Tag Archives: friendship

Thanksgiving as a Global Holiday

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Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers. ~ Howard Thurman

I love the irony; what is considered a uniquely American holiday seems to bring out our most global attributes.

Here’s the scenario:

  • Cook all day for guests.
  • Spend hours at the dinner table focused on the dishes, conversation and family
  • Lay around afterwards with no goals other than digesting and hanging out.
  • Watch a game on TV

If I spell the game “futbol” (or what the US calls “soccer”) then I have described a ritual that occurs weekend after weekend around the world. Thanksgiving seems to give us the excuse to return our Old World roots. Here we seem to remember what I find to be a delicious experience of making a day all about food and relationship.

This realization came about last Thursday when we included friends visiting from India, Lebanon and Panama at our dinner festivities. Each settled in naturally to what could have been a novel event of remembering the Pilgrims and commented that this reminded them most of home of any of their Montana-based activities.

I first fell in love with food and community-dominant cultures when I was an exchange student in Mexico thirty years ago. On Sundays, friends would host a carne asada or barbeque where we would spend the afternoon eating, dancing, and then when bored, we’d car pool over to another friend’s house to see what they might be doing. Hanging out was a fine art and a distinct contrast from growing up among productive Norwegian descendants in downtown Minneapolis.

Refining this cross-cultural skill I  find to be essential when working with international groups who spend one to five months with us at Montana State University. Since I love it so, I’m always looking for an opportunity to assemble the groups to hang out as a community, yet I now recognize that these gatherings are also one of the key to success for our programs. Drawing on our Thanksgiving roots, is not only personally fulfilling, but also really smart.

I recommend, as we all are called to be more globally-focused leaders, to search out your own opportunities to recreate Thanksgiving at other times with your groups. It’s not about the turkey, but how to allow those we might perceive as turkeys to become a more integrated part of your team. What small ways can you balance the work with the relationships as I described in an early post?

Chat! It’s good for your health

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University of Michigan psychologist Oscar Ybarra brought me welcome news this week.  As the lead author of a study reported in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, Ybarra explains that brief (10 minute) social conversations like those you would use to make friends boosts our brain’s executive functions.  Improvements in working memory, self-monitoring, and the ability to suppress external and internal distractions resulted from relaxed conversation.

International teachers visiting in Montana

In a study of 192 undergraduates, Ybarra showed that a daily chat enhances both our problem solving and social intelligence capabilities. As a computer programmer who fresh out of college would quickly finish programs so I could catch up with my colleagues, I appreciate some belated justification for my actions. Now as a consultant and instructor focused on getting people to work better together, this study lends credence to my consistent call to bring both your head and your heart to work.

In previous research, Ybarra found that social interaction provides a short-term boost to executive function that’s comparable to playing brain games, such as solving crossword puzzles. “We believe that performance boosts come about because some social interactions induce people to try to read others’ minds and take their perspectives on things,” Ybarra says.

“Taken together with earlier research, these findings highlight the connection between social intelligence and general intelligence,” Ybarra adds. “This fits with evolutionary perspectives that examine social pressures on the emergence of intelligence, and research showing a neural overlap between social-cognitive and executive brain functions.”

Getting to know and empathize with your peers and employees has just become even more worth your time.

Say Yes

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Life is movement. The more life there is, the more flexibility there is. The more fluid you are, the more you are alive. – Arnaud Desjardins

Ask a Buddhist what we can count on and he will probably explain that nothing is permanent or, as Desjardins says, “life is movement.”

Sometimes that precept is welcome news. It’s great to know that homesickness or a sore back will eventually end. That your toddler will someday not need diapers and will learn how to dress herself brings a smile to your lips. Yet, as you look across a table at a dear friend, at that beloved toddler or at an aging parent, you’d probably rather forget that everything changes including our favorite people.

So, how do we come to terms with the axiom of constant and sometimes heartbreaking change?

This question has been accompanying me closely as our cousin Charles Bach passed away from congestive heart failure last month. Six months my senior, Charlie assumed the role of elder brother by providing relentless teasing and instruction throughout my childhood, which I usually resisted. Our extended family’s favorite memories include Charlie and me arguing for hours rooted literally and metaphorically in the spot where we began.

