Advent

I text, “I’m heading to the grocery store.  Need anything?”  I have hopes he will say something like, “Yes, can you bring me some shampoo and sit around and talk for a while?  I’d love your advice on a few things!”  Of course, this is not the response at all, instead it’s “No, I’m okay thanks.”  I’m a little disappointed, but not surprised.  This is my 18 year-old, now living on his own with a roommate in a little old house a few miles away from my place, a place by the way, which is feeling less and less like home by the minute. He’s been gone a week.

Most families, whatever their shape, size or composition, will eventually go through this transformation.  It’s a bit like death, in that it’s pretty unavoidable.  Parents raise children to grow into independent adults who not only survive, but thrive, in the outside world.  As a parent, I have a list of boxes I am hell-bent on checking before I can unequivocally say my job is done here, and my children are ready, by my standards, for this passage.  I want to exceed expectations in this area, and regretfully, I feel like I am barely meeting them.

 

There is some solace, though, when I think about my own experience.  When I left the family homestead the ink was barely dry on my college diploma. My face still damp from the tears I wept after accepting a pittance of $12,500 a year in exchange for full-time employment in my area of study, I sputtered off, having robbed my siblings of the 1975 Cutlass Supreme we all shared, which was known by the way, to die on very cold mornings at the stoplight at Burlington Avenue and Route 53.  I possessed little more than the values my parents instilled in me and a fierce, independent spirit.  I rented an apartment to be “closer to work” in a seedy section of Villa Park, which I discovered decades later to be a hotbed of drug trafficking. (Don’t tell my dad.) I’m quite sure my parents thought me to be insane, and lost more than a few nights of sleep.

I sweat in that apartment, sleeping on the living room floor in front of the window air conditioning unit when temperatures soared in May and never dropped.  I covered the couch in a big blanket to hide the worn upholstery. I washed my clothes in a dank laundry room in the basement. I rolled changed when I couldn’t quite make it to payday. While my standard of living sank several notches, the place was all mine.  I explored the used book store down the street.  I shopped at the grocery store and chose my own food. I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.  It was heaven.

The odd thing is I don’t remember worrying.  Worrying came later in life, after my people arrived and I had dependents who needed me and expected me to take care of them.  Maybe I didn’t need to worry at the time because my parents were doing the worrying for me? 

What I forget sometimes is this stage of life is a passage.  It’s not about having a certain amount of money saved up in the bank, having a specific job or title, having a partner to marry.  There is no right age to venture out, no boxes to check, no stamp of approval for readiness.  You just do it.  You take a leap of faith, you step out on your own and you learn as you go.

I broke my lease at that Villa Park dive before the year was up, on to my next outlandish adventure in San Diego with my boyfriend.  We sat in lawn chairs in the living room, shared a one-car garage.  We rolled change.  I learned how to drive a 5-speed and became a master at parallel parking on the street in front of our townhouse.  We could see a little sliver of the ocean from the kitchen window. I threw darts regularly at Lucy’s by the beach. I went on to move 3 more times in the next 4 years. I made good decisions and bad ones. I learned. And I did it without my parents’ hand.

On this Father’s Day it’s important to note that what got me through, and what still gets me through today are the values and competencies my parents nurtured in me. When I moved out I had very little money. I was low on maturity. What I lacked in self-confidence I made up for in headstrongness.  What I really needed to make it on my own was instilled, I’m sure, way before my parents’ worry started when I moved out. My dad has modeled for me a tremendous work ethic, perseverance, resilience, resourcefulness, tenacity, steadfast calm, and grace under pressure.  He has taught me how to live small, to do without, how to solve my problems.  And he did all of this simply by being himself. My work with my boys is already done.  It was done a long time ago as I unknowingly steeped my children in the same by being who I am. And I’m learning to remind myself that with these qualities, my boys will survive this passage and every other that comes their way.

Now my job is to enjoy the next phase of my life, and to be here when my boys reach out.  Dad does an excellent job of paving the way for this new reality, too.  He shows me acceptance when I make bad choices, offers help when he knows it is too hard for me to ask.  He patches up heated disagreements. He welcomes my new partner in life with open arms.

