These are incredibly trying times. The headlines are crazy-making. So much is broken, and there’s so much to do. I feel like I should be doing more. Something. Anything.
And yet:
I don’t know what to do, or to say.
I don’t have anything to offer.
Nothing I do or say would make a difference.
This is what a voice in my head has been yammering lately (and, truthfully, for a long time). Variations on “I’m not enough – smart enough, strong enough, connected enough, rich enough, talented enough….” Self-doubt amplified by feeling overwhelmed by All That Needs Doing. A dull thrum of melancholy and inertia, a gray drizzly miasma of inadequacy – and a strained desperation to be free of it, for the sun to burst through the cloud!
Sound familiar? I suspect I’m not alone.
Especially with all that’s going on in the world these days (the list is familiar and long, so I won’t try to rehash it all, but it includes the specter of ongoing pandemic, corrosive social and political rancor, threats to democracy, racial injustice, war in Ukraine, worsening climate crisis, runaway inflation, and more) many people are mired in soul-sucking stress, uncertainty, and fear. Many are feeling isolated and alone (see Dr. Vivek Murthy’s powerful book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World). Many more are feeling adrift, storm-tossed, powerless to grapple with forces that seem beyond their control. Many have been swept up in the “Great Resignation” – they’ve left behind much of what they’ve known – but they have yet to find their place in the “Great Reimagination” – they’re asking themselves Who am I becoming, and where am I headed? Many are yearning for a sense of solid ground under their feet and a clear direction forward.
And then there are those voices that make it even harder, the ones that remind us (OK, me) of how small we are (I am) in the face of the immense Everything That Clammers For Attention these days.
Yes, I get the irony: my life’s work for more than two decades now has been about vocation (related to the Latin for “voice”), and yet I seem to have such trouble finding, using, raising my own voice. Even believing that I have one at all is often a stretch.
Where does this persistent self-doubt come from? Why does it hold on to me so tightly? And how can I loosen its grip, grow beyond it?
Or, what if I were to ask myself instead: What voices – from within myself or from others, real or imagined – do I tend to give the most authority? And why? What are the messages they carry? What voices actually deserve my trust, and what messages are worthy of my attention?
Even as I write this, I’m aware of a number of forces (or voices, if you will) wrestling within me, including:
• not yet entirely healed bruises from past wounds, rejections, and failures – some petty and long-past, some more recent and deep – and the fear of falling again.
• a culturally conditioned “works righteousness” mentality: a belief that my worth, my lovability, my value depends entirely on my ability to earn the accolades and applause of others (not to mention financial reward and the “legitimacy” that comes with it) through my own efforts and accomplishments.
• deeply seeded impulses to avoid, in no particular order: 1) conflict, 2) the appearance (and reality) of arrogance, 3) superficiality and irrelevance (so replete in our culture of distraction), and 4) being wrong, or stupid, or both.
• urgency to be of use, to make a difference – and crippling sense of overwhelm – in the face of the thundering torrent of brokenness and need that continually drenches the world. I want my life to matter.
• gratitude (and perhaps some embarrassment?) for my immense privilege and the countless ways that I live a gilded and gifted life: home, family, health, education, abilities, friends.
The list could go on, of course. But you get a sense that it’s crowded up there between my ears. So here I’ll just say that I ended that accounting as I did (with gratitude) not to be cute or contrived, but because I really do want to sort through the voices that tell me who I am, who to be. I really do want to pay more attention to that kind of voice, one that lifts up rather than drags down. Voices of gratitude, of authenticity, of a grounded confidence that empowers risk-taking. Voices of courage and trust and the strength inherent in vulnerability.
In that vein, it’s begun to occur to me not only that I’ve been blessed throughout my life to be surrounded and held by exactly that kind of voice but also that because that voice comes from people I respect and trust and love – and who love me — I can believe it. I can trust the people in my life when they tell me that I am enough, that I matter, that I am loved and loveable. AND, when I discount or disregard them telling me those things, in effect I am discounting and disregarding and dishonoring them.
So, when a small group of dear friends and colleagues shared adrienne maree brown’s poem “Radical Gratitude Spell” to open a weekend retreat we did together a few months ago, I (a) found myself weeping by the end, and (b) realized that they were telling me the truth:
you are a miracle walking
i greet you with wonder
in a world which seeks to own
your joy and your imagination
you have chosen to be free,
every day, as a practice.
i can never know
the struggles you went through to get here,
but i know you have swum upstream
and at times it has been lonely
i want you to know
i honor the choices you made in solitude
and i honor the work you have done to belong
i honor your commitment to that which is larger than yourself
and your journey
to love the particular container of life
that is you
you are enough
your work is enough
you are needed
your work is sacred
you are here
and i am grateful
Or when my Dad’s last words to me before he died were “I am so proud of you” – I could believe him.
Or when my former students tell me I’ve made a difference or changed their lives – I can trust them.
Or when Kim continues to love me after all these decades of marriage, or my kids tell me they believe in me – I can know they’re telling me the truth.
Or when colleagues and clients from across the years tell me I do good and meaningful work and encourage me to put more of it out into the world, I can take it to heart and try harder not to get in my own way.
So, yes, there is a voice in my head that tells me I I don’t know what to do or say, I don’t have anything to offer, nothing I do or say would make a difference. But thankfully that voice doesn’t have the last word. I can trust the people in my life who tell me that I do have something to say, and that it’s OK for me to offer it to others. I can believe them when they say, “You are here, and I am glad.”
Since “we’re all in this together” and, as Desmond Tutu and others so wisely remind us, “we are because we belong,” it’s not entirely (or even mostly) up to me whether what I do or say will matter to someone else. We are fundamentally relational beings, interconnected and interdependent with one another. So when I discount my own voice, when I doubt that I have anything to say, I’m forgetting that there is great power in others’ hearing and receiving; they are the ones who can make or find meaning in what I’ve said or done. It’s no accident that “spirit” resides both in “respiration” and “inspiration.” Spirit can take words or ideas or questions that I “breathe out,” and “inspire” others in ways I might never imagine, or even be aware of.
And I can own for myself what I constantly tell others: the world needs each of us to show up as our whole selves: light and shadow, gifts and failings, hopes and fears, the whole package. I can sort through the voices that tell me who to be – and pay special attention to those that help to evoke (literally “bring to voice”) my truest and best self. Sure, those less helpful voices will still be there, but maybe I can more often turn down the volume, ask them to whisper. I can more often nudge aside my self-doubt and instead try on for size the possibility that I am enough. I matter. I can and do make a positive difference.
Oh, and the same goes for you, by the way.
Just sayin’.