Charlie

Charlie

So, fast-forward to today, I’m still balking at the presented topic — I’m not a big fan of impermanence right now, thank you very much. I would love the opportunity to battle with Charlie over introducing it. “Sometimes people need to leave,” I could hear him saying…

Some of Charlie’s last words were, “Yes, yes, yes!” and “It’s an amazing world of yes.” I am told that he died happy and very much at peace. As one of my lifelong teachers, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he left behind answers on how one is supposed to cope.

Since he was a gifted musician and actor, Charlie’s statement reminds me an improvisation rule — “say yes to whatever appears.” For example, what if on stage your partner suggests making spaghetti on Mars? Go along with the program. And if the clarinetist wants to riff in a new direction? Follow her lead. The scene calls for you to now to be ninety-year-old hip-hop star? Fantastic – start dancing.

Patricia Madson, author of Improv Wisdom expands, “The world of yes may be the single most powerful secret of improvising. It allows players who have no history with one another to create a scene effortlessly, telepathically. Safety lies in knowing your partner will go along with whatever idea you present…Seize the first idea and go with it. Don’t confuse this with being a “yes-man,” implying mindless pandering. Saying yes is an act of courage and optimism; it allows you to share control. It is a way to make your partner happy. Yes expands your world.”

A deliciously talented improv actress, friend and teacher Katie Goodman reframes this concept in her book Improvisation for the Spirit as “don’t negate.” She writes, “If someone offers a tidbit of information to move the scene forward (such as “Oh man, I left the money we stole from the bank, um, at the bank,”) and I negate the offering (“No! It’s right here!”) it would do several things: First of all, it would be a power-play over the other actor, which is really not fun for the others and over time makes people not want to work or hang out with you…Secondly, the energy of the scene would have fallen flat – if you outright negate and say no to an idea the scene comes to a screeching halt. And most importantly, I would have just blown an opportunity for a creative challenge, which brings energy and enthusiasm to our lives.”

Not only opening us to exciting new opportunities, saying yes is an act of recognizing reality. We accept even that to which we want to say no. On stage it might be easy to say, “yes, we eat spaghetti on Mars” and yet in real life we are called to say, “Yes, atrocities are being committed against innocent people in the Congo,” “Yes, you think I’m a jerk,” or “Yes, there is racism and misery in the world.”  We see what is, we center into the facts, and then can decide what must be done.

A fighter by nature, I was never happy when it looked like Charlie won an argument. But here, yes, he gets the last word (Charlie would have teased me for choosing that figure of speech so I’ll leave it.).  Yes, I stand silently vanquished not only because I admit that he made another excellent point, but also because as Seneca once said, “Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.”

Keeping it Real

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I smiled listening to Michael Jordan honor his beloved sister and brothers as some of his valuable opponents when composing last week’s post. I get it; when I wrote The Way of Conflict, I began the introduction by telling the story of how I grew up fighting with my three sisters.

These are three of the dearest people in my life. They are also my walking truth serum. I know within days of exposure, I’ll be required to fess up to what’s working me internally. Over the years, I’ve come to trust their uncanny abilities to make me come clean and have a healthy respect for this power. I love to be with each of them, but know that seeing them always brings some level of reckoning.

For some, old friends might provide a similar experience. They’ve known you too long and you have too much in common to be able to pretend your insecurities or struggles don’t exist. We can tuck them away for most of the world, but there are those souls that keep us honest.

Reading about indigenous cultures I notice that community members are sometimes assigned this truth serum role as a specific job. In the Dagara tribe in Africa you are chosen by the year of your birth to be a community jester or a “nature person.” Nature people are expected to tease you or to give you grief if you are putting on airs. When a nature person shows up at your door, know that you are going to get a work out…it’s their job.

Some Native American traditions explain that this role provides “coyote energy,” seeing this animal as the trickster whose role it is to keep us real. In other traditions it is the ritual clown who makes fun of those trying to pretend that there are above all the messiness of life. Their universal role is to humble us.

