First it was for consulting firms, and then I became a federal government civil servant.  Deliverables and expectations about what those demanded drove my work.  A PowerPoint deck was mandatory, and planned activities were essential.  Workbooks were necessary.  Every minute needed to be planned for and scripted.  Soon the charade started feeling like training and very little like OD.  Every inch of the emptiness was full, and I went from doing "inspired" work to orchestrating "good" work.

The proscription in medicine is to "do no harm."  "Do no harm" is implicit in organization development as well.  I don't think I've ever harmed any person or group. As the world of delivering to expectations drove me though, "doing no harm" became the necessity rather than "healing."

Lyricist and philosopher John Lennon wrote, "Love is all there is."  When I did "inspired" work, knowing that love was all there is was my compass--my true north.  If I emptied myself and held a room in love, the truth of all the things that separated them from love just bubbled up.

At last it is spring.  For Christians, Easter marks a time of rebirth.  Jews remember the passage from slavery to freedom and a new life under God's guidance.  Everywhere people see new birth of animals and plants as the days grow longer.  Amidst all that clutters our lives over the months during which nature passes through its cycles is love.

Now at the time of rebirth, we have time to blow it all away and remember that whatever we do and wherever we go "love is all there is."  If we will let it, all the other stuff will fill us with illusions of what is.  Our job is to empty ourselves and allow love to drive whatever we do.

The Pursuit of Happiness

I've had time to write this weekend, and I really wanted to do so.  To my consternation, nothing would come, and that almost never happens. On Friday, I'd been taking medication for pain associated with a toothache, and I couldn't focus. I watched a couple of movies, attempted to read, and had lunch with someone with whom I'd been "matched."  (It wasn't.)

This morning I went to church a little early.  Often when I sit and reflect, something will come.  It didn't.  When I got on the train to come home, a religious leaflet from the Church of Scientology was on the seat beside me.  In large letters with a blue background was a quote from the Church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, "No man is happy without a goal, and no man can be happy without faith in his own ability to reach that goal."

In that instant, I knew what I'd write.  One of the movies I'd watched was "Hector and His Search for Happiness." The movie is based on a book by the same name  by Francois Lelord, about a man who's pretty much achieved his goals, but knows he isn't happy.  British psychiatrist Hector takes off on a months-long journey of Asia, Africa, and America to find out what makes people happy.

During the course of his journey, he comes up with 23 rules or principles for happiness.  However, the line that sticks in my mind comes from a lecture Hector attends on the Pursuit of Happiness. The happiness lecturer says something like, "It is not the pursuit of happiness that counts but the happiness you find in pursuit." Although Hector finds 23 guidelines for happiness, it is clear that most boil down to being present and finding happiness in the possibility of the moment, whatever is occurring.  At the end of the movie, we see Hector back with the same home, office, and partner just being delighted at the same life through which he used to move mindlessly.

In the 1990s when I coached primarily physicians and C-Suite executives, most of whom had achieved all their goals, I found that neither the goals nor the pursuit of them brought happiness, peace, or joy.  In fact, one said to me, "As soon as I set a goal, I know I will achieve it.  Even the pursuit has lost it's joy."

With all due respect to any Scientologist readers, I am pretty confident that Hubbard was wrong.  Hector, the lecturer in the film, my clients, and my own life bring me back to a common theme in this blog: being present and finding joy in whatever is occurring is the path to happiness.

The Work That Is Mine To Do

I remember writing in Leading from the Heart that while most of us see things in black or white, the Truth more often lays in countless shades of gray in between them.  Even then, I knew that the world was much more complex than the simplicity of black and white would suggest.  In the years since, I have become more and more convinced of that Truth.

While I was sure of the Truth in the shades of gray the more than 20 years ago when I wrote Leading from the Heart, I thought I was certain about some things.  I knew that God is Love. My work in the world is to connect with everyone who comes onto my path from that Truth.  Somehow, if I could find love in my heart for everyone, I would be doing what God wanted me to do.

This morning at the very end of our church service, just as I have countless times before, I said the prayer for me to go into the world to do the work that was mine to do.  "What?" I thought, "is that?" Robbed of the innocence that I held even just a few years ago that, if I would just love those on my path, I would be doing my work.  I can't believe that any more.  At least, I can't believe it in the way I once did.