I ask his brother how it’s going over there, in his new place.  He says everything is fine but there is no hot water.  I am immediately alarmed.  “It’s okay, Mom,” he says, “he’s showering at the gym.”  I can’t help myself; I call him.  It’s all fine, he tells me.  He is working through the process with the gas company. And then I am reminded of who I have raised:  A fiercely independent, resourceful, determined soul hell-bent on finding his own way. And I know he will.

Thanks Dad.   

Brakeman

I’m the last person to step onto the 7:51 and I’m feeling lucky I make it. Driving to the station I am on edge.  The clock on the dashboard says I’ve got two minutes.  The driver in front of us doesn’t seem to know which street he wants to turn on and therefore slows down at every intersection, his blinker flashing into perpetuity.  I’m silently cursing.  Okay, I might be audible, but I expel under my breath. I kiss him on the cheek before we’re even at a full stop. Running poorly in high heels, I thank the conductor at the door for holding the all clear sign until I’m on board.

We are clipping along at what feels like a faster pace than usual. The train is noticeably rocking on the track; I’m having a hard time reading my book. And then we stop. A voice comes over the public announcement system to tell us we’ve been involved in a pedestrian accident. Quiet resignation ripples through the air as the regulars settle in for what they know will be a lengthy delay.

Many people like to say these incidents are not accidents, that an individual has made a deliberate decision to exit an unbearable world.  However, on this day I imagine someone who, like me, is running late. Instead of taking a moment to consider whether the ramifications of tardiness are truly dire, a split-second decision is made to stay on a self-imposed schedule. This individual, I think, pays the ultimate price.

 

The train is undoubtedly filled with frustrated passengers.  Strangely, I am not one of them.  I find irony, and a signal to pay attention, when in rushing to stay on my own timetable I am stopped by someone else I presume to be doing the very same thing.

A woman a few rows behind me is seeking an iPhone charger.  I know most of us probably have one. I do. I pipe up and lend it.  Two little boys on the upper level with their father are quiet as mice for the entire 3 hour delay.  A woman across the aisle patiently works with her doctor’s office over the course of several phone calls to find space for her visit, as the next available appointment, we learn, is in August.  Others around me have much more pressing consequences than I do.

The conductors are rattled.  The engineer naturally unable to get it together when we’re finally able to move again.  As passengers we get very limited information about the incident.  Now, as I’m writing this, I feel compelled to find out the details.  Google quickly produces a short and concise synopsis. A pedestrian was struck 200 feet east of the station. Her death ruled a suicide.  She was 21. I have a 21 year old.  I am grateful.

I’ve seen angry and unruly behavior when mechanical failures take down a train.  I am impressed by the respect and humanity my fellow human beings exhibit on this day.  As I recount my amazement, especially given the divisive and angry state of our country at this moment in time, she reminds me we feed on the behavior around us.  Particularly that of our leaders. This I have witnessed personally and profoundly as the noise level in my home diminishes dramatically the day I decide to take yelling out of my communications repertoire.

She says there was a leader on this train, someone who steps outside of herself or himself, considers the situation and feelings of another human being and puts the other person first. Someone who models the behavior we all follow. I’m not sure who this is.  The impeccably behaved little boys on the upper level?  The woman with the doctor’s appointment?  Me?  It can be anyone and everyone.  There are a multitude of situations every single day where we get to choose how we will behave. We’re all leaders with the power to create positive behavior in others by modeling it ourselves.  It’s magical stuff.  Have you given it a try?

Patina

I remember thinking of it as a revelation, and a relief.  “He’s Just Not That Into You,” a book finally giving women everywhere permission to stop the all-consuming, endless cycle of analysis, the elaborate maze of mythical excuses love struck ladies conjure up for the oh-so-desirable date who displays inconsistent and tepid interest. The authors say there is no magical moment when a woman decides to face this truth, only that she becomes tired of it all and decides she wants something better for herself.  Love shouldn’t be this hard.

Work shouldn’t be this hard, either. At first I confuse it with growing pains.  I’m in a new job.  It is normal, I tell myself, to feel off kilter, a bit like I’m walking on marbles.  I should expect to be thrown into new situations and forced to improvise, to figure it out as I go.  I’m not going to get it right all the time.  It will be messy.  I train myself to be alright with this.

