Category Archives: leadership

Holding Gentleness

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“…A kinder, gentler nation.” –George HW Bush

President Bush the First came to my high school during his campaign for a second term in 1991. I got to speak on behalf of Students Against Driving Drunk (SADD–which I just learned is now Students Against Destructive Decisions) and sit next to him on stage. Decades later my classmate would tell me that the photo of that event which hung in the main office is actually a Getty Image. I’m convinced they put me in that chair so people could get a good view of him–he was at least a foot taller than me. He was also such a decent man. I so admired him, and Barbara, too–I read her memoir in college. I know there are many decent, kind, and gentle people all around. That is what I hold tonight, no matter what anybody says.

Clouds and rain glowered over Chicago today, though temps were still very mild for November. Other than the hour when I PR’d my bench press (6 reps, 80#, all me!) at Ethos this morning, my energy has felt dim and slow. These last couple days I wonder if I’m more anxious about the election than I realized. Huh. Good opportunity to practice some body scan meditation and breath work. As I write this, the usual states have shown their usual colors. I will post this and go to bed, and deal with it all tomorrow.

So how can we all cope with things in the morning and beyond?

Gently is the best word I can muster tonight.

My conservative friend in Alabama went to work the day after the election in 2016 [note: I have corrected this post. The prior version stated he voted for Trump in 2016; he did not]. He did not gloat. His colleague arrived in tears and he held her in a hug. I hope this kind of interaction happens all over the country, tomorrow and onward. Hugs. Gentleness in both triumph and grief. I hope we’ll eventually be able to say both, “See, it’s not as bad as some of us thought it would be,” and also, “Yeah, it’s not the utopia that some of us had assumed.” Because things are rarely all bad or all good like we imagine or expect. What we must do, however, is to admit these things to one another, honestly and humbly. And it’s only safe to do this if we are gentle with ourselves and others, both in person and in rhetoric.

Our threshholds for distress and self-care practices vary. Let us be patient with ourselves and one another. Some will withdraw and cocoon, others will need tighter, brighter connections and out loud processing. Yet more of us will react in new, unfamiliar ways. We will all benefit from one another’s soft words and touch, our respective strengths and generosity in complementary presentation. This is how we save ourselves from political and interpersonal toxicity.

A kinder, gentler world, indeed.
The more we believe it’s possible, the more we will act to make it so.

I Hold Gentleness for Us all, as we approach our shared future. Whatever it is, we will all suffer less if we can be more gentle with ourselves and our fellow humans.

Take a look at the Instagram panels below. Let us consider them for ourselves and in our like-minded groups. How can we set down the adversarial spikes toward others and take up the tools to rebuild our connections? Gently, gently, ever gently.

Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot

Holding FORtitude

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Doesn’t it feel like boarding up our windows for an oncoming hurricane?

It’s late. I’m tired. We’re all so tired. We have all done what we can to this point. Whether we have seen it as a fight, a war, a crusade, a mission, a tragedy, a comedy, a farse, an apocalypse or something else, it’s all about to climax–we think. But let’s consider a moment.

Will there be resolution of any kind by the time we go to bed Tuesday night? Very likely not. Even if the election result is clear, the road ahead looms treacherous either way. This is why I have committed to writing with the election in mind for the entire month–we will live in this morass for a long while yet, and we each/all get to decide how we will show up for our fellow citizens and humans. Will we participate in fomenting division and rage, or can we find another way to be and do?

*deep breath*

How will we get through? Can we be:

Mindful Intentional Thoughtful Humane Empathetic Compassionate Kind Generous ?

Tonight I implore us to frame our opinions, goals, aspirations etc around what we are for far ahead of what we are against. Constant rumination and speech around what we don’t want centers and amplifies just that. It keeps us stagnant and limits creativity, innovation, and collaboration. We can reframe “I’m against illegal immigration” into “I’m for justice and rule of law.” “I’m against family separation” can become “I’m for humane and merciful treatment of people fleeing violence.” We are far more likely to find shared values and goals around things we are for–because these are expressions of hope and aspiration. No surprise, we humans share these in common more than we admit in times of conflict. The both/all AND solutions emerge far more readily when we de-escalate from oncoming to coming alongside.

Here’s what I’m FOR:

Leaders of character and integrity

Holding elected officials accountable to their words and actions

Treating my fellow humans with respect, understanding, and kindness, regardless of their political leanings

Holding my fellow humans accountable for their words and behaviors toward me and others; low tolerance for ad hominem attacks and demeaning behavior of any kind

Government that is socially progressive and fiscally responsible and accountable

Patient-physician autonomy in medical decisions, especially women’s reproductive decisions

Non-violent, non-adversarial, mutually respectful political discourse

Transparency about conflicts of interest

Self-awareness, self-regulation, and effective communication at all levels of the electorate and elected/appointed officials

Learn. Practice. Train. Nothing will improve if we continue to cycle/spiral through futile interactions of emotional hijack and refusal to see one another’s points of view. We have so far and long yet to go, and it is up to each/all of us to heal the deep ruptures in our social fabric.

