What Did We Learn?

My wife and I have been watching New Amsterdam on and off for about a year now.  Admittedly, if it was up to her, we would have finished the series long ago but I simply don’t have the stamina to stay up longer any more than one episode at a time (and even that is a struggle most nights!)

We are now in the third season which takes place as we all began to carefully emerge after two years of Covid-imposed isolation.  Most recently we watched an episode where the administration of the hospital was challenged to encourage patients to return so that revenue streams could begin again, but neither the doctors nor the community felt the comfort of “knowing” it was safe.  In the climatic moment, there was a realization that nothing will ever be truly “safe”, but it was safe-enough; that living life fully is worth the risk.  

Afterwards, my wife and I commented that the episode felt especially heavy – I think because we remember, very clearly, what that moment of reemergence felt like.  It was only just four years ago that we all went into lock-down, and yet it feels like a world away.  

The question the episode asked but could never answer was why?  What is it all for?  Why is all this happening?  I asked my wife:  we went through all of that – and what did we learn?

What did we learn about ourselves and each other?  What did Covid and the years of isolation teach us?  

I remember listening to an interview that reflected about how scared we became of the other.  That being in proximity to someone you didn’t know could literally kill you.  How tragic it was. . . 

I would like to say that we learned about sacrificing for common good, but even many who did for the moment, have gone back to our previous habits.  

I don’t know that I can confidently say that we “learned” any one great lesson, but we did walk away with some insight about how distracted and compartmentalized our lives have become, and many of us have struggled with what we have lost since the lockdown ended:  chiefly, focus and intentionality.  

Remember how uncomfortable and exhausting virtual meetings first felt?  They required such focus to really be present and we simply were not used to it.

Covid took away so many of the distractions that fill our lives, and suddenly were forced to like the company that we kept – which was pretty difficult if you didn’t feel comfortable with yourself.  We were suddenly forced to focus on the people in front of us and we realized that the events and technology that fill our lives has prevented us from being present to each other, as well as ourselves.  

What did we learn?  I am not entirely sure we have learned it, but we gained some awareness about the difference in our lives with and without the distractions that usually fill them.  

The question is now how to create the environments and the disciplines to regain the focus that was once forced upon us with such a force?

There is much we still have to learn and unlearn, but I am profoundly aware of how much I crave presence these days, perhaps because I had a glimpse of what life feels like when my practice of presence is not challenged by distractions that, for a time, took a back seat to the need to care for each other.   

Employment as a Relationship

This past week, I had an opportunity to speak a the annual conference of Unidos US on the topic of apprenticeships.  Though well-established in Europe, Apprenticeships are only just gaining traction in the United States under the Biden Administration.  Simply put, they offer employment and on the-job-training for an employee.  As a credentialed program, there are formal requirements to an apprenticeship:  a documented curriculum with both classroom and field hours, a progressive wage increase upon completion of measured outcomes and a commitment from both the employee and employer to the work.  

It is this last part that I find so important.  Too often we hear about the need for qualified people to fill the many jobs of an employer/industry.  Employers are often frustrated by potential employees who “ghost” them in the hiring process, or job openings that sit open for months on end.  

Dare I say, we have been approaching the problem from the wrong point of view.  Simply put, people are not interested in a “job”; rather they are looking for a way of life; a career; a relationship.  They want an employer who is going to recognize them as a person who is often caring for other people; who brings more than just a set of skills to meet the objectives of a job. 

Similarly, employers are looking for people who will be dedicated to their work and contribute positively to the culture and the bottom line.  

In short, both the employer and the employee are looking for the right relationship.  So we do we continue to make employment so transactional?  

The apprenticeship model offers a solution because it recognizes that the employee has both skills and still needs to learn.  Apprenticeships are built on a long-term commitment, offering a plan for onboarding, mentorship and overall growth.  They give dignity to those who have been doing the work for sometime and to those who are willing to learn how to work better.  

