There’s a beautiful video featuring the late author, Dr. Maya Angelou. The video is titled, “Dr. Maya Angelou’s 3-Word Secret to Living Your Best Life.”
Dr. Angelou passed away in 2014 but her message seems especially relevant today.
Dr. Angelou’s advice is “Just do right.” It’s a simple message that transcends politics, race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, and faith. It sounds simple, but it’s not.
Each of us is a complex tangle of history, experiences, emotions, ideas, biases, dreams, and more. Even the best of us can be egocentric, inconsiderate, vain, unforgiving, and hurtful. It takes discipline, focus, education, and time to rise above these flaws.
I used to be a news junkie. Used to be. And then I
overdosed.
I stopped newspapers subscriptions, and only read online
news headlines. Then I stopped watching my favorite network and cable news.
Strangely, this newfound ability has led to a disability. I have
become more dismissive in general. As the article below suggests: I have lost
grace. Am I on my way to losing compassion?
I am not alone. It seems we are all tuning-out rather than
tuning-in. Think about it. This is damn dangerous.
Your nation dismisses its political allies. Does it teach
you to dismiss your personal allies? What happens when you need someone?
In Daring Greatly, social researcher Brené Brown tells a story about an experience she had in graduate school that surprised her. Called to a meeting with a professor, she expected to be intimidated and rebuked. Instead, her teacher was an ally. She pulled up a chair, sat down beside her, and offered Brené Brown adjustments.
This is shaky ground for a lot of us: moments when our work, our ideas, and our actions are open to feedback. It is a place of immense vulnerability. But it’s also the place where we are the most open and receptive. If we’re nurtured, this is how ideas evolve, broken systems detach, and innovation emerges.
And, on the other side, there is someone making a choice to sit beside or against us. That person carries a huge responsibility.
Nearly every day, we are that person, with that responsibility. Whether we are offering notes to a colleague, telling a child it’s bedtime, or extending a contrary opinion when two perspectives are in conflict. Grace in disagreement — saying this could be different and how — is an essential part of the human experience. We evolve through disagreement. Ideas subjected to criticism grow stronger than ideas left unchallenged.
It’s not disagreement, but graceful disagreement that makes the world go round. And it is rediscovering that grace that Brené Brown articulates so well in her guidelines for engaged feedback:
I know I am ready to give feedback when:
I’m ready to sit next to you rather than across from you.
I’m willing to put the problem in front of us rather than between us (or sliding it toward you).
I’m ready to listen ask questions, and accept that I may not fully understand the issue.
I want to acknowledge what you do well instead of picking apart your mistakes.
I recognize your strengths and how you can use them to address your challenges.
I can hold you accountable without shaming or blaming you.
I’m willing to own my part.
I can genuinely thank you for your efforts rather than criticize you for your failings.
I can talk about how resolving these challenges will lead to your growth and opportunity.
I can model the vulnerability and openness that I expect to see from you.
Of course a great many teachers already do this, especially with teachers of young children. The art of guiding and adjusting with compassion is common practice in classrooms around the world.
It’s when we grow older that we sometimes forget that offering and hearing feedback can be a place of mutuality and growth. Disharmony and discomfort can be grounds for transformation once grace and compassion are in the mix. What we need now more than ever is the capacity to both hear and speak honestly together. We need to seek not the hollow shells of half-ideas but the fullness of two thoughts, even when — especially if — they are in conflict. It is these antitheses, as Hegel wrote, that produce the most vibrant synthesis.
As kids we learned “we need to know” to be valued by
others. From an evolutionary perspective, the more we knew the safer we were
while wandering the plains. Between the Serengeti and the streets of New York,
however, “knowing” has become a downright pain in the neck. We seldom even
consider that we might not know what we don’t know… because “needing to know”
married “needing to be right!”
Maimonides said: “Teach thy tongue to say I don’t know
and thou shalt progress.” Hmmmm… do you smell wisdom there?
Author Austin Kleon recently wrote a short piece on this topic. I read it twice. I needed to know what it said in order to not be a pain in the neck! Enjoy!
Teach your tongue to say I don’t
know
I’ve long believed that “not-knowing” is the proper mental state for making art, but I’m starting to think it’s the proper mental state for going about life in general. (As Mike Monteiro says, “The secret to being good at anything is to approach it like a curious idiot, rather than a know-it-all genius.”)
“Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know,’” said the poet Wislawa Szymborska in her 1996 Nobel Prize lecture. She spoke of why she values “that little phrase ‘I don’t know’ so highly”:
The
article below was written in 2016 while Parker Palmer was writing for “On
Being.” It is worth rereading as we all need to be reminded about how to help
another who is suffering – no matter their age.
Children
are so often rolled over with our “wise” advice when the best experience we
could provide is to sit quietly and allow them to be heard.
The
holidays can be tough for many people – even for some who appear to “have it
all.” Make a pledge this season to give others the gift of your listening.
When my mother went into a nursing home not
long before she died, my wife and I were told that, for a modest increase in
the monthly fee, the staff would provide a few extra services to improve her
quality of life. We gladly paid, grateful that we could afford it.
I recently became aware of eating lunch totally detached from what I was putting into my mouth. This was happening every day! If you landed in my brain and asked it what I was eating, it couldn’t tell you!
I don’t remember not knowing what I am eating.
Sometimes, as I swallowed, I noticed I was holding my breath.
(Cutting to the chase quickly, this is not a post where I ultimately suggest you chew each bite of food a hundred times before swallowing.)
To stop my devolving experience, I started to eat lunch outside in the sun. There is something about the sun that is so valuable that it stops what isn’t—in its tracks.
So nothing to read, no draft of the next post to edit, no YouTube video of an art technique I am pursuing.
Nothing.
Nothing, but me, my food, and my mind. Me and my mind being separate, of course. We all think this way, don’t we? We put food into our vehicle so it can chauffer our mind.
Considering how off-base I have become, it was fitting that I slowed down long enough to read Shane Parrish’s article on the “cult of speed.” He nails it when he says, “when everyone goes fast, most advantages brought by speed get lost.”
I know there are a lot of articles about tech/lack of sleep etc., etc., but Shane also addresses what our new found need for speed does to our ability to think clearly and to form opinions thoughtfully, instead of coming up with glib answers to almost everything. Worth reading.
“Sanctuaries of Silence” takes you on a virtual journey into one of Earth’s last remaining bastions of true quiet — the Hoh Rain Forest, in Washington State. Shooting in beautifully immersive 360 video, directors Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee follow acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton as he explores the mossy, green heart of silence. In “Sanctuaries of Silence,” the threat is not so much to a place, as to our very ability to encounter the natural world on its own terms. As Hempton puts it, “Silence isn’t the absence of something, but the presence of everything.”
