Category Archives: relationship

For Real — Go High

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NaBloPoMo 2020 – Today’s Lesson

Four years ago I started experiencing contempt from some people.  “Trumped That Bitch” and other pejoratives reverberated.  Daughter asked earnestly if we, natural born citizens, would be deported.  Random people asked me if I speak English, and people who look like me all across the country were yelled at, by total strangers, to go back to China.  We have been verbally and physically assaulted with escalating frequency since then.

Today, my phone vibrated with celebratory text threads.  Friend Unicorn labelled the experience a collective catharsis.  That made me consider… “I hope we can be less vindictive than the other side was last time,” I replied.  Friend Pegasus wrote back, “I believe we will be because the person leading will promote it.”  Exactly.  Leaders set the example.  Character really matters.  My friends and I feel soothed already, like we can finally take a breath and a pee break, refreshed for the next leg on the race toward progress.  Kamala Harris’s and Joe Biden’s speeches tonight further lifted our hopes and enthusiasm for healing and reconciliation.

I thought of my conservative friends throughout the day and evening, wondering how they’re doing.  I checked in with a few.  Some expressed disappointment and grief.  I can relate.  I also remember worrying about and praying for the Obamas’ safety immediately after the Grant Park celebration in 2008, and still do today.  Flashes of fear for Biden’s and especially Harris’s safety flared tonight. 

74 days until transfer of power.  Will it be peaceful?  I believe we each have more agency over this than we think.  Ignore agitators—give them no platform.  Amplify and uplift the peacemakers.  We’ve got serious work to do, together.  Stay focused; allow no distractions.  Go High—really—for all our sakes.

Postmortem as Prenatal

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NaBloPoMo 2020 — Today’s Lesson

Feedback and root cause analysis:  If you’re like most people I know, you love neither.  I relish the former; my friend revels in the latter.  We make a great team!  We conducted a series of both recently, and yet another complementary relational phenomenon occurred to me:  These are not concluding activities; they are initiating.

Many of us procrastinate and dread feedback—both the giving and the getting.  On the other side of dread and gnashing of teeth, we sigh with relief when it’s ‘over.’  For more complex issues, just one session may not suffice—we must dig deeper—ask more questions, really dissect out the nerves, vessels, and tumors.  A good postmortem requires patience, curiosity, and a nimble beginner’s mind.  We never know what will emerge, and we follow clues with a balance of enthusiasm and realism.

So many times in the past week someone has told me, “This is very good information,” when I have either given or described feedback I received.  Very good indeed, and sometimes painful and humbling.  I did not sigh with relief and closure.  I inhaled deeply and prepared to contemplate longer—to gestate.  The figurative autopsies I assisted in this week served as developmental studies of our paths to current state. They shed light on the potential anatomy of better processes, understanding, and collaboration.

We dread the hard conversations.  We think if we can just get through them, we can be free and slink away.  But the joyfully ironic truth is, hard conversations are exciting and inviting beginnings.  If we both steel and soften ourselves to pass through these jagged archways, myriad new possibilities beckon.  We get to be the architects, together, of a much healthier new future.

Primed and Susceptible

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NaBloPoMo 2020 – Today’s Lesson

Text from a conservative relative:

I get it, you hated him 4 years ago and you still hate him now, I’ve seen a lot of hate thrown his way, but this guy is a consistent winner and an overachiever. That’s what the people who support him love about him Yes there have been some scandals, yes there have been some lies, and maybe a few times he’s twisted the truth to make him look better. He’s out there everyday proving those haters wrong time after time. Call it jealousy, call it envy, some people just can’t handle how successful he is and how much money he has, could even be jealous that he’s got a hot foreign model as his wife. You may not have wanted him in his role, but he’s there now and there is nothing that you or I can do about it. I know it’s possibly going to get worse over the next several days, but like him or not, Tom Brady is turning things around in Tampa.

I confess, I read this while stopped in traffic, so I may not have paid enough attention (ahem).  Also it’s not a text from my relative; it’s a friend’s Facebook post. 

It’s an exercise in attention, assumptions, priming, and susceptibility.  And man, was I duped.  I got to the end and thought, huh, that was a weird non sequitur–firmly stuck in my own narrative.  What hijacked me most was, “nothing [we] can do about it.”  I was not alone.

I wonder what myriad important perspectives, learnings, and connections I have missed, shuttered by my own biases?  How much fuller could my life be if I managed them all far better?

How much better for us all, if we all did?