Humility means to be “of the earth.” Not less than another, and definitely not higher, but instead that we are all essentially the same. Important souls around the world remind us that as much as we’d like to ignore it, we are human just like everyone else in our community. We all make mistakes, fear death and have physical urges that can control us. We are imperfect and yet valuable in our own right.

I notice that within my sisterhood, we seem to call out behavior that is outside of our best and brightest. My siblings give me grief about eating ice cream out of the container (I know it’s gross), but also none will put up with self-depreciating talk. It’s in that fact that I trust; they see my potential and can get quite peeved when I miss the mark.

Historically we are told this was the role of the court jester. I know how easy it is to delude myself into thinking that my actions make sense and thus appreciate the idea that wise royalty knew that you must have someone checking your work. Too much pride or bravado needs loving critics.

Last weekend I had the rare opportunity to spend time with all three sisters and mom in Yosemite. On Saturday, twice driving back to a cabin we were renting, we saw a cute young coyote cross the road. Rare to see a coyote in Montana in broad daylight, I was impressed to see him in California hanging near the road hours apart. It took until one sister said, “I love each of you, but being all together isn’t always easy,” for me to giggle at the irony. Adding the citings, she was right; there was lots of “coyote energy.” Yet, like after working with a great personal trainer or coach, this week I now have a better sense of who I am, where I stand and what I need to work on. From the nudging and prodding I hope to be better, brighter and more real…and curtail double dipping in the Haagen Daz container.

Emotions are Contagious

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As I read about the world’s mourning rituals I notice that you can catch a cold, you can contract the flu, but you can also get a case of sadness or joy from another. Emotions are contagious, which is not such a bad thing.

Burkina Faso traditional home

Burkina Faso traditional home

When I was pregnant, I didn’t think that the viral nature of emotions was good. I couldn’t watch intense dramas; “Shindler’s List,” “The Joy Luck Club” or “Life is Beautiful,” were far from my viewing list. I could bearly watch a happy sitcom on TV since there might be one of those “times of your life” commercials that could set me into tears. In that state, my emotional radar was so strong that I could sympathetically cry about just about any moment. It was embarrassing.

Now far away from the prenatal stage, I recognize that there are still times where being exposed to another’s grief or hardship can get me weeping. For example, when I’m struggling, I’m leery of situations or films that will bring up sadness. I want to hide out and be entertained with fluff. Yet, I am hiding, not truly coping, and in that lies the core reason for communal grieving.

Around the world, we can find long lasting rituals that push us to face and move through the sadness of loss. In Ireland and Scotland for example, the practice of keening or a vocal lament over a corpse was popular from the sixteenth century on. Women, often paid for their services, would recite list the lineage of the deceased, poetically describe those left behind and literally sing his praises. This practice continues in parts of rural Greece where elder women of the community sing laments at funerals, memorial services and during exhumation.

These songs appear to have the same effect as watching “P.S. I Love You.” Those grieving are moved to tears. Yet, they are expected to stay relatively under control so they can follow the singing. In Greece, if a widow were to lose control and begin shouting for example, the rest of the mourners would move her back to her seat so that she can listen to the laments and quietly weep.

In tribal culture of western Africa, communal grief rituals are created when a major loss occurs. Meanwhile during the ritual, others in the community are expected to describe their own tragedies and sadness so together the tribe can move to the other side of mourning. You might begin by recounting how you miss your deceased aunt, yet I would be expected to add how I am suffering with the loss of my grandfather and the sadness I feel that life is so short. Here too people lament until they are moved to face the source of suffering and allow it to be seen and processed.

Ritual seems to be created to keep the grief on track. We are required to stay with our sadness instead of being distracted by the injustice of the loss and running down the path of rage or blame. What is gone, is gone and we are to simply face it.

So how might I translate this knowledge to my drama vs. romantic comedy dilemma?

Lately, I have been watching what type of emotion I am trying to avoid. Is it I don’t want to witness sadness? Do I want to run from others who are afraid or anxious? Struggling with facing the reality of injustice in the world? Starting there, I try to identify which emotion has me on the run.