Traditionally, people apply apprenticeships to trades and skill-based labor positions, but apprenticeships are critical in any industry that requires a knowledge-base that cannot be learned in a book.  In other words, just about any industry benefits from apprenticeship models.  

More broadly speaking, what is most needed is a recognition that employment is about a relationship more than a transaction.  If we can approach our work from this point of view, then job orders will be filled more quickly and people will be more enthusiastic about their work.  

IN Dependence

This past week, I found myself in a small town witnessing the celebration of all things American. I find it difficult not to be a cynic. I find it difficult to celebrate contradictions and lip-service. As songs are sung about the land of the free, I cannot help but think about how many freedoms and rights are denied and stripped away. As we sing songs about those who are “coming to America”, I cannot help but think about how many people American borders deny because they do not look and act like “us”. But most of all, I am mindful of the excess and entitlement I witnessed among so many people who want the country “to be great again” (and many who carry the flags proclaiming it).

This past week I also listened to an interview by a Harvard Happiness Professor, Arthur Brooks, who spoke about his recent visit an art museum in Asia; specifically, a conversation he had with a museum guide about the process for making good art. In response to the guide’s question, Arthur described the creative process as starting with a blank canvas and then adding the colours and images. The guide, in response, said that Arthur’s response is typical of many Americans, who think about creating as adding to something; whereas in his culture, creation is removing of something to reveal that which was there all along.

This perspective resonated with me; especially, as I think about the state of the United States and the world today.

My concern is that we are blind to our own consumerism; and that we have become so accustomed to progress that it is difficult for us to let things be. We constantly long for something better and newer. Salvation is earned, rather than gifted. Our accomplishments are measured by how much we posses rather than by how much we experience. We consume information much like we consume fast food – often making us feel like we know more than the substance it offers, skimming headlines as if those alone will represent the complexity of the issues they portray.

If we long for freedom, it seems as as if we long for the ability to take whatever we want, when we want. My own sense is that we don’t want freedom, so much as we want control. . . and we all know where that gets us.

In the same presentation, Brooks says that happiness equals our “have’s” divided by our “want’s.” (H=h/w) That we do not need a “have more” strategy; we need a “want less” strategy. That the secret is not to have what you want, but to what what you have.

The truth is that many of us would prefer to be special, more than we would happy. In other words, we want to feel unique, powerful, in control, needed, etc. . . At least this is the America I often see today; this is the “in dependence” that I witness day after day.

Again, it is hard not to be a cynic. So where do we go from here?

It is time we adopt a spirituality of subtraction; to realize that independence is freedom from the idea that more is better. What is needed is the decluttering of our minds, hearts and activity, so that we may reveal the original goodness that we forgot was there. In doing so, we will free ourselves from an ego that demands to be special and reveal a soul that is much happier.

A Father’s Wisdom

Over the past few days, I have been thinking about a question my wife asked me regarding our children:  what do I want them to say about what they have learned from me?  

It is an obvious but profound question.  In the moment, I responded that I want them to know that they have enough knowledge and skills to meet the challenges of life, because life, while joyful, is often quite difficult.  I want them to have a sense of independence and confidence along with a willingness to explore the wider world.  

But as I think about it more, I want to teach my kids:

• That we are called to live with a sense of duty and responsibility to care for others, both known and unknown to them.
• That belief if stronger than knowledge – because what we know is static and often rooted in the past (usually with a sense of right and wrong); whereas belief is rooted in what has occurred with hope as you walk towards the horizon.  
• That independence is not isolated, but rather when you learn to ask for help on your own.  
• That we learn the most important lessons from people who are radically different than ourselves; and the more we are present to them, the better we understand who we are and our place in the world.  
• To know enough that you never have to pay someone to work for you that you could do yourself.  
• Be comfortable with risk and failure when it doesn’t matter, so that when it does, you can recover well.
• That the opposite of joy is not sadness, but expectation.
• That no matter what we do, we are always worthy of love.
• That true stability has nothing to do with walls, titles and routines and everything to do with relationships.  
• That it is not for us to know whether our prayers will save us, but that the most certainly make us worth saving.  
• That church, while able to profess some certainties, has much more to teach us about living with uncertainty.
• That our imagination is the humanity’s greatest renewable resource.  
• That faith is the convergence of our experience and our hope.  
• That when we live up to our calling, we are provocative – we are compelled to state less and ask more.   
• That love and creativity are the result of vulnerability.
• That authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.  
• That community is pointless without purpose.
• That belonging leads to believing, not the other way around. 

