All posts filed under: Monday Musings

Thoughts to start off the work week

Stiff-Necked

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Last week I was reading the Daily Office.* (Hint to the non-liturgical: the Daily Office is not an e-newsletter about the five best ways to work from home.) There, as part of the tale of the Jews wandering for years in the desert, we find the Lord telling Moses to lead his people to the Promised Land. After saying he would send an angel ahead to drive out their enemies, God Almighty throws this rather peculiar curve ball: “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” Whew! It’s pretty bad when even God can’t stand to be around you! Think about how you would feel if the CEO told your manager to have your team complete some task, but then threw in, “But I’m not going to be there with you, because I’ll lose my cool just being around you stiff-necked people!” Stiff-necked is a term I heard my Grandmother use. It …

Belonging

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During this pandemic, many of us are feeling vulnerable. Some may be wondering if or where we belong in a world that has dramatically changed. Brené Brown says that our belonging to each other can’t be lost, but it can be forgotten. She came to understand the simple yet profound answer to the question of the difference between fitting in and belonging out of a conversation with a group of middle school students. “Fitting in is when you want to be a part of something” they explained. “Belonging is when others want you.” With my background, Brené Brown’s thoughts on vulnerability and belonging led me to think about history, storytelling, and our use of selective memory to keep others out of our narrative, to ensure they don’t belong. If we confront our feelings during this pandemic, we may come to realize the ways that we have made others feel vulnerable in the past, perhaps by omitting or erasing their stories as if they don’t belong. History isn’t what happened. It is a story about what happened. …

Beyond the Pandemic

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To no one’s surprise, nostalgia is very much in vogue in the middle of this pandemic. That’s understandable. Psychologists say that experiencing distress, or “negative mood” is a very common trigger of nostalgia. As a temporary reprieve from the pressures of the present world, these past happy memories can be a helpful coping device. But as a long-term strategy for getting through and — more importantly — thriving on the other side of the pandemic, nostalgia alone will not be enough. With past pandemics and crises as a guide, the world never goes back to the old way of doing things after such a shock to the system. As someone whose entire career has focused on ensuring that history is part of our present and future, I want to make certain that we don’t discount the past. But this pandemic will require that we adjust to the reality of inevitable change. We can adjust, becoming more effective in our jobs and in life while also promoting our cognitive health, by embracing enthusiastic learning during and …

Responsibility

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Responsibility has been in the news lately. In a time of never-ending obfuscation, gaslighting, spitefulness, and mendacity, it seems appropriate to return to the plain spoken wisdom of Harry Truman.* President Truman had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office that simply said, “The buck stops here.” Truman received the sign as a gift and only kept it on his desk for a short period of time, but the message and image stuck with him for the rest of his life. Truman was saying that he was responsible. There is no need to blame anyone else for this. I own the issue. Responsibility has always been at the heart of leadership because it is inherently focused on others as opposed to self-preservation. Truman is just one example, but there are many others in our country’s history. There are famous individuals who regularly took responsibility for their actions — such as Roger Williams, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, A. Philip Randolph, and General Dwight Eisenhower — just as there are millions of less famous …

Find Your Benefactor Moments

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I was reading a journal the other day where the author was describing ways to tap into self-compassion. In it, she suggested that we recall “a benefactor moment, an instance in life ‘when we felt seen, heard and recognized by someone who showed us genuine regard and affection.’” She was quoting Thupten Jimpa, PhD, adjunct professor of religious studies at McGill University and author of A Fearless Heart. By way of example, the author suggested we think of a time when we were speaking during a big work meeting and a colleague begins talking over us. In the moment we begin to question ourselves, wondering if our point had value. But when he’s finished, “your boss redirects the conversation back to you, because she wanted your take. Benefactor moments like these make us feel valued.” The suggestion was that when you question your sense of purpose or usefulness, call upon those moments from your past as reminders that you do have value. In The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, …