 

And so I over think it all. I wear out my sounding boards. My thirst for validation cannot be quenched. I say “yes” too quickly. I wonder if the word “no” is anywhere to be found in my lexicon. I wake up in the middle of the night, over successive nights, sweat rolling down my back. Not because I’m afraid of failing, I discover, but because I’m afraid of being found out.

I am a rule follower, and so I don’t immediately recognize the dissidence I feel. I find myself struggling as I’m being asked to make bigger, more impactful, riskier decisions. At first I think it’s because I’m not experienced enough. Until the reality becomes impossible to ignore:  I have plenty of experience, I just don’t believe in what we’re doing.

I’m reminded of a poem called "Good Bones" by Maggie Smith. She wants to shield her children from the awful truths about life, to somehow push the promise of this world we live in. She writes of a realtor taking prospects through a dismal property.  It’s got good bones, she quips, and you could make this place beautiful.

I believe we can make dismal beautiful. In some ways I may have a spent a career doing just that. But in order to achieve it we have to see the promise.  We have to look past what meets the eye and focus on the structure underneath.  And when the good bones just aren’t there, instead of pounding our heads against the wall or standing at the door that just won’t open, we need to cut our losses and move on. Years of time in the business world (and in therapy) have taught me to trust my gut. I recognize good bones quickly.

I want the freedom to cut my losses so I have the time to work on what shows promise. I want a chance to exercise all I have learned about leadership, inspiration, building a vision and making whatever I touch beautiful. I ask myself a question that has ebbed and flowed over the course of the past five years:  My responsibilities demand me to be windward to fear for causes I’m not passionate about.  What will it take for me to channel all of this energy and experience into work for causes I believe in? 

Exhaustion, pure and simple.  This is the conclusion I come to.  I’m just plain tired of an emotional investment netting so little return. For a brief time I think maybe I can just care less. Yet, this, the caring part, is what makes me extraordinary. And so I decide my energy needs to go to other places. It’s exciting and it’s scary all at the same time. I don’t know what it will look like or how it will unfurl. All I know is that it needs to happen because I want something better for myself. 

I want to make this place beautiful.

Scull

I don’t recall how old I am, but I’m huddled in the shallow end of a big swimming pool at North Central College, I think, staring into the green water, wearing a rubbery, coral swim cap with ridges etched into the surface meant to mimic curls. I’m sure my mother drags me here, I can’t imagine I ask for swimming lessons.  My recollection is fuzzy after all these years, but I’m pretty certain I never make it out of the beginning group.  I remember how surreal it all feels, the stench of the chlorine, the unnatural echo of our voices, and tracing the pattern on that bathing cap with my fingers.  Pools aren’t meant to be indoors and we don’t cover our hair. It is me and an overweight little girl named Olga.  We never advance.

I can taste my dread and fear and smallness as I dredge up this experience.  Maybe I cry about it, and I’m sure I feel ashamed, like I am too old for this reaction.  I am supposed to suck it up, put my head underwater and swim.  But I can’t. And I can’t for many years.

Life is full of these kinds of moments.  We’re thrown into them against our will, and we fight like hell to maintain some kind of control.  We’re often given teachers, coaches, guides to talk us through.  We think they’re here to explain the technical terms and steps of the process, but what they really do is help us access the faith in ourselves required to put our faces in the water and move forward.  If we’re going to do this, whatever it is, we have no choice but to believe it is possible and we are strong enough to endure. And so we take direction and make hard decisions pressed upon us by experts we barely know.  We put faith in the unfamiliar.  We figure out how to heal ourselves where we’re broken, and to live peacefully in uncertainty. It’s a tall order and I wonder sometimes how we ever get through.

 

“The best way out is always through,” poet Robert Frost says. And he’s right.  There will never be any hope of a life with the right person if you can’t get through the hard work of ending a marriage with the wrong person.  There is no room on your team for stellar performers if you can’t have the conversation needed to move on poor performers. It’s impossible to leave behind your parents’ house and start the life you imagine for yourself if you don’t enroll in the training needed for a good paying job. We get through by addressing what we fear, by actually doing what it is we’re afraid of.  And we do it over and over again in every aspect of our lives.

 

She’s talking about the inspiration for writing her song.  She sees artwork of diving girls, and admires their strength.  She recalls the hard times of her own life, and thinks to herself what a strong swimmer she is. She plays this song, at first for members of her family, and then to audiences of strangers.  Everybody cries. 