And the list keeps growing. . .

The Means of Achieving

If you look up the word “aspiration”, you get two dominant definitions. Most common is something akin to ambition, or achieving a goal that is strongly desired. The second less common definition is often associated with medicine: to breathe in.

I find it instructive that both words, ambition and aspiration, are thought as synonyms, and yet one is quite different from the other. If I was speak to the difference, ambition is about something we can achieve or earn. It is a goal. Whereas aspiration is something more ethereal, more like a gift or something that comes to us by a way of being.

Since both ideas concern what we receive, critical to our life is how we receive: by way of consumption or communion? As consumers, we are in control of what we want; or perhaps more specifically, what our ego wants. But to aspire, almost by definition, is a way of being – a way of relating – a communion. This way of communion is non-egotistical as it is living with a sense that everything is gift. Thus life is living in a constant state of surprise – not in a shocking sort of way, but more as a revealing.

Typically, when we consider either ambition or aspiration, we are referring to something distant. Several steps and time will be involved, but here again is a difference that is instructive. Ambition concerns something in the distance that we want right now, and it not so dependent on the environment around us. Aspiration, “to breathe in”, requires us to accept the environment around us, making that environment critical to how we live. This is not a new concept: “you are what you eat”, “nature vs. nature”, “choose your friends. . .” and other ideas all recognize the importance of our surroundings.

So why is it that we consume so recklessly? In this information age, we click and we click for hours, thinking that there is no harm in the exploration. We do so to alleviate our boredom and distract us from our present reality – from our presence. To aspire is to learn how to be present, accept it for what it is, and make it new. Thus it seems ambition and aspiration are not so similar after all; and the difference is very instructive to how we achieve, or should I say, receive.

Not P&L, but G&D

We create the world we live in by the attention we give to the particulars. In organizations, most people focus on profit and loss as the bottom line, but if people are our best resources, then it seems we need a new measurement, which I propose as G&D: Gifts and Deficiencies.

When I was a classroom teacher, I was fundamentally changed by our response to difficult students. Rather than give them greater attention and trying to understand the reason for their behaviours, the school response is to isolate them from their peers. We remove them from the classroom, or in more severe cases, from the school through suspension or expulsion. Rather than surround the child with more attention, we ignore them somehow thinking the problem will solve itself; that the child will miraculously figure it out; or that they will find more support elsewhere (often sending them back home to the very places that are contributing to the behaviours we want corrected.

We cast out the problem, thinking that it is for the greater good of the whole. We learn to do this in our schools and continue its practice in our justice systems. This is at the heart of the restorative vs. retributive justice positions.

I can never forget the look on my student’s faces when they would find out they couldn’t come to school; that they would be forced to stay home. Difficult as school might have been; for many of them, it was much better than staying home. Years later, I see the same practices of removal in our communities and workplaces. Why?

It is easier to focus on the negative, rather than the positive. Even more so, it is easier to focus on our deficiencies rather than our gifts.

. . . please let that soak in, and consider how often this is our response to other people.

The reason is that problems are often easier to solve, and they make our egos feel better when we do. Problems require solutions. Gifts require possibilities. Gifts focus on the action of another, whereas problems often focus on own response. Gifts are about a horizon net yet known to any one, whereas problems and their solutions are often based in the past. And while gifts require a particular generosity; strangely, the focus on fixing the problem seems to create further suffering rather than alleviate it.

