My Millennial Friends

I have three Millennials that I have mentored over the years.  I consider all of them friends now.  I love the general optimism and enthusiasm for new things that they reflect. I try to lunch or coffee with each if them at least 2 or 3 times a year.  Today I lunched with one. The other two are on my calendar for the next two weeks. After today, I am almost giddy with anticipation.

As always, today's lunch was a two-way exchange.  Although she has had limited exposure, this young friend enjoys trying different foods, and she always asks me to pick something she's never tried. Since I enjoy different cuisines, I delight in the task.  We ate Belgian today at Washington's Belga Cafe. I cannot even begin to share what a treat it was to watch her eyes light up with each new flavor treat, and there were some good ones.

I always like to think that I enjoy good food, but when I watched her, I realized how much I take for granted. Thanks to her example, I will focus my intention on paying attention to my food in the future.

Her life has been busy since we were last together. Really busy. I think I am too busy, but since she was a child, this young woman has cared for a disabled mother, who recently died. As her water broke, and she was in child labor, her mother had an episode which required 911. There she stood timing contractions while assuring that EMTs had her mother in the ambulance before she headed to the hospital herself. She's helping a friend who has been having serious health issues, parenting a two-year old, and applying for readmission to graduate school, which had been back-burnered due to aforementioned challenges.  I've always respected her ability to deal with personal challenges in her life; now even more than ever.

Really! And I think I am busy? Note to self: whatever I am doing, I could do at least three times as much, especially when what I do is motivated by love.

Next week's lunch promises a full report on MOOC participation. (Massive Open Online Courses). Both that lunch and the one the following week will teach me at least one thing I haven't known how to do with my technology.

So what is the message here? There are several. To start with, every GenXer or Boomer should have at least one Millennial friend. I don't think kids count because I believe parents interact differently with their children than they do as friends.

Second is about the value if cross-generational friendships. Again, I don't think family members--grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles--count. As I reflect, the difference is probably about power and respect, which are different with family members than friends. There may also be something about assumptions. Often times we are concerned with making sure family members are making good decisions to take care of themselves. We tend to respect the judgment of friends or think it isn't our business.  I think everyone should have at least one friend in a generation ahead and at least one in a generation behind.

Next is certainly about the opportunity to learn from everyone. Whatever I've shared in mentoring with these three has been returned many times over...and I was never counting.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhonehe

Postal Time Travel

We are now down to two days until Christmas, and Postal Magic arrived in my mailbox today.  My mailbox is more appropriately sized for the volume of snail mail that we got two or three decades ago, so most days the single catalog or bill that I receive is lost in the space.

But, today...today...was a bonanza.  Most of my friends used the Saturday before Christmas to mail cards, and my mailbox was full today.  I couldn't even wait until I got to my apartment to start opening the cards.  One was from a colleague who retired 13 months ago: it reminded me how much I'd loved working with her.  I am also grateful to still have her in my life.  Another was from a colleague on a grueling work project five years ago.  If misery loves company, that is how we bonded. We laughed and commiserated over dinner and a glass of wine many evenings. I've moved to other employment, but we are still friends. 

Still another card came from a friend of almost 30 years.  As I opened it, I remembered cross-country skiing at Christmas in the mountains together 25 years ago. A few days ago, a card came from my college roommate from even longer ago. With it came memories of both of our weddings, one right before Christmas and the other in January.

I've written before about the powerful ability we have as human beings to "time travel"--to really be in another time and place through our memories.  I receive a few e-cards, but they don't match the magic of a card with a handwritten note that initiates time travel.  This evening after traveling over the years and the good times with my friends in my memories, it occurred to me how very important it is to be truly present to this year's celebrations for today I am making the memories that will fall out of cards 20 years in the future.

Going to school

My life has seemed to go in cycles.  For a few years life flows swimmingly.  Money, relationships, health, and career all work well. Then, for no apparent reason, one day it shifts, and life can be very difficult for the next few.  While I certainly think the easy times are much more fun, in truth, I am sure that the difficult ones are more important to the evolution of my soul. 

I think of the difficult times as when we are in "spiritual school."  It is easy to have faith when everything is easy. I have learned the most about faith when it is tested.  Like in the life of the Biblical Job, if we are able to remember that we are on a spiritual journey, we come out the other side stronger and closer to whatever we consider the divine.  When things really fall apart, we are going to spiritual graduate school.

When I was publishing a book each year, writing several newspaper columns, consulting globally, and delivering a reasonable number of keynote addresses, I had lots of people around me who loved me.  Then the economy went bust...and my business with it.  Suddenly, most of my "friends" evaporated.  I found out who my true friends were.  I would never have learned what makes a real friend without those times.

Similarly, I won't ever really learn about forgiveness and gratitude until I need to forgive someone for a particularly wicked deed and then take it one step further to expressing gratitude for the deed. Twenty years ago a friend and I would talk about "being in lesson" at moments like that.  We would know that there was a spiritual purpose for our challenging times.  The more challenging the times, the more we were sure we were "in lesson."

School goes in other cycles too.  A different friend and I were talking over dinner Sunday about the same lessons that seem to keep showing up in our lives every few years. In my belief system those repeating lessons are ones that our souls signed up to master.  But, with each cycle, we learn something different.

I am a bit reluctant to announce at this early stage, but I feel a difficult cycle is approaching an end.  You may recall that a few days ago, I wrote about feeling as if I were pregnant (11/2/12.)  I've been restless and keep feeling like I have been about to deliver something.  Today, I think my "baby" is an easier stage of life.  In several arenas in life, I feel little breakthroughs, harbingers of better times.  I feel as if it might almost be safe to relax.  Ah!

