What I’m Learning About Equity

Posted on January 26, 2020 by Catherine Cheng, MD

My friends, I am humbled this weekend.

A year ago I agreed to present on culture change to the inaugural WEL cohort, a group of 18 amazing women physician leaders. I had no idea at the time what an honor and privilege this would be. This would be the last in person meeting of their 18 month training on Wellness, Equity, and Leadership. Having just completed my own 10 month leadership training, I empathized acutely with the bittersweet bonding and pending farewell among these sisters.

For two days I received infinitely more than I offered, and I saw again how membership in a mutually respectful, supportive, and empowering tribe can transform any individual from star to superstar. Truly, these women were superstars before this tribe was formed; but whereas before we probably only needed dark sunglasses in their presence, now we need welder’s masks.

Gender, race, socioeconomic status, mental health status—these factors among others are all subject to unconscious bias and thus discrimination, in all arenas of society. These WEL women will have a hand in changing that for the better, of this I am certain. I’m so proud to know them all.

The night before my presentation, I messaged my friend who has helped me think more deeply about these issues in the past year. I wrote, “It reminds me of your idea of approaching inclusion first, which I now see as wide psychological safety. As you said, there can be a room full of white men and all may not feel included. And in my mind, that precludes true, open and honest collaboration and productivity. It prevents any forward movement toward diversity or equity. When we don’t feel safe we revert to scarcity and survival thinking. We look out only for ourselves. Nothing good happens here.”

What about the one Old White Guy (OWG) among women, how does he feel? Dr. Clif Knight, Senior Vice President of Education for the American Academy of Family Physicans and WEL steering committee member, owned this distinction this week. He reported his recent self-identification as ‘a HeForShe.’ My heart leapt for joy. Later I took him by the lapels and shook him (gently), practically yelling that I was so excited, and wished for him to recruit all of his OWG friends to the cause.

I thought again about my friend above, also an OWG. I know him to be kind, generous, respectful of women and a genuine ally. What about his idea of working on inclusion first? After a long, deep conversation with one of my new WEL friends, with whom I’m also thinking about equity issues for Asian-American physicians, a new insight dawned on me, and I wrote to her: “Practicing inclusion INCLUDES the OWG ‘oppressor’! 😱 If we talk only about him needing to include others, while we make him feel excluded himself, how can we ever expect to enroll him in our cause or even behave in the way we ask? We do how we feel. And when we feel threatened and marginalized, especially from a place of loss, we act accordingly…”

Another new WEL friend, Dr. Dawn Sears, has already taken this idea to heart and made an impact in her community, elevating women’s and men’s awareness of gender disparity in medicine, and helping them fight it together. Check out her powerful presentation to colleagues here, full of evidence as well as unsettling personal stories. In it she directly and kindly addresses the men in the audience, informing and inviting them to join the fight, for all our sakes. She names the contrarian men who have held her up on her professional journey, defying gender bias and paving their own HeForShe way for others. She includes men in order to enroll them in the movement. I encourage all to view the talk—find out how you, as colleague, patient, and all around good citizen, man or woman, can help improve the system for us all.

Once again I thought about my friend. I wrote to him again: “I wonder if I inadvertently made you feel excluded, or at least ‘other’d’ when I asked you to read Feminist Fight Club*. DUH, the intended audience for that book is women.” He was gracious and encouraging in his response, and I look forward to continuing our conversation for a long while.

Tonight I feel wildly optimistic. So many strong, visible, articulate, creative, powerful and loving people all over the place, all working to make the world better for all of us, WOW. We will make a difference, my friends. We are not only allies; we are accomplices. If we go together, we can do anything.

Onward, friends. We’ got lots to do.

*He made an earnest, good faith effort, and did not finish the book.

Friendsourcing Motivation

Posted on January 19, 2020 by Catherine Cheng, MD

Sunrise, Sylvan Dale Guest Ranch, Loveland, Colorado. Photo courtesy of Dr. Anne Dixon

Greetings, friends! How goes it, halfway through January of the New Year? How are you doing with those resolutions? I always feel conflicted about announcing such commitments, preferring to call them ‘intentions’ (see here, here, here, and here!). I’ve read too many articles dismissing resolutions as mindless, unhelpful, and ultimately a waste of energy. And yet, the start of a new year naturally prompts reflection and renewed motivation for self-improvement, which are good things.

Once again, taking a more nuanced view helps here. It’s not that resolutions are bad. It’s that we need to be thoughtful and realistic about them, as the linked article above suggests. Whatever we call them, commitments to behavior change can lead us to transformation. But it’s anything but simple or easy!