Struggling with separation

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In this time of quarantine, has your daily to-do list deteriorated to the point where it resembles one I saw on a recent YouTube video? 12 pm — Wake up 12:30 pm — Eat cookies 12:45 pm — Change into daytime pajamas… Having recently been gifted two pairs of yoga pants, there are days when those comfortable, loose-fitting sweats certainly fill that daytime pajamas role for me. Of course, many of our fellow citizens of the world don’t have the luxury of rising slowly with fewer demands on their time during this crisis. I have nieces who are juggling teaching their elementary school classes online while helping their own children with their schoolwork. My sister-in-law’s father passed away last weekend after a long illness where she was the primary caregiver. We have neighbors working from home while they juggle taking care of their active and inquisitive children. Our mail and packages and groceries don’t show up each day through magic, but because millions of Americans brave the virus and do their jobs to keep those …

History and hope in the midst of denial and darkness

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Harry S. Truman famously said, “There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” Each day we are facing a crisis that some describe as “unprecedented.”* Serious? Absolutely. Life-changing? Unquestionably. Worthy of all our attention? Definitely. But unprecedented? Thankfully, historians are speaking up to help make sense of what we are facing today, and to provide hope for what can come. John M. Barry — who, in Rising Tide, wrote one of the best histories I’ve read of how a disaster changed our country for the better — has also written a book that is invaluable in understanding our current crisis. Barry’s 2004 work, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, makes him the historian who arguably knows more than anyone about the 1918 flu influenza that is the public health event most often compared to today’s outbreak. Barry writes that in that year, “a new respiratory virus invaded the human population and killed between 50 million and 100 million people — adjusted for population, that would equal …

Reflect. Reconsider. Reset.

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Navigating through difficult times is both a personal and communal journey. As we each  chart our course through this particular crisis, it is important to concentrate on the ways we can show love and live with hope. Inspiration for my journey comes from a cross section of writers, historians, thinkers, theologians, poets, activists, and friends. One of my personal favorites is Rebecca Solnit.  “When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up to become their brothers’ keepers,” Solnit writes. “And that purposefulness and connectedness brings joy even amidst death, chaos, fear, and loss.” In a 2016 interview with The On Being Project’s Krista Tippett — posted on the project’s website as one of the “conversations we’re longing to hear again and finding useful right now” — Solnit speaks of how the world wants to categorize and pigeonhole love. But coming from a place of abundance, where there is room for everyone, Solnit said, “There’s so much other work love has to do in the world.” That resonated with me. I had returned to Solnit …

Competency. Credibility. Empathy.

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A crisis can be illuminating. It can strip away the façade of what we say we believe and expose our true natures. We can use a crisis to step into being our best selves. Or we can take a different route, such as acting out of cold-hearted self-interest to stockpile more than 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and attempt to profit from a pandemic. Along with illumination, a crisis can bring a moment of reckoning. In 2020, America is coming face-to-face with the dire consequences of a well-funded campaign that began in the 1950s to denigrate, hollow-out, and ultimately destroy good and competent government along with the maintenance of a strong and empathetic social contract. Our current crisis has brought those decisions front and center. That reckoning is at the heart of Anne Applebaum‘s recent article in The Atlantic magazine: The Coronavirus Called America’s Bluff.  Moments of stark illumination and national reckoning also tell us a great deal about our leaders. When it comes to leadership in a crisis, it turns out — surprise, surprise — that …

Servant Leadership

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“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” Max DePree, the long-time CEO of the furniture and design pacesetter Herman Miller, wrote those words in his small but influential book Leadership is an Art, and they’ve stuck with me through the years. In the early 1980s, as I was preparing to take my first leadership post as the executive director of a nonprofit organization, I read Robert K. Greenleaf’s 1977 book Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. A humanities major without any background in management or business, I was looking for guidance on how to lead, motivate, and manage people. Greenleaf’s words resonated with me, even if I didn’t come close to fully understanding their implications. “The servant-leader is servant first,” he wrote. “It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.” I went on to study other management and leadership theories, attended a Harvard Business School executive …