While I look forward to easier times, I am cognizant of being truly grateful for the years I've been "in spiritual school," maybe this time for a spiritual post-doc. 

Warmth

Washington is finally experiencing some serious fall weather with temperatures predicted into the 30s tonight.  A serious chill brought shivers to my jaw as I walked to dinner in the city this evening. Yet, I am warm--warm in a way that, regrettably, I have rarely been in recent past. 

I've just spent three hours with special friends.  We've been friends since college, and that was more than a few years ago. It has probably been over three years since two of us were together, and more likely a dozen since all of us were together.  We did the usual catching up on our day-to-day lives, shared stories of health challenges, and talked about what we thought the next chapter in our lives would be. They got a brief tour of my new home. It was a fun evening.

Sometime early in the evening, I realized that I had been wrong in this blog yesterday.  I can let love in.  I can feel that warm vibration in my heart with other humans.  I felt it tonight.  It was wonderful, and I want to let more of love into my life.  What could be more important?

If the world works like I am pretty sure it is supposed to, this heart-to-heart warmth should be normal all the time.  People connecting to people connecting to people in a ribbon of love that connects the whole world.  I've advocated for it. I've believed it could be.  I've even talked about how important it is that those of us who want to change humankind focus on staying in that spot until we build critical mass to global transformation.  I couldn't quite get there myself.  Or maybe I could at some time in the past, but not yesterday or the day before or the day before that.

At what point between two days ago and several decades ago did I lose the ability to let love in? Does it matter?  What really matters is that today--this one miraculous day--my heart opened.  I really believe that if I can do that tomorrow, the day after that, and 100 days after that, we can change the world.  I am confident that is why I am here in this world.  I am pretty sure that is why we are all here.  Seems like changing the world is pretty easy...as soon as the heart creaks open to just one person. I think the first is the hardest.  Tomorrow, I will open again.

Coming Together in Warmth

Yesterday I wrote about the special kind of friends with whom we can be open about our hopes and fears, and they will sit with us in total acceptance.  Today I want to write about other kinds of friends.  In a few minutes I will leave to have brunch with several women with whom I share an occasional lunch, dinner, and today brunch.  One is a current work colleague, but sadly most are now former colleagues. 

The occasion for today's celebration is a visit by one who moved back to her native state of California, and most of us haven't seen her for 15 months.  Among us there will be warmth, joy, and laughter. There will be curiosity about what has been going on in our lives. There will be concern and support. Perhaps mostly, there will be connection born of a time and place when we collaborated together on a common mission: to make life at our agency better for the people work there. 

In Leading from the Heart I wrote about the experience of people coming together every day to produce a newspaper, the business in which I spent 10 years of my career.  I think it matters not whether it is a federal agency or the newspaper business or any one of 22 other industries in which I have worked over the years; what matters is the magic that happens when a group of people share a mission.  Together we are more than the sum of our parts. We are able to accomplish something in community that the same people working alone could not accomplish.  It connects us.

Over the years, I have made friends at many of the career stops I've made along the way.  There is still something about that magic that continues to connect us 20-30 years later.  Today I look forward to coming together in warmth with a special group and sharing our connection.

What Does It Mean to be a Friend?

Today I have been in intense exploration of the question, "What does it mean to be a friend?"  Although I say "today," because today it has been very focused, I believe that I've been playing with this question for almost a week.  Last Sunday I watched Brene Brown on OWN's Lifeclass.  She is a prominent researcher on "vulnerability" and "shame."  She said that in a lifetime, we should count ourselves lucky to have one or two friends with whom we can totally share who we are--to whom we can open our hearts, and they are willing to just empathize with us.  She calls it opening our "arena" to that person and letting them in to our vulnerability.

"Wow!" I thought.  One or two in a life time.  I must be very fortunate indeed with so many friends.  That is when the pondering began.  I have people I do things with. I have people I turn to for spirited discourse. I have people that I strategize with.  I have people I know I can depend on and who know they can depend on me.  But, do I truly have people in my life that I can totally open my heart to and with whom I can share my "shame"?  Do I have people who can just sit there and be with me and ride through it with me without trying to "fix" me or somehow move me around my vulnerability?  I am not sure that I do...and I have a really evolved group of friends, well populated from the "helping professions."

I am a staunch believer in when I am pointing my finger at others, I should notice three other fingers pointing back at me.  So I noticed.  Could I really sit with one of my "friends" and ride with them into their shame and vulnerability?  I'd like to think that I could, but the truth is that I am more likely to help them reframe, excuse, justify, strategize, or encourage than to just sit with them in their vulnerability. 

Have I unconsciously invited a group of people into my life that could function with me at a superficial level because that is my comfort zone?  They don't show their vulnerability, and I don't show my own, and we can safely avoid the discomfort of just being empathetic with each other.  That hurts.  But, what to do about it? Do I need new people?  I hope not. Can I change the fundamental nature of my relationship with the people in my lives?  I hope so, but wonder. 

I am tired of hiding behind a wall that I've built to keep others from knowing who I am in my heart, and I am terrified at coming from behind the wall.  But the wall is built of stuff I need to forgive myself and others for.  The wall is built of the past and keeps me from the present.  The wall is what keeps me from being fully who I am.  What I know in my heart is that if I can find the courage to come behind the wall, "my people" will be there for me.  The question for me is can I forgive, be in the present, and be fully who I am?  Now that is the question.