My post on experimental questions got a boost in views this past week. I wonder what prompted that? I wish I knew who was reading it and why, what they think, and what it means to them? Since that post was published, I have continued to ask my 4 newest questions, of both patients and myself. The recent traffic on that post parallels the evolution in my own reflections and answers:

In the coming year, what do you see as the biggest threat to your health?

My hedonist impulses, no question: Ice cream and office sweets, mostly, but also online washi tape sales and paper, clothing, and shoe stores.

What is the biggest asset?

My friends, also no question, my pit crew. They encourage me, keep me honest, and lend perspective. They teach me and inspire me. They hold me up.

One year from now, what do you want to look back and be able to say about what’s important to you?

In January 2021, I want to look back and say that I got fit again, that I regained the exercise discipline I lost in 2019. I got control of my eating, decreased my sugar intake by at least half. I put my phone down and was more present with my kids. I was more intentional and executed better on how I spend my time and energy overall. I exercised agency over my life better than ever before.

What support (external to yourself) do you already have and/or may still need to recruit, in order to make that vision a reality?

On November 10 when I posted these questions, I honestly had not answered this one yet. It was harder than I had anticipated. Since then, as I continue to ask patients, I see that I’m not the only one stymied. My first response resembled my patients’, something akin to, “Well, I just have to do it.” We type-A, independent peeps often rely first and foremost on ourselves. We don’t ask for help. And even though I have written and spoken ad nauseum about the importance of support, I found it difficult to identify my own need for it. This is why I have added the ‘external to yourself’ clarification to the question. Support comes from somewhere or someone else. And we all do better when we have it.

***

Friendsourcing Motivation

The whole time, the answer was right there in front of me. The biggest asset to my health is my friends. We know that social support (sometimes in the form of peer pressure) can be the key to success in behavior change. Why else would people attend Weight Watchers meetings, or to go AA? I need a workout buddy and a healthy eating buddy, I realized—I can tap my assets! Eureka!

Easier said than done, however. Who should I ask? What should it look like? Over a month or so, I worked out my specifications:

I need support from friends, not strangers (thus fitness classes will probably not be my jam)
I don’t want to be constrained by schedules with my buddies—flexibility is key
I need a two-way arrangement—someone who also has a goal that I can support them in
The arrangement must be concrete and accountable, but not feel oppressive

Tadaaaaah—Habit Share*!

On our sunrise walks in Loveland last weekend, two friends from LOH and I agreed to be one another’s buddies. It was perfect—we all wanted the same things; we just needed an easy way to connect. One of us, the youngest, most tech-savvy one, found the Habit Share app. It’s free and perfect. We each define our own goals, and simply share them with each other online. We receive notifications when our friends check in, and we send messages of encouragement and solidarity. It’s perfect! I have already shared the app with patients and other friends, and am now connected to two more friends. Our habits range from exercise to reading, to flossing.

Holy COW, what a difference! Just knowing that I’m tracking my goals, and that my friends are seeing and supporting me, it’s been exponentially easier to motivate and execute these seven days than the entire past year. It’s easy, aesthetically pleasing, costs no money, and connects me with people I love. It is–wait for it–PERFECT!

I know, I know, it’s only been a week. Who knows what all of our app screens will look like in another week, a month, or three months from now? Will we all still be connected and holding each other up in a year? Who can say? But what’s the utility of thinking that far ahead? Yesterday I set the new goal of getting up early once a week to write. Today I can check it off. I still have a chance to say no to ice cream, work out, turn off my phone apps by 10pm, and floss! My friends will know when I do it, and they won’t judge me if I don’t. It’s all good, and we can all take it one day at a time.

So, what support (external to yourself) do you have, or may still need to recruit, to make your best-self vision a reality?

*I have no financial or other interests in this business. In fact, I want to contact them to give them feedback about how to make it better, but I cannot find a ‘contact’ page on their website…

All Good Things Must End

Posted on January 12, 2020 by Catherine Cheng, MD

Setting moon, Sylvan Dale Guest Ranch, Loveland, Colorado. Photo courtesy of Dr. Karen Cornell

Friends, Leading Organizations to Health has graduated Cohort 11, the Class of 2020.

Ten months ago I started at my Hogwarts, the leadership training program that has definitely made me a better leader. But more importantly, it made me nine amazing new friends and a much better person. Today, on the last day of the last retreat, it all came together in the most beautiful way, and I am beyond grateful.

