Just Be Nice

There is a loop in a park here where one half of the road is set aside for walkers, runners and other humans not in cars.  The other half of the road is for cars, so it is a one-way drive around the loop.  It's a lovely walk or run through one of my favorite parks, so I go there as often as possible.  Here is what happened the other day:

I was walking around the 2 1/2 mile loop, and since it was a warm day after about a week of deep freeze, so were lots of other people.  Shortly ahead of me was a guy who was going for a run.  He slowed down towards the top of one of the long hills on the loop, so I caught up within a few feet of him.  This was near a parking area.  One car pulled out of the parking area and started to slowly drive on the side of the road meant for walkers/runners and whatnot -- as if this was still a two-lane, two way road.  The man ahead of me scooted out of the way.  he made a rude gesture at the car and glared at the driver as she slowly rolled past him.

As I walked up to the car, the woman in the passenger seat rolled down the window and asked, "Excuse me ma'am, is this a one way street?"

I said, "Yes.  It is."

The woman thanked me warmly, and the car slowly turned to the right direction as I continued to walk.  When the car passed me again, going the correct way this time, she thanked me again and waved.

Just another random encounter, but I kept thinking about it.  Finally I think I understand why.  This small moment, this seemingly throwaway encounter, illustrates in microcosm a larger problem which we see the results of every day.  This problem of our divisions, and the cruelties (small and large) we inflict on each other because of them. 

Kentucky is a largely rural state, with a few larger cities.  I live in the largest metropolitan area of the state.  I have heard it called the "blue bubble in a red sea."  This one small moment in the park illustrated, for me, the ways we fail to understand each other and therefore miss opportunities to really communicate. 

The people in the car were visiting the city.  The county on their license plate was one in the eastern corner of the state, in the mountains.  The man who was running saw them only as an annoyance, an obstacle to his pursuits.  What I did was not especially kind or unique.  I will admit I was a little annoyed at first too.  It only took a moment of openness to answer a question, human to human.  At the time, I felt a little embarrassed by what I saw as the woman's excessive thanks.  Later, it made me wonder if their "city" experience had been so full of harshness that a polite exchange seemed so special. 

See, I know some smart people.  And some of these smart people have shaken their heads in confusion and wonder at the "backwards" nature of some of "those people out there."  Meaning, usually, people who live in rural communities, or people whose politics are different, or people who are mistrustful of intellectuals.  I have been guilty of this myself. 

This one small moment in the park brought it home for me, though.  If you were a person whose contact with "big city" or "intellectuals" usually involved someone glaring at you, making rude gestures, talking down to you and in other ways making fun of you for your lived experience -- well, wouldn't you learn to mistrust intellectuals too? 

There are complexities and layers and oceans of social and economic factors that put each of us in the lives we have now.  Our differences are legion.  But our sameness is still there. 

It only took a moment to speak politely to someone who just had a question about the way things worked in an unfamiliar place.  It only took a second to be nice.  I know I didn't change the social and political landscape of anything, but maybe I helped change some one's mind about the city.  I hope I did, anyway.  And I hope we can all take every moment to let go of labels and just be nice.

The Bardo

I recently read the amazing book, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.  It was unique, touching, haunting and heartbreaking -- all the things I love about fiction.  This post is not a book review, I will just say that I loved it and I think you should read it too.  (And get your copy from a library or local independent bookstore.)

Since I finished the book, I have been thinking a lot about the concept of the bardo and how I can carry that idea into my life.  Briefly, the bardo is the intermediate space between death and rebirth, as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  When I was trying to learn more about it, I found this wonderful comic book guide to the bardo.  I suggest you check it out for a primer on the concept.

The ideas that stuck with me in all my reading on this topic were that the bardo is not just one "place," there are multiple manifestations.  Several commentators also suggested that the concept of the bardo could be expanded to apply to any transition, not just the transition from life to death and whatever comes after.

I have been thinking about that a lot lately -- that there are several bardos which apply to any life transition.  It is, for me, a useful metaphor to describe how I was feeling at multiple points in my life where things changed and I felt completely out of myself for a while.  The transition of moving to a new city.  The transition from being in a long marriage to being single.  The transition from being single to being back in a loving, supportive relationship.