You’ve been here before, whether you realize it or not, on the edge of many different pools, tugging nervously on that ugly bathing cap, diving into unfriendly waters and cutting through, one stroke at a time, to the other side.  You can do this.  Whatever is in your way you can push aside, you can push through. 

You are a strong swimmer.     

Bust

It starts with futile attempts to replace a cell phone that went for a swim in a vat of gravy at a certain fast food restaurant which shall remain nameless. “File not found” is the message I receive upon clicking on links to the materials I’ve been anxiously awaiting to incorporate into a big presentation.  The dog has eaten my homework, or at least this is how I sound to myself as I answer a colleague’s request for updates on multiple initiatives we’ve made little-to-no progress on. As I crawl over the finish line at five o’clock a candidate I am trying to recruit to my team has mercy on me saying, “You haven’t sold me on it, but I’ll consider it anyway”. 

The universe is conspiring against me today and it’s time to cut my losses. Everything I try to do is met with an extra level of resistance.  Even the manager’s manager (yes I’m that persistent) at the AT&T store can’t find a way to take the $700 I’m ready to fork over for a new phone because “the system” won’t allow it.  I fail to explain to my colleague that we’ve been in triage mode for the last three months on this assignment and while her strategic priorities were assigned to others, they weren’t deemed critical to our survival, and therefore didn’t get enough of my attention.  I let my emotions get the best of me with these failures, and it impacts my day.  I can’t muster the excitement to entice a candidate to take on a new assignment. I can’t find the energy to search other avenues for my presentation materials.

There is a part of me that says these are signs to step away and do something else. Maybe I’ve done all I can today?  I’ll come back tomorrow when things feel easier to tackle.  I’ll be successful then. But, wait a minute, what if I’m not successful tomorrow? 

Few of us expect to fail when we set out to do something.  I know I don’t.  Yet the reality is things can and do go wrong.  Regularly, in fact, unless you’re somehow more than a mere mortal. What if we walked into new situations expecting that we will fail a few times before we figure out how to get it right?   If we can get better at expecting failure as a precursor to success, I’m wondering if that would leave us with more emotional energy to invest into picking ourselves up and trying again.

Getting into an argument with the AT&T representative doesn’t make me feel any better, it’s not who I want to be, and it doesn’t get me a phone any faster.  However, giving some feedback about my experience and suggestions to empower his team on the sales floor means maybe something will change for the next customer. I can beat myself up for not being Wonder Woman, able to single-handedly stop the blood flowing from every orifice of my current assignment, or I can look at the decisions I’ve made around delegation and why the expected results weren’t delivered.

At the end of the day we all want to feel good about what we do.  We’re programed to believe that good feelings only come with success; that failure must equate to bad feelings.  I’d like to change that dynamic.  Not because I’ll settle for failure, but because I can learn from failure. Failure alerts us to what’s broken and creates an obligation to make change.  I can’t think of a faster way to success.    

Divisive

I’ve never been one to pay much attention to politics, let alone political rhetoric.  I don’t seek out information from this sector of news. When it’s pushed in my face every four years, I assume if I can just ride out the campaigns and election season, I can then settle back into the bliss of ignorance, going about my daily life relatively unaffected by the decisions our elected and appointed officials are entrusted to make. I’m not proud of it, but I’ll own it.

It feels like the campaign is still raging on; there is no place to hide, no peace to be found. I ask a seasoned follower of politicos if it’s always been like this, if the parties have always been diametrically opposed.  Have I just been under the covers my whole adult life, immunized by my own privileged self-interests to be unaware of the extent of the divide across our country?  What’s different now? 

From where I sit, the difference is how we talk to each other.  It’s how the White House speaks to the citizens it serves and our fellow human beings around the globe. It’s how we as citizens, in the various roles we play in society whether we’re journalists, legislators, comedians or laypeople, speak to the White House, and to each other.  It’s sobering to watch what we know about psychology play out as one side’s disrespectful comments cause the other to sink equally low and respond in kind.  It’s starting to feel wrong to laugh at Saturday Night Live. And it hits home as families struggle to retain harmony. Our dignity and respect for each other as human beings is nowhere to be found. Our mothers would be ashamed.