These ten months were the best elective educational experience of my life—they really gave college and med school a run for their money. We immersed in a curriculum dense with abstract concepts of interpersonal communication and organizational change management. We then translated the theories into tangible skills in an experiential learning lab, applied to specific challenges brought by my 7 cohort mates and me. Over four in-person retreats and monthly Zoom calls, we shared, supported, and coached one another in the tenets of relationship-centered leadership.

We bonded in a similar way to residents on call: Gathered for training, bringing different backgrounds and perspectives, participating in a common curriculum but each with a unique learning path, eventually to disperse and practice in different settings across the country. We eight now share a connection of stories and struggle that nobody else can know. We are a tribe.

Thus, I grieved the goodbyes long before we arrived in Loveland this last time. But I also trusted our master facilitators to help me manage this, by both their loving and authentic presence and the very structure of the program, which is founded on contemplation and self-awareness. I also felt an abiding faith in the friendships we all grew this past year. As with my best friends from college and medical school, I knew we would maintain contact and connection, just in a different way. We can’t stay in the nest forever—now is the time to fly.

In thoughtfully constructed journaling exercises and discussion groups, we reflected, consolidated, and synthesized ten months of learning. We also examined our personal and professional evolution over this time, growth and movement in fluidity and complexity. We explored aspirations and imagined the future state of this work in our natural habitats. Finally, we sat in a closing circle. Having each shared our own reflections, the group offered each friend observations, affirmations, and well wishes in what I can only describe as the most loving communion. Each person’s strengths were articulated and amplified. We acknowledged one another’s challenges. We celebrated each other’s engagement, perseverance, contributions and triumphs. Finally, sustained mutual support was extended around the circle, wholeheartedly and without qualification.

In my opinion, we formed the kind of community that we all want to lead. Tony and Diane led us all by example, deliberately, artfully, and mindfully. They live the principles they teach; they lovingly and patiently showed us the way. In the end we discovered our own capacity to each write our own next chapter(s). By making us feel seen, heard, understood, accepted and loved these ten months, our teachers inspired us to do the same for others. And that is the strongest foundation for building our houses of positive change agency.

Now we go forth. We’ got this.

Better Angels: Clarifying the Commitment

Posted on January 5, 2020 by Catherine Cheng, MD

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year!

What have you committed to? What will define a good or great year when you look back on December 31?

Better Angels Illinois chapter leaders held a potluck brunch today. Over a mouthwatering international selection of food, we reviewed activities and growth in 2019, and set our sights on 2020 with enthusiasm and camaraderie. We found encouragement, inspiration, and connection in one another on a remarkably mild January day in Evanston.

We spent a long time today discussing negative media coverage about BA (read in the Washington Post here and the New York Times here). Basically they say the work is futile at best, and harmful to a progressive agenda at worst. We queried ourselves for how these articles make us feel, where we think they’re coming from, and how we might approach and respond, both individually and collectively. I felt so gratified when we agreed that probably we should call forth the communication skills we teach in our workshops: stay curious and respectful, acknowledge our detractors’ valid points, and stand in our core values, our WHY for doing this work. I shared my two most recent posts on why I committed to Better Angels and my Fierce Optimism about the value we add to the greater political conversation.

I’m also gratified to read this long article in The Atlantic by Andrew Ferguson. He attended BA workshops and interviewed the organization’s leaders, took the time to really understand BA’s Why and How, and then summarized it eloquently. He addressed Julie Kohler’s objections in the WaPo article with respect, humor, and almost defiant hope. If you’re up for reading another couple thousand words after this, check it out; I highly recommend it.

Finally, I share with you below a letter to members from John Wood Jr., Director of Public Outreach for Better Angels. I’m satisfied, for now, to let his words speak for me (especially the parts I bolded).

Onward, friends. We will always be in this together, and I pledge to continue figuring out a better way forward.

***

January 5th, 2020

A Call to Courage

Dear Catherine,

Better Angels began with a kernel of faith.

After the election in 2016 was over, you wouldn’t have found many people who would have told you that it would be easy to bring together 20 or so Clinton and Trump supporters to spend a weekend together discovering their “better angels” when the wounds of the election were so raw. This happened though, and our belief that it could was the beginning of what became an enterprise of goodwill that spread across America. Here at the start of 2020, Better Angels finds itself at the center of a small, but nationwide, movement of Americans from across the divide to reestablish charitable understanding as the foundation of our national conversation.

But our work is deeper than that. And it needs to go deeper.