Then I attempt to just allow that feeling to be within me. For example, I was avoiding the natural sadness that comes with sending another son off on an exchange program on Friday. It didn’t seem right, since it is mixed with huge joy for his next adventure; I didn’t want to be sad and happy at the same time. However, I noticed that I instead had been wanting to hide from anything emotional…generally, not a good practice.

I realized I had some internal clean up to do. To push myself along, I looked at pictures of when he was a toddler and thought of our dear boy as a baby…a bit masochistic I know, but it really helped. Essentially created my own little lament. After allowing happy/sad/nervous to be fully present, I now find I can better participate in his last week home.

What is equally important for me is to be comfortable enough with my own grief, so I can show up for another in a similar circumstance. We really need community when we are struggling. As in my last post on Job, it is when we can stick with someone as they experience scary emotions that we shine as friends…and as parents.

Dinner with Job

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Last week I had dinner with Job.

Book of Job by William Blake

Book of Job by William Blake

Thousands of years after the legend was born, the biblical character Job continues to incarnate in my pedestrian life. On Friday, he visited in the form of a father whose twenty-year-old daughter recently died of a brain tumor. I also met him last month as a young woman about to lose her home. He shows up from time to time as a friend who after being fired cannot find a new job.

To recognize him, let me pass along Job’s story:

Once upon a time, there was a successful father who was a respected member of his community. He had land, possessions, a big family and a wife who loved him.

Then things began to fall apart. In his times, it would have been the gods, or God depending one’s religious background, who ordained the mess. Regardless, Job loses members of his family, his business bankrupts and the good stuff he owned is taken away.

At first, he is tough and takes the setbacks gracefully. “It is the will of God,” he proclaims. But then things go from really bad to worse. He becomes ill and is covered with oozing sores. Then, he’s had enough.

Depending when you meet Job, you migth find him yelling at God or not believing that there is anything remotely divine in the universe. At this point in the story, he hates life and wishes he could die. If we harken back to my post on the four seasons of tough times, Job experiences one of the coldest and cruelest winters of his life.

As I sat at dinner with the deeply suffering parent last weekend it was to Job’s story I went for guidance on what to do. Three friends visit Job at his lowest point. They model both how to support another well and how to really screw it up!

First, the three friends sit in silence with Job for a week. This has been carried forward in the Jewish ritual of sitting shiva where a grieving family stays at home for 7 days and friends come to support them. During these times, we are to witness the other’s suffering and not try to fix it. The three friends shine here as they love Job enough to allow his pain to pierce their hearts and feel compassion.

But, next the friends fail. I try to remember them as a cautionary tale. It appears they couldn’t take the depth of Job hating God and turning away from life. It was just too scary for the three. So, they try to figure out why all this bad stuff had happened to Job. One friend tells Job he must have sinned and God was punishing him. Another adds that he must be a bad person. As you can imagine, this does not make Job feel better. Trying to figure out why a friend is suffering is generally a bad idea. For example, if I had followed these misguided souls, I might have mistakenly stammered, “Perhaps your daughter was only supposed to be here for twenty years,” or “Now she is in a better place.”

The story of Job reminds me that we don’t get to understand the full “why” of a situation and, as Buddha agreed, that life contains suffering. It is very uncomfortable to sit with someone who is miserable. I always wish I could help. I would love to relieve the pain not only in the one suffering but also my own sympathetic sadness. Yet it doesn’t work like that.

I can remind another that I care about him and I would miss him if he wasn’t around. I can say I’m sorry that he is going through terrible times. In the depths of another’s misery, that’s all I know to be absolutely true.

Standing at the First Gate

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You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.  –Marie Curie 

In an ancient Sumerian myth, Inanna, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, decides to go visit her sister

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth

Ereškigal who lived in the underworld. Inanna, although overly confident and a bit arrogant, was also smart. Before stepping into the bowels of the earth, she asked her faithful servant Ninshubur to wait for her at the underworld’s first gate. Ninshubur was not to follow, just to watch for her return. If she did not see Inanna within three days, the servant was to go get help from the gods. This wise decision saves Inanna later in the story.