At the same time, I have been re-reading one of my favorite Lynda Barry books, One! Hundred! Demons!  The book is autobiographical, and it goes through the moments of life that hurt you, both small and not-so-small.  At the end of the book, Lynda Barry has a short how-to section, where she invites you to draw your demons, to give them shape and features as a way of removing their power.

See, there are demons in the bardo as well.  And demons in every transition.  Maybe they aren't the specific kinds of spirit manifestations as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Maybe they are things like grief, self-doubt, fear, and anger.  And maybe Lynda Barry is onto something when she suggests you draw your demons, give them a face.  Isn't it somehow easier to know what you are facing, to be able to call it by name somehow?  This is another thing I understood about the bardo -- that the dying person finds peace when they are able to recognize the true nature of the things manifested before them.

So, if I can draw (or name, or recognize) the demons that appear in every life transition, I can release their hold on me.  I can maybe even strike up a friendship with them and learn the lessons.  My friend grief helps me recognize and articulate what is precious in my life now.  My friend self-doubt teaches me where to find my deepest skills.  My friend fear shows me where I still need to heal.  My friend anger drives me to act for a better, more loving world.

As with everything, I am trying to bring this understanding to every client interaction, indeed every human interaction.  Recognize that we are all, at some level, in some bardo, facing or running from some demon.  Deal gently and gracefully with each other, as we navigate our own transitions.

(And forgive me for my limited and very beginner knowledge of what the bardo is and what it represents in Tibetan Buddhism.  If you want to learn more about the Tibetan Buddhism, Louisville have a great resource in the Drepung Gomang Center for Engaging Compassion. )

Working Wounded

A long time ago, when I was still on the track to become an academic, I spent a few years working my way through grad school by teaching English Composition.  Before my first semester of teaching, the grad school did make an effort to make sure we grad students were at least a little ready to manage a classroom.  We took a summer seminar where we talked about pedagogy, syllabus craft, assignment design and other teacher-ish things.  I remember almost none of it.

I do remember one thing, though.  In the midst of a discussion of attendance and absenteeism, our gangly gray-haired professor jumped down from his perch on the edge of the desk and glared at us with his steely blue eyes.  "People," he said, "I need ya to work WOUNDED.  If you got a cold or whatever, you gotta just power through and hold yer class.  Ya gotta work WOUNDED, people."

Believe me, we did.  There were moments in our shared grad student office where people would be collapsed on their desks, trying to gather up just enough strength to get to their classroom and power through an hour or so.  There were days when our whole lesson plan was "go sit in small groups so I can sit at the desk so I won't pass out."  It got pretty brutal sometimes.

I am so gratified now to work in a career and with humans who know that what you do when you are wounded is heal.  You rest, recover and recuperate.  You most especially do not, under any circumstances, offer to share any potentially contagious thing with your clients.  You model appropriate self care.  I am so gratified to know that now.

Except for the times I don't.  Recently, I scheduled a trade with another local practitioner.  I was excited to learn more about her modality and to maybe cultivate another referral source for mine.  As the day of her appointment with me approached, I was nursing a mild cold.  Not enough to stop any but the most strenuous of my activities.  On the day of her appointment, I had reached the point where I was past feeling sick, but still coughing and draining pretty impressively.

What I should have done was call her that morning (at the latest) and ask to reschedule the appointment.  What actually happened was much less professional.  She called me about twenty minutes before her appointment time, asking for directions.  Hearing the cold still in my voice (really, you couldn't miss it) she gently suggested that if I wanted to reschedule, it would not be a problem for her.  So we rescheduled the appointment for the following week. 

I have been thinking about that exchange, and how it highlights the need for continual self-vigilance and review.  Somewhere along the way, I learned only too well how to work wounded.  With clients who were not immune-compromised, I had started to drop my guard.  I am embarrassed that I did not nudge myself to make the right decision, and I am immensely grateful that she modeled appropriate self-care for me. 

In grad school, the concept of working wounded came accompanied by the threat of losing our scholarships and stipends if we missed a day of teaching.  In my life now, the only threat that comes with working wounded, is the threat of remaining wounded and missing the chance to heal properly.  My fellow practitioner reminded me of that.  I am humbled, grateful, and looking forward to working together when I am all the way well again.