Focusing on the gifts of others requires much more of us; whereas focus on the problems of others requires so much less of us. When we open ourselves up to the gifts of others, we open ourselves up to change because their gifts will bring about new possibilities that affect us all. In contrast to the problem which allows the status quo/ourselves to continue on our same path. The problem is a problem according to what already exists as acceptable.

Great courage is required to focus on possibilities more than problems. It goes against our natural tendency to protect ourselves, but it is also the only way that we will solve the most complex problems of our time. This is true for individuals as well as organizations. When an organization becomes more complex you find that you cannot cut your way out of a deficit; rather, you grow your way out. You diversify revenue streams and find new resources. People, as well as organizations, that operate out of a place of fear or defence will, at best, breakeven. It is only the organizations that are willing to risk that actually get ahead of the problem. This is to say, the people who find a way to recognize and harness the attributes of a gift.

As people organize themselves, the shift is that we do so not with a focus on our response to the problems or how we solve our “losses”, but how we benefit (and indeed profit) from a focus on our gifts.

Cultivating Confidence

Traditionally, summer is considered a “slower” time of year. Kids are out of school; there is an expectation that people will be away on vacation; the regular rhythm of activities are suspended; and the longer days seem to give an impression that you have a little more time to get through your to-do list.

Though most of us associate Spring with budding new life; I find that summer is actually the season when our humanity has an opportunity to flourish, not in activity, but in incubation.

There is no need to write anything more about the frantic pace of life that we all live or the impact of 24/7 accessibility to everything through our devices. The problem is clear and well documented and it causes us to react to nearly everything.

The reality that is not so well documented is that we need preparation for that which we are about to encounter. As common as the term, “blindsided” is, we do not seem to associate it with the way we live our lives at any given moment. Our devices catch us off guard with news about an aspect of life that we were not prepared for. They have no concern for the activities of a present moment to which we are trying to give our attention. We may be focused on work and suddenly a message gives us personal news that we were not prepared to hear, or vice-versa. We may be focused on inner work, and suddenly our device calls our attention to events on the other side of the world.

However, living life constantly on our toes for fear of what may come next is not the central issue. Rather, it is the context in which the larger issue dwells: confidence, or actually, the lack of confidence is the issue that is at core of so many issues today.

Change is not so difficult if you feel like you will be okay as a result. Differences of opinion or values are not so threatening if your own person and values are secure as a result of the encounter. Compromise does not seem like loss if do not feel the need to be “right”; or even more so, the need for the other person to be “wrong”, thus making you “right”.

I don’t know how many people have made the connection between the frantic pace of life and the struggle so many have with their own confidence, but two seem very related. How can a person feel confident when they are constantly caught off guard by information? If confidence is connected to preparation, and we are frequently pulled from that which we’re prepared for, then it should be no wonder why many of us struggle with confidence?

More the issue, the lack of self-confidence gives rise to other demons: perfectionism, false humility, sensitivity, fear, anxiety and anger.

Perhaps summer can offer us a remedy? During a season when we are not pulled in so many different directions, perhaps summer is a chance for us to create disciplines of focus and intentionality? Perhaps we can offer ourselves time for reflection and incubation? A season for which ideas may percolate? A season that allows time to distill the essentials from the façade? In doing so, perhaps we will create disciplines that nurture our confidence by allowing us to be prepared for the present moment? That we will create disciplines that allow ourselves to sit in the silence trusting that winds of our lives do not bring changes that uproot our lives, but rather, renew our lives?

To Create or Consume?

There are many people who believe to be made in the image and likeness of God gives us permission to have dominion over the earth. After all, that is what we were told in the Book of Genesis. Manifested dominion has been experienced as an expression of power, and our right to take and mold what we can harvest.