When tough times hit, we are indeed wise to enlist a Ninshubur or two; loyal friends with whom we share our troubles.  This caring community pays attention as we journey through difficulties and keep tabs if we have been in the depths of the underworld too long.

Admitting that we are struggling is not a standard cultural norm in US culture. We strive to be on top of our game and independent, so it can be hard to share that we are traveling through disappointment, grief or even depression. Yet, a Ninshubur can save our life.

Cross-culturally, I have found that many death and mourning rituals include a caring community that periodically checks in on those grieving. There are prescribed activities where the mourners must participate with extended family and friends.  The larger group watches “at the first gate” and assures that the family keeps moving forward to the other side of loss.

A wise woman shared her story of acting as a caring community member, “One of my dearest friends committed suicide last fall. She left two children, ages nine and twelve. When she died, the eldest son locked himself in his room and wouldn’t come out. After a few hours, worried, I wrote a note saying, ‘Are you OK in there? Just let me know.’ He responded, ‘I’m OK.’ I then wrote the names of all the people who had gathered in the house that evening who loved him, so he would know that we were all there holding him, and slipped it back under the door. He eventually unlocked the door.

“Six months later, his father needed to go on a trip. I kept an eye on the kids during the week that he was away. Although his grandparents were taking a turn at the house, I received a surprise call from my twelve-year-old friend who asked if I might be coming by the house. All plans were tossed away and said I would. That night I spent the evening watching him do homework and just being near him. That’s the first time he’s called me although I call and visit him often.”

When choosing someone to stand at the first gate, we want a friend who can pay attention and allow us to figure out how to adapt to a bad situation. If you are struggling with a financial crisis, a tough relationship or job loss, enlist a friend who can witness what you are going through without trying to “snap you out of it.” Difficult experiences hold opportunity and learning if we are allowed to work it through. Inanna had to go to the underworld, even though it was a risky venture. There are times when we need to restructure our finances, get out of bad marriages and find new work, even if it seems dangerous and scary. Those who can keep an eye on our progress and overall health are useful members on our “tough times team.”  They let us travel through our difficult circumstances, but make sure that we don’t get stuck within them. 

The Business of Endings

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Serve your wife, children, father, and mother, and treat them as if they are very dear to you, but know in your heart that they do not belong to you. - Ramakrishna

When my son and I addressed his high school graduation announcements this week and started to receive others, I found myself ruminating more about celebrations, rites of passage and community. As I wrote earlier, cross culturally, ceremony is used to facilitate moving us from one phase of life to another. Our community helps by showing up at the celebration to witness our change. Also, even though an event might focus on one family member, it also can support transition for others. For example, puberty, graduation and marriage rituals signal shifts for both the child and the parents while funerals publicly mark changes within not only a family, but also within a community.
So, I’m feeling pretty comfortable that closing celebrations are important for both celebrant and their family. But, I’m noticing they also cause some stress. First, we have to face an ending and a new beginning, which elicits fear of the unknown. The ground shakes a bit underneath all our feet as we recognize that we haven’t yet practiced this next phase. We’ll figure it out, but it requires figuring! After years of teaching and conflict resolution, I try to take special care around endings. Be it the end of a workshop, a business or a phase of life, a structure that has given us comfort is being taken away and that causes disequilibrium.  Being gentle with oneself and those around seems in order.

Celebrations can not only throw us off by making us face by an ending, but it can also be stressful figuring out just who to invite! Not only do I get to confront where I now stand, but also who actually should stand with me. I’ve come to think of my community as organized in concentric circles with me at the center. At a macro level, I’ve got an inner circle of family and friends that surround, then a mid circle of acquaintances and an outer circle that is comprised of other’s in my “tribe” be it of a town, country and then the greater human race (or all living things depending on one’s viewpoint).

Now, within each of those circles, there are further gradations. Like within the inner realm, there are the friends you would call without hesitation at 3 am versus the buddies you would ring up happily up til 9 pm. Among your family, there is the sibling with whom you shared a room and the distant cousin you met once. Thus, the former of each example probably would be placed in a closer circle than the latter.