(I sought to cast a vision of what it looks like to go deeper than ‘merely’ empathy in reforming the fraught social culture of our country in an address to the Visionaries Summit, a gathering of New Age social entrepreneurs, last autumn in California. See it here: Social Transformation Through Self-Transformation: John Wood, Jr. at Visionaries🙂

Building understanding between Americans is not something that we do merely because it feels good.

It does feel good. That is true. There are so many amazing moments in the work that we do that we could never count them.

It does not feel good, however, to have people attack you (from your own ‘side’ no less) for “fraternizing with the enemy.” It does not feel good to put yourself in the line of fire of someone whom you are trying to show kindness to, only to receive contempt from them in return.

We do not do this work simply because it feels good. The work we do is hard. Sometimes, it even hurts.

We do it because the future of the United States of America depends on it.

America’s future rests not first and foremost necessarily on who the president of the United States is or who controls the houses of congress. The future of our nation depends on our own willingness, and our own ability, to maintain the bonds of civic friendship that allow us to behave honorably towards each other as a people.

We do not oppose the two party system at Better Angels. Indeed, we are Republicans and Democrats, alongside Independents and members of third parties, striving together in a working alliance for a deeper good in this country. We seek in essence what you might call Dr. King’s “Beloved Community,” or the “more perfect union” set forth as the aspiration of the Constitution of the United States.

Yet while not challenging the legitimacy of our political parties, we recognize that much in the way of the incentives that are guiding our major political and politically affiliated institutions, including and beyond the parties, are predicated on a willingness to divide the American people for short-sighted political gain.

The means by which some forces in politics, the media, and elsewhere do so often times include intellectual dishonesty – and a striking lack of humility and empathy.

Perhaps one side is more guilty of this than the other. Most of our members, leaders and volunteers feel this way, even if we disagree on which side that actually is. The true balance of error in our politics between the two parties matters. It is a subject that is fit for debate.

Yet, as Republicans and Democrats (and all others) here is what we say matters more:

What matters more is that we set an example for how Americans ought to treat one another – both for the ‘other side’ but more importantly for our own.

What matters more is that we discover and rediscover the power of those ideals that transcend and salvage our politics – the ideals that make us one American people – beyond race, religion or party.

What matters more is that we create the structures, the environment and the resources that allow Americans to engage, to organize and to rebuild community around these ideals – and in opposition to the ways of thinking that would prevent this.

The bases for this work are patriotism and empathy. But it is also courage.

We believe in the decency of the American people. We believe in the decency of you. We also believe in the bravery of the American people.

We believe you have the courage to meet dishonesty with integrity. We believe you have the courage to meet demagoguery with dignity. We believe you have the bravery to return love for hatred and the tenacity to return understanding for fear.

That is the stand we take in 2020. We are sending out a call to courage. We are grateful that you have the courage to stand with us.

Much, much more to come. Just as America faces a great test this year, our organization and our movement must rise to the challenge of the preserving the heart of our civic conscience. Together, we are equal to the task.

-John Wood, Jr.

National leader & Director of Public Outreach

Better Angels

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Onward from 2019: Learnings and Intentions

Posted on December 31, 2019 by Catherine Cheng, MD

Friends! WHAT a year, no? How are you feeling here at the end?

In this post: 3 key learnings, 3 high intentions, and my 6 recommended life readings.

What resonates with you?

What would you add?

For a thoughtful and inspiring look on the coming year, check out Donna Cameron’s post from yesterday.

3 Key Learnings of 2019

Complexity

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” –John Muir

“All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.” –Octavia Butler

We all live in inextricable connection, like it or not, know it or not, want it or not. Every interaction has potential for benefit and harm, and the scale is exponential. Some may find this idea daunting, overwhelming, or untenable. I find it reassuring. The idea that some cosmic life thread connects us all, that we are made of the same stuff today as that which existed at the dawn of the universe—this gives me peace. It encourages me that everything I do in good faith could make a difference. You really never know how far a small gesture or sharing will reach for good.

The 3 Tenets of Relationship-Centered Leadership

Not so much learnings as a synthesis from LOH training, these are the current foundation statements of my personal and aspirational leadership tenets (iterations likely to evolve over time):

Founded on curiosity, connection, and fidelity to a people-centered mission
Attendant to the relational impacts of all decisions, local and global
Respectful of norms and also agile and adaptive to the changing needs of the system

Having defined these ideals for myself, I am now fully accountable to them. And I hold them as a standard for those who lead me.