Thankfully, most of us understand that with great power comes great responsibility. When it comes to the earth, we better understand our role as caretakers or stewards rather than masters. But when it comes to the smaller, monotonous and necessary activities of our day, we are often defined more by our consumption than our creation. These days, this consumption is displayed in the many fast food restaurants we patron during the week; as well as online shopping in the late hours of the day. However, I fear even more so by the amount of time we spend consuming information about things and people on our phones.

Even this past week the Surgeon General cautioned about the dangers of social media consumption for young adults. I cannot but wonder if fully matured adults are affected that much differently?

The remedy, I challenge, is in reawakening our innate desire to create. This is not only the dignity of our work, but the fulfillment of our soul.

To be a creative, does not mean that we must produce some great masterpiece made from the fruits of the earth. It does not mean that we are to hang up our careers and become painters, chefs or musicians. Rather to be a creative is to understand how our work fits into the tapestry of the human experience; to understand the purpose of every activity as part of something larger than its face value. Likewise, to understand that if an activity has very little value beyond its surface, then it may very well be like the empty calories of one’s diet – a filler at best, but not contributing to our own betterment.

To create is to give dignity to our work. To truly work is to contribute to the collective act of creating, because the defining characteristic of a creation is that it is not meant isolation. What we create is to be experienced, seen, felt, heard, and tasted. What we create is a gift that is experienced rather than consumed because we understand it as a gift that is not our alone.

May our work be experienced as such.

NOTE: the inspiration for this post came from this post: To Labour is Love

This Commitment Doesn’t Happen Much Anymore

My parents were married at 19 years of age. When my father retired, he did so after 40 years of working for the same company. This past week, my parents hosted a 50th wedding anniversary celebration for all the people that made them who they are – many of them had been close friends for more than 30 years or more.

These things don’t happen much anymore. Life is much more transient, and much more fleeting. Change has always been a constant, but never with this much speed.

The obvious question to ask a couple married so long is some form of “how did you make it?” How did you stay together for 50 years? How did you work for a company for so long? How did you remain that committed?

The answer that was never spoken, but so very obvious in the room the night my parents celebrated 50 years, is that they had a lot of help. That is to say (and this may seem strange) that commitment requires more than just two people.

Aristotle wrote about a “transcendent third” – the idea that two people fall in love, not simply with each other, but with something else that they can love together. He argued that “the third” is necessary to pull them out of themselves or their ego. What is needed is something they can love together.

I like to think of Aristotle’s idea like a roof. Between two points, you have a line – a flat roof that will eventually buckle under the weight of the elements. Between three points, you have a roof that is pitched, allowing the elements to fall to the side.

Beyond marriage, the secret to commitment is still much the same: rather that existing between you and something or someone else, commitment exists within the context of something greater – a community or a set of values. This is true of a school or a workplace or a city. In “the third”, we are brought out of our own selfishness into a shared sense of service that allows to be equal together. In a corporate culture, this may look like the mission or the communicated values or the experience. In a marriage, this will be some kind of community, whether it be family, or friends, or otherwise.

But this also takes time, intentionality and presence.

May we all be so fortunate to find these, and the commitment they bring about. . . so that it may happen more and more.

What is the Current Project We Are All Working On?

When he began his papacy, Pope Francis coined a phrase, “The Art of Accompaniment”. This phrase coming from a person of his position received immediate fan fare and defined his early days as Pope.

Accompaniment became one of my new favourite words because, though I has often been in positions of prestige and held titles that could set me apart, I wanted to be anything but. I wanted, and want, to experience all that life has to offer. It was my biggest challenge with priesthood, and one of the reasons I ultimately left. I came to terms with the reality that many people needed their priest to be on a pedestal, but I much rather preferred the kitchen.

It is why I love the question that is the title of this post. Rather than think of service as something one does for someone else, I prefer the question of what we are all working on together?

It is not an easy question to answer. Is it love? Meaning? Ending poverty – in its many forms? Equality? Equity? Becoming more like God? Or becoming more human? (I think the last two questions are actually the same)

Without question, it is a conversation starter, though I am not sure the question will ever find its end.