Please, for the love of us all, let us stay engaged. Rest when you must, know your limits, find your niche and make your contribution. Do it as humanely as you can–resist the urge to lash out, to offload your frustrations in hurtful ways. Find what upholds your patience, your forbearance, your steadfast perseverance, your courage–your fortitude–and immerse in these when you can. Look for the humanity in everyone around you, especially in those you may perceive as your ‘enemy’. The real enemies are cynicism, hopelessness, despair, and hatred. They are the hurricane.

The road is so long, so arduous. We trudge it together, like it or not.
Let us help one another onward, leaning and supporting in turn.

I Hold FORtitude for Us, individually and collectively.

Board our windows, and leave the porch lights on.

From Instagram
From Instagram
From Instagram
From Instagram

Holding Wholeness

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When was the last time you judged a whole person, dismissed them, or put them on a high pedestal, knowing only one thing about them? They’re a Chinese-American doctor. They’re a black man in jail. They’re a white male CEO. Their body shape is at least as thick as it is wide. They think exactly the way you do about something really important to you. They think the opposite, and loudly.

“Mamala and the Senator”

Most of us probably know Kamala Harris more as the senator, the attorney general, and the district attorney than the maternal figure to her stepchildren, the avid home chef, and the joyful, laughing woman among friends. How do we reconcile these divergent aspects of her humanity? What does this bring up for each of us? What biases does her wholeness as a person trigger?

Some of us want to see women mainly as maternal, domestic figures. We value the feminine as nurturer and caregiver, the personal glue that holds individual family units together. Others of us also cheered when we watched Senator Harris in action, interrogating hearing witnesses with firey eye contact and direct language, not letting them deflect, obfuscate, or gaslight. Some of us cannot reconcile these divergent sides of a woman, cannot imagine their synergistic integration embodied and applied in leadership, especially at the highest level. That’s too bad, because any leader–man, woman, or otherwise–must own all parts of themselves to lead to their full potential. The strong and the soft, the masculine and the feminine, the committed and the flexible, the differentiated and the attuned–these polar and balancing aspects of our nature make us whole humans. People who live in their wholeness lead by example, by inspiration, by resonance with the wholeness of those they lead. They are leaders because we are moved to follow them; we feel their integrity and want it, aspire to it for ourselves.

Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent. Name a professsion. Name a state, a generation, an eye color, and all of its associations in your mind. It’s okay to think of stereotypes. The brain operates on pattern recognition and shortcut heuristics; we could not live effectively without these automatic systems in place. We just need to guard against leaning on them so heavily that we oversimplify and overgeneralize our fellow humans.

What a narrow, uninteresting, and unfulfilling life when we only see people as categories. Red, Blue, old, young, rich, poor, male, female. What happens to our heuristics when we encounter contradictions? Maybe gay people should not be conservative? Asians should not be loud and demanding? How do we react to the unexpected, the new, the unknown? Too often we fear it. It’s perceived as a threat–to our own expectations, identities, and emotional security. Fear can then sublimate to denial, anger, blame, exclusion, and violence.

What happens when we hold space for one another’s incongruous, confounding, enigmatic, vibrant, and distinctive wholeness, ourselves included? Maybe then we can say, “I don’t fully understand us, and I choose to see us–all of us–anyway, and be with the parts I don’t yet get, because the longer I’m with us, either it will get clearer or I’ll just accept what I cannot know and figure out how to live in civility, if not harmony, with the whole of us.”

None of us is defined by only one aspect of our identity. And yet we so easily identify others this way. What a disservice to one another’s full humanity. Even when it’s positive–“You’re a doctor, wow, you must be the smartest person!”–it’s still reductive. And when it’s negative–“All Trump supporters hate women and people of color”–it is destructive, no question, even when we think we protect and defend the good.

Holding wholeness means getting and staying curious. It means being honest with ourselves and holding ourselves accountable to our biases and how they manifest in thought, perception, words, action, and relationship. It means practicing self-compassion for all of this, and extending empathy and compassion to others struggling with their own self-honesty and -delusion.

May we endeavor to see one another’s full humanity in every encounter. May we withhold judgment, even for a moment, a breath. May we move through the world with an attitude of ‘together’, all of me with all of you, inextricable, interdependent, ad infinitum.

I Hold Wholeness for Us.