I’m spending a lot of time these days wondering how we restore common courtesy. Decorum is an old-fashioned word, one invoking pictures of southern belles fanning themselves calmly while sweating bullets on a hot summer day, but showing some decorum is essential if we’re going to tamp down the flames of the inferno raging in the hearts and minds of our population.

The easy answer is that the tone is set at the top.  It’s a fairly well-known leadership lesson that the CEO, the team leader, the teacher, the parent sets the tone for how we’ll treat each other as we go about getting done whatever it is that we do.  When a respectful and kind tone is absent from the top, it takes some very strong and courageous individuals in the ranks to uphold basic values of decency and humanity.

 

As I watch panelists and moderators struggle unsuccessfully for calm and composure while opining on the state of the union, I’m tempted to turn off the TV and walk away.  It’s hard to be in the discomfort of two sides arguing vehemently and often vindictively for their positions.  But it’s important we sit in this awkward space.  It’s important we challenge each other in these challenging times.

So I’m forcing myself to keep the television on, to listen to the painful dialogue.  I’m rooting for those who can maintain decorum and still get their points across effectively, regardless of whether I agree with them or not. I rally around those with the courage to answer, rather than evade, the hard questions. I cheer for those who can give the other side credit when it is due.  These are the true leaders, the voices of reason, and I have to believe they will prevail. 

Interstice

My book club takes a detour in January; we decide to devote our first meeting of the year to creating vision books and boards to help us get clear on what we want to achieve, where we want to take our lives over the course of the next 365 days.  It’s an art project, so of course I’m in.  I spend a day in preparation, corralling my pens, papers, markers, stickers, glitter, scissors and glue; loading them into my beloved Fat Max, so I can wheel them down the street to our meeting place and share with my friends.  I also use this day to develop my vision for myself so I’m ready to go to work with the girls.  I think I want to center on finding balance, and as I consider how I might do this, the theme that emerges for me is the space between. 

The space between is ubiquitous.  The Dave Matthews Band sings about it. We all recognize it as fraught with anxiety and pain, the time we want to wish away.  It’s the fear in the pit of our stomachs when we’re suddenly kicked off our beaten paths and forced onto roads we’ve never traveled. It’s characterized by that unsettled feeling that consumes us when the next step is identified but we can’t take it immediately, or taking it could mean a bad outcome. Maybe it starts as stalling to avoid at all costs what we’re afraid of and ends with just wanting whatever it is to be over with so our fear will subside. Any way you look at it, the space between doesn’t feel good. 

For me, I realize the space between grabs a hold of every ounce of my energy and uses it for awfulizing, a term I recently heard on NPR that means imagining terrible outcomes.  The space between holds me hostage, strangles me in fear and robs me of time I could be using to embrace joy.  Whether worried about delivering a presentation to a client or having a hard conversation with an employee, I often don’t realize until after the deed is done that I have held my breath, trapped in the space between, unable to allow myself to smile, feel carefree or enjoy the good life has to offer.  This, I decide, needs to change. 

  

We think practice can help us overcome the discomfort.  This mindset may be where the mantra “Do one thing a day that scares you” comes from.  We believe we can train ourselves to let go of the anxiety if we just put ourselves in vulnerable situations regularly.  But in reality, as Brene Brown proves through the research in her book “Daring Greatly”, the discomfort never truly goes away.  We are far better served accepting this vulnerability as normal and getting ourselves used to dealing with the uncomfortable.

 

So I try this.  I tell myself the space between isn’t supposed to feel good.  And it is amazingly liberating. I’m not sure exactly why, but maybe it’s because this new perspective releases me to give myself permission to be afraid and uncertain. When I accept my vulnerability and express rather than suppress it, room is created to let some joy in.

I make it my goal this year to pay attention to how I’m using the time I spend in the space between.  In this space I tend to be unavailable to the people who matter to me; I don’t make time to take care of myself.  I lose faith and can’t trust the mess that is life.  My vision book reminds me to recover the space in between and repurpose the energy I expend there for activities that nourish me:  to eat regularly, vacation liberally, create earnestly and practice gratitude.  I’m the girl holding an umbrella on the tight rope, not only to find better balance, but to learn to let go and celebrate life.