Let it Be

I started this blog to uncover a quiet but integral part of who I am -- a writer.  As such, it is extremely satisfying to see the little numbers next to each post that shows how many times the page was viewed.  Even better is when someone responds to what they read.  And best of all, when someone I love and admire talks about how my writing struck a chord for them.  

This happened recently with my friend and fellow oncology massage therapist, Lucy Allen.  She shared a paper written for a course she is taking, and in it she quoted a section from one of my posts.  Here is what I wrote back to her (with a link to the referenced post):

Lucy!
I am humbled and grateful that you chose to include something I wrote in your paper.  Thank you.  It's wonderful to know that what I write is helpful in any way. 
I have a reflection on what I wrote -- reading it again through your eyes, what strikes me is that I could have done a much better job of letting that client have all of her feelings.  I think I was maybe too quick to go into the "You will be empowered!!" space before she had time to really sit with her guilt/shame/whatever.  

And this is another great thing about writing and sharing -- I get to see my blind spots.  When I first wrote that post, I was all hopped up on a self-acceptance kick, ready to take down body-shaming in all its vile guises.  What I failed to notice: maybe my own crusading was taking away a moment for my client to really have and sit with her emotion.  Instead, I swooped in, biases blazing.  

I am savoring the process of becoming aware of this.  Like most humans who sometimes do clumsy things, I was trying to act from a place of love and compassion.  I forgot to also act from a place of supporting and serving my client in her moment, rather than supporting my own agenda.  So, my dear friend Lucy, thank you for the compliments, but most of all, thank you for sparking the lesson.  

In the words of the incomparable Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Work v Service

I recently read this article, in which the author talks about things we need to recover from every day.  It's another in a long series of posts, articles, books and talks about how we do too much and need to settle the heck down so we can hear our own quiet voice of truth.  The first item on his list of things we need to recover from: work. 

So, this made sense to me, and it also made me bristle a little.  Because I love my work.  I'm in a place right now where I don't yet have enough of it, so every moment of work is precious to me.  But I am also aware that when I had my full practice in Chicago, especially during the short period where I was working at four different places, I needed to schedule in serious self care time.  I don't want to call it recovery time, because to me that implies some sort of harm was done to me by the work.  I think of it more as integration time, where I can finally take a minute to examine all the moments of the time at work and distill them into knowledge and lessons I can carry.  Maybe even turn some of those moments into stories that go up on this blog. 

It surprised me that I reacted so strongly to the idea of recovery from work.  It is a perfectly sensible idea, and I would have been all about it when I worked in I.T. or Marketing.  (Yes, I did both of those things.)  The difference for me now is how I perceive my work.  It is not so much work to me as it is service.  The work I do to pay my bills and put delicious vegan food on my table is also directly linked to what I feel is my purpose as a human being.  I realize this makes me incredibly fortunate. 

I used to work for a living.  I worked in several different capacities, and some of those I even enjoyed.  Still, I always had a sense of not really doing anything that would inch the world forward in a more compassionate direction.  Now, though, every day that I work I know I have added a small nudge in that direction.  Every day that I work, at least one person feels a little better because of me. 

I'm not thinking is grand scales when I think about service.  When I try, it become overwhelming and then I truly do need a moment to recover.  The things I want to change are astronomical, pervasive, and require long patience.  True service, though, can happen in an instant.  When I let my client cry because she needs to.  When I remind the person in front of me that no part of their body is "bad" or "wrong."  When my client comes into his massage with a headache, and out of it with no headache and the ability to turn his head all the way to the right.  It's not going to change all the things i see as big-level problems, but it is going to fulfill my purpose. 

So, I don't need to recover from work, because for me, work is service and it nourishes me.  I do, however, need time for reflection and integration.  Which I am getting ready for right now.  I am writing this on December 31, about to go into my annual tech shut-down and future planning retreat.  You will be (are) reading this the day after I get back, hopefully full of ideas, plans, clarity and energy.  Ready to work.  And to serve. 

Happy New Year, Dear Ones.

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