Being >> Saying or Doing

Saying and doing compassionate, empathic, and kind things are necessary and noble. And they are not enough. These actions ring hollow without honest sincerity behind them. People feel us before they hear our words. Our authentic presence, positive or negative, originates from within. It manifests in posture, facial expression (overt and subtle, intentional and subconscious), movement, and tone and cadence of voice. Fake it ‘til you make it—saying and doing things because we know we ‘should’—only gets us so far. We humans possess a keen sense of genuineness—it’s a survival instinct. If we accept that a meaningful, productive life and effective leadership in particular, require strong, trusting relationships, then we must cultivate true compassion, empathy, and kindness. That means suspending judgment, managing assumptions, and holding openness to having our perspective changed by all that we encounter (see first key learning above), among other things. This may be life’s penultimate challenge—our role models include Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama.

3 High Intentions for 2020

Continue to ask more and listen better for people’s personal and unique meaning making—not just patients but all people—attend to souls
Let go perfection
1. All relationships are not great, and it’s not all my fault
2. Some people/relationships and circumstances challenge my best self and skills more than others
3. It’s the honest, sincere, good faith effort, and the learning from imperfection and failed attempts that matter
4. Some relationships are better ended
Guard against judgment, arrogance, and cynicism

6 Recommended Life Readings—the 6 most personally impactful books I have read in the last decade:

The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. Scarcity thinking, competition, and looking out for number one hold us all back. Stepping fully into our central selves, claiming our full collective agency for creativity and collaboration, and manifesting all the good we are capable of—that is the discovery of this book for me.

Start With Why by Simon Sinek. In my opinion, the most eloquent and resonant writing on the purpose-driven life. The freedom and creativity that flows forth therefrom—it all just gives me goosebumps. Sinek’s The Infinite Game may eventually make this list too, once I have integrated its content and learnings more fully.

Rising Strong by Brené Brown. Strength and vulnerability, confidence and shame, individuality and belonging—these are the essential human paradoxes that Sister Brené reconciles with gritty aplomb through real life stories as well as grounded theory research.

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Be you, all you, all in. Love thyself—flaws, failures, and falls all included. Make things. Because that is what we are put here to do, for ourselves and for one another.

Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute. Perhaps no book explains the profound importance of being better in order to do better, better than this. And it took me almost all year to really comprehend, and then begin to apprehend, the concept.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, MD. I started and finished this one on vacation this past week. Dr. Gawande is my favorite physician writer. I consider this book required reading for all physicians for sure, but really for all people . “The death rate from life is 100%,” a wise patient once told me. In modern western society and culture, multiple intertwined and complex forces hamstring our ability to live and die well and at peace. This book is a brilliant compilation of heartrending personal and professional stories, neatly folded with history, research, and practical information for improving this sad state of things. It is also a guide to the hard conversations that we all should really have—now. It has both validated what I already do in my practice, and profoundly changed how I will do things hereafter. Thank you, Dr. Gawande.

*****

Best wishes for Peace, Joy, Love, and Connection to all.

We Must Go Together

Posted on December 22, 2019 by Catherine Cheng, MD

How will you celebrate this week, friends?

What do you leave behind, and what do you look forward to?

The sentiments on the front of this Christmas card, created in 2017, align with my core values and my Why: to cultivate the most meaningful, heart-connected relationships between all people. The last four years have taught me much on this journey—about American political geography, economic and tribal dynamics, and my personal trigger patterns. 2020 feels daunting and high risk to me; I approach it with caution, and also with Fierce Optimism.

I feel prepared and trained for whatever lies ahead, as I know I have my strong social and emotional ties to lean on. They may prove tested and strained in the months ahead, and I feel confident they will hold. Because in the end, however divergent our political or economic leanings, I firmly believe that what unites us infinitely outweighs what divides us. I keep coming back to our shared humanity—that we all love our children, wish to hand down to them a world in peace; that we all want all of us to live in happiness and security. This belief is what keeps me going, what makes me continue to reach out and attempt to connect.

We have much work to do my friends, many frayed patches of social fabric to mend. And I honestly believe we can only do it—we can do anything—if we go together. Just think of that time when you thought something was impossible—and somehow you pulled it out. I bet you had help, no?

The road will be long and arduous. We will stumble and fall, we will argue. We will fight. We will also share breathtakingly beautiful vistas, and numerous moments of sublime love and communion. Let us meditate on the latter—on all that is good—let us seek it and acknowledge it in one another with eyes, hearts, and voices wide open and out loud. Let us harness that energy and put it in front, guiding our attitudes, words and actions, toward ourselves and all those we encounter.

