By now 2019 is in full swing. Did you start the year full of good intentions? Maybe it’s time to reconnect with them and re-energize them. Here is an intention from a few years ago that may resonate, given the tension and conflict swirling around in the world today:
It was the beginning of January. Sitting down at my desk in my office at hospice, trying to ease back into work mode after the two-week Christmas break, I turned on my computer to check my emails. The very first one was from Mary, one of the other therapists. It was addressed to the rest of us. “Let’s lift each other up this year,” it read. The work we were doing was so intense—dealing with death, trauma, grief and loss—our feelings were sometimes too much to hold and would spill out all over our colleagues. Emotions ran high and the work environment could become toxic at times as we engaged in petty conflicts—criticizing and judging each other. Mary’s email was a breath of fresh air. What a great intention for the new year, I thought. And so simple. But not so easy to put into practice.
What if we were actually able to lift each other up this year instead of sometimes unintentionally tearing each other down? I felt hopeful at the prospect. The microcosm of our work environment at hospice would radiate out into the broader world, I imagined. I knew it would be challenging at times, but if we could at least hold the intention, maybe it could make our intense work less difficult and more effective.
That year, one of my clients (I’ll call him Mark) provided a beautiful example of a way to stop infecting each other with our own stress. Mark’s young adult son had died after a short illness, and during the challenging days, weeks and months after Greg’s death, Mark and his wife came up with what they called the “grieving rules.” Whenever they started to engage in conflict with each other, they would invoke the grieving rules to remind them they were operating under great stress, and that arguing and fighting would only make things worse. Invoking the grieving rules allowed them to step back and recognize their need for compassion. I loved this idea and wondered why can’t we invoke the grieving rules in our everyday lives? Even if we aren’t grieving, our lives contain plenty of stressful situations. Why is it so difficult to offer compassion instead of conflict to ourselves and others?
Of course, we need to start with ourselves. I think of the monks at the ashram in India teaching us the “art of listening.” Instead of reacting in anger or judgment, we were invited to witness our internal reactions when we were triggered by something someone said or did. This practice goes against our tendency to believe we are always right, to protect our ‘territory’ against an ‘enemy’ who doesn’t believe the way we do and who doesn’t act the way we want them to.
The disagreements and conflicts we had with one another in the hospice workplace were mostly so minor I don’t even remember what they were. Probably petty things like who got the best office, who got preferential treatment and who got the better schedule. At the time they seemed all important, but they were simply reflections of the stress we were under due to the intensity of the work we were doing with our clients, who were facing the greatest loss. Mary’s email was a breath of fresh air, a hopeful message at the beginning of another year working together.
For those of us who truly want a solution and who want to contribute to life, we need to find a way to witness our reactions and accept ourselves as we are. Only then, can we extend good will to those around us. Only when we lift ourselves up, are we able to lift others.
The weeks and months marched on and the stress and intensity of the work threatened to tear us down. But the sentiment in Mary’s email along with Mark’s grieving rules would occasionally shine through the inner and outer noise and remind me to take a breath, to have compassion for myself and the others as we continued the difficult work of supporting our clients on their powerful and transformational journeys facing grief and death.
As another new year dawns, I think of Mary’s message that January. In the face of these stressful times, can we remember to lift each other up? Can we refrain from the tendency to sink into negativity and hopelessness? The spiritual masters tell us we are happiness and bliss at our core. Can we touch into our innate happiness? We have a profound effect on each other—both positive and negative. This year let’s remember that we are powerful beings and that we can make the choice to use that power to uplift ourselves and our world.
If we could honor the fact that we are each traveling an individual path perfectly tailored to our own evolution and contributing to the evolution of humanity, would we judge and criticize each other? Would we try to change each other? Or would we support each other with compassion for the struggles we all experience? And let’s remember to have compassion for ourselves when we fall short of our highest intentions.
Note to self: We are all in this together here on Earth. Wake up to the oneness of all beings.