Difficult people have come before me, and I have tried to love them...repeatedly...for years. At least one has made me wonder if there are evil people in the world--those who delight in causing pain.  I grew up with a mother like that.  I often think that this person is in my life to give me the opportunity to learn how to deal with my long-deceased mother in a loving way. God knows I have tried.  Usually I just get beat up again...and again.

Scary-weird people have come onto my path, and I have tried to see them in peace and love.  A homeless mentally ill woman sells Street Sense, a newspaper written by and for the homeless.  I used to be afraid of her.  I used to think she qualifies as "scary-weird," but as I've come to know her, she is a really kind woman.  I call her by name now.  She remembers me.  Now I think, "There, but by the grace of God, go I."  Other scary-weird people just get scarier and weirder.

While in New York a few weeks ago, I saw the musical "Beautiful," based on the early career of singer-songwriter Carole King.  King married her lyricist Gerry Goffin when they were teenagers, had two children with him, and then, as often happens in show business, watched him fall prey to drugs and womanizing.  In the play, about 10 years into the marriage, King says to Goffin, "The girls deserve better than this, and so do I."  The words penetrated me, which is when I can usually tell there is a lesson to be learned here.

So this morning as I thought about going into the world to do the work that is mine to do, I found myself sinking into the shades of gray.  Maybe my spiritual work isn't to love everyone.  Maybe it isn't to learn how to love my mother differently.  Maybe it isn't even to not be frightened by scary-weird people.  Maybe it is to say, "I deserve better than this."

Right now, I am stuck in the "how to know."  I truly do believe that it is our work to love those who come onto our paths--to raise the level of love on the planet.  How else can we make the world a better place?  Yet, I am also sure that God wants us to love ourselves. Yet  to allow someone to continue bringing misery into my life isn't raising the level of love.

Some would say that we should just let the meanness roll over us and to not allow it to make me miserable. I may even have said that a few dozen times myself.  Now I have learned that isn't so easily done.  When someone pummels me, day in and day out for years,  I do feel the pain.  Maybe my work is to say, "I deserve better."

Today, I sit with what my work is. Once it was very clear that I am to love.  When I was much younger, my work was just to survive.  Both very black and white.  Today, I sink into the shades of gray and listen for a new Truth.

Friendship

I am taking a course in the Psychology of Happiness, and as homework I've just spent several hours reading about and reflecting on "friendship."  It seems that having one good friend with whom we can share confidences or inner feelings is essential to happiness.  The value of friendship is in quality and not quantity, so if we have 20 friends but none with whom we can share our innermost thoughts, they are of less value than one with whom we can share.  And, that one: will not only make us happier, but healthier as well.

While reading Aristotle on the nature of friendship is not exactly the light reading I might prefer for a Saturday afternoon, the ancient philosopher does raise a lot of questions about the true nature of friendship.  Are we friends because of something we get from a person?  Aristotle calls that "utility," and he professes that is not friendship but "profit."  He also describes friendship of "duty," and friendship that is really love to gain love in return.

What has interested me most in his intellectual/philosophical meanderings is the description of a friendship of pure delight in each other's company, where we love without concern of being loved in return.  Now, that's what I call friendship.  In my experience such friendships are rare to be preciously tended.

Forty years ago, give or take, I walked into a room in an aging dormitory building to meet a new roommate.  In less than 30 minutes time, I was certain we would be friends for life, and so far, I have been correct. We have gone long periods without seeing each other face to face, but usually talking at least once or twice a year.  Always, we seem to pick up just where we left off.

It never occurred to me to be concerned that I would get anything from the relationship but pure delight.  Each time we are together that is exactly what I feel--pure delight.

Last weekend she and I met for the weekend in New York City.  We tromped all over Manhattan, taking on the mysteries of the New York subway system and seeing as many sites as we could take in during two days.  I even walked 12 blocks once, just to end up almost from where I departed. Despite bitter cold and an unexpectedly early snowstorm, we embraced the city with gusto, talking for hours on end into the night.  The years peeled away, and we were 20 again. Well, except for some gray hair and a few lines.

I still have lots of Aristotle to plow through, but so far I've read nothing to suggest that he really got that instant relationship that "clicks" for a lifetime.  Having had such a friendship is a gift of my lifetime.  What a blessing that such a miracle crossed through my life, and I had the wisdom and dexterity to grab it.