May this holiday season, this time of reflection and preparation, reconnect us with the whole human family. Connect on every plain, every mountain, every island; in every school, (church), and statehouse; in every city, village, community, and home of our little blue planet.

May we do better in 2020 and beyond.

A Laser, the Sun, and a Lightbulb: A Story of Self

Posted on December 15, 2019 by Catherine Cheng, MD

Friends, how do you decide to spend your time and energy?

Multiple times this year, friends, colleagues and I expressed the idea, “Either Hell Yes or No,” meaning we came into stark view of our core values and primary objectives. We then let them lead the way to confidently making important decisions, such as what work and which clients to engage, candidates to interview and hire, and projects to pursue.

Three friends have read and recommended Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and one kindly gifted me a copy many years ago. A quick summary:

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Have you ever found yourself stretched too thin?
Do you sometimes feel overworked and underutilized?
Do you feel motion sickness instead of momentum?
Does your day sometimes get hijacked by someone else’s agenda?
Have you ever said “yes” simply to please and then resented it?

If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is the Way of the Essentialist.

I have started and restarted the book over the years, and have yet to finish. It makes me feel bad about myself, as if being divergent in my attention and activities is somehow a personal deficiency and failure. A few years ago I listened to The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson, and liked it a lot. The message seems similar to me, and yet I did not feel diminished by it. As I discussed with my friends this summer, once again I remembered Start With Why, one of my favorite books which, arguably, also posits a similar thesis. What follows here is the record of a stream of consciousness I had the day after my birthday. Much credit is owed to my friends, who help me keep the conversation and learning going over these many years.

A Laser

First, there is absolutely value in focus. I see it as akin to knowing and living my Why—my core values, purpose, and mission. But there is a shadow to this virtue: narrowed vision and rigidity. Singular focus on an exclusive goal risks missing a wider context of experience, missing possibility. Maybe that’s how I see the message of Essentialism—like a LASER—straight, focused, one wavelength only, directed, landing on one point, unbending, predetermined. This is not me, I thought, the day after turning 46.

The Sun

So what’s the opposite of a laser, then? The SUN, I thought joyfully. Full spectrum light, generative, warming, inviting, invigorating. It reaches everywhere. It is intrinsically energized, self-sustaining, BIG. But it can also be damaging. It should be taken in measured doses or it’s not safe. It can also be harnessed; we can absorb and store its energy for later use. It is a paradox—so powerful, and yet blocked by a thin sheet of paper. It is celestial, mystical. Oh yes, I love the Sun.

At first I thought I would much rather be like the sun than a laser. But… really? Could I seriously compare myself to the source of all light and life on our planet, the center of our solar system around which all other heavenly bodies orbit, the gravitational focus of our universe?

[Insert googly eye, open mouth, hanging tongue emoji here]

A Lightbulb

Teeheeheeee, yes, this feels much better.

A lightbulb can brighten, enlighten. It warms. It sheds light where there may otherwise be darkness.

There are different kinds of lightbulbs, all for different contexts, serving various needs—but their essential Why is the same. It’s their How that varies. They are adaptable.

A lightbulb requires an energy source. I must be connected to that which sustains me, where I can recharge. And a bulb can get electricity from anything that generates it—solar, wind, hydro, a human on a bike, fire, steam—I can derive my power from any of a myriad of sources.

A bulb must be seated in a socket, in constant contact with its energy source—a reliable circuit must always be present in order to maintain its light. I cannot think of a more perfect metaphor for my deep, thick web of friends who hold me up every day. Disconnected, I go dark.

Lightbulbs can also burn out. Hmmm.

I have decided that I am a shape-shifting, metamorphosing lightbulb. I change myself in my socket, or change sockets, giving different kinds of light, depending on the room I’m in and what the room needs. I can be incandescent, fluorescent, LED. I can be your flashlight, your headlamp, your night light, or your reading light. Hey, it’s my life analogy, I can invent it however I want!

All of that said, I think I’ve tried to be too many bulbs lately. My light flickers a bit today. In 2020 I intend to look a little harder at my all of my bulb selves, and perhaps shelve one or two for a while. Or rotate myself more slowly, intentionally, and mindfully. Sit in my sockets good and long, serving those around me with deeper presence, brighter light, a fuller spectrum of myself at a time. Yes, that feels better.

Onward.

Healing Through Connection

The Inner Work of Physician-Patient Relationship…And Other Things