In our culture, we usually invite portions of our inner circle to coming-of-age ceremonies. However, since we don’t clearly know within which sub-circle everyone belongs, this can create messiness. Invite too many and appear to be trolling for dollars (or maybe it always looks like that with graduations!), or don’t send enough and offend a family member.  Also, although I believe ceremonies are important, I would be hard pressed to appear at every event to which we have been invited, or to send a gift for that matter. :) So, choosing who to invite and how to respond also creates disequilibrium.

As one friend commented when we spoke about attending celebrations, “There were two events about which I still question if I should have attended. The first was a gathering of friends around a woman who had suddenly lost her husband.  We had recently become friends and I wasn’t sure she would have wanted me there to comfort her. The second was a funeral of the mother of my daughter’s friend, should have I gone? It’s not always clear.”

So, with 18 school days left, the cap and gown have been tested in the kitchen and the announcements were sent. For the lack of a better guide, we followed the Golden Rule and mailed to those from whom I would expect a similar notification. I’m thinking I will use the same when deciding how I should respond when invitations appear. Meanwhile, I find myself full of mixed feelings; including great joy for the future that lays ahead for my son and some anticipatory sadness for his absence at home next fall.  Endings are indeed important and sometimes tricky business.

It Takes a Team

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I’m not sure who came up with the favorite saying, but among three dear friends we took it to heart. I think Julie invented it, but she likes to credit Annie or me since her children are the youngest of the lot.

 In the early 1990’s I was mothering two boys under three and trying to work full time. My husband Bruce was in law school, so finances and time together were limited. I would work during the day and he would attend classes in the evenings. Crossing paths at the front door, we’d often hand a hungry, dirty-diapered baby to the one now on duty. We were thankfully young enough to power through these crazy times since on every level we were just barely “pulling it off.” I’m still amazed that Bruce graduated and I was able to start a career.

 My friends Annie and Julie were in the same boat. With seven kids and three jobs between us, we’d meet monthly at our self-fashioned book club. Somehow we adopted the mantra,  “You need people.” We used this tag line to justify getting a cleaning service to muck out our homes. It made it sort of all right that we needed childcare to sneak away a few times a year to get a manicure. What I didn’t realize at the time, “I need a team” was the underlying truth of why I not only I should buy support services, but it was why I deeply needed these friends to survive early parenthood.

Recognizing we needed help was hard to admit since we also believed that as American women we were supposed to pull off mothering and working on our own. Not long out of college in the 1980′s we each considered being successful grownups meant figuring out how to be as independent as possible. 

Living in Washington DC we were all far from family. So, to Julie and Annie I went if we needed help.  Julie and her husband appeared at 4 a.m. to watch over our eldest when the second was born. When we wanted to build a deck, Annie’s husband was found wildly digging behind our house for hours in a rainstorm. It clearly took a team to keep Bruce and I afloat even if I couldn’t fully admit it.

 Now almost twenty years later with my children about grown, our motherhood mantra keeps circling through my head.  As I research global approaches to overcoming difficult times, “It takes a team,” is the resounding wisdom. When the going gets rough, community is supposed to be at our sides.

For example, cross-culturally during times of major loss we would not be expected to grieve alone. People are expected to stop by and check on the mourners. African ritualist Malidoma Somé adds, “Dagara people don’t comprehend the idea of private grief.”  From the Jewish tradition we learn the practice of sitting shiva where friends provide constant company and support to the mourners for seven days. In the Iroquois culture, this same practice continues for eleven days. 

Even as a person dies, in many, many cultures, he or she is kept company through the last breath and is not left alone until days after. In Japan, loved ones will bathe and sleep near the corpse, speaking to their departed loved one until internment. We are to be sung to, guided and comforted through this greatest transition. 

This wisdom transcends into our everyday. In the years after writing When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner has asked thousands what got them through a life crisis. The answer to his question was a single word, “community.” 

We weren’t dealing with physical death thankfully as newly minted mothers. Yet, our old footloose and free lives were ending as we were initiated into motherhood. We needed a team, and thank goodness we adopted this truth — no matter who invented it.