how to attend

i’ve had a lot of meetings lately. times like this afford me the opportunity of considering the ways in which i am present to others and they to me. more than when i am simply being heard or seen, i take special note of when i feel “attended to.” this rare experience is a gift. 

attending to someone requires discipline. it is an active, conscious task which involves the whole person. focus is necessary and an ability to sit still helps. eye contact also helps. phones do not.

it amazes me how many people prepare themselves for meetings by taking a look at their phone, making sure the ringer is off, then placing it, face up, on the table in front of them. when meeting with a mother of a young child who is with a sitter, a physician who is actively on call, or other similarly needed individuals, this makes sense. when, however, the meeting is a time limited one between two or more people who have chosen to make space for each other, the sense of this is lost on me. even still, i am guilty of this exact preparatory practice.

and so i am challenging myself to attend in a new way for a week. i am choosing to apply all that i know about attending to the one that i am with to as many encounters as possible. not just those with my friends, clients, and family but also those with the person ringing up my purchases, the people in line with me at the bank, the person stocking the shelves at the store, and the server who fills my coffee cup.

here is what i know about attending:

1 it takes self control. when attending, i listen more than i talk. even when i have the perfect anecdote it might be best for me to simply be quiet. and still. and more open to what the other needs to say that what i want to say. the same can be true with advice, stories, or filling the space. it isn’t all about me and it takes self control to show that.

2 it requires presence. truly encountering another requires being fully present in the moment. a glance at an incoming text hijacks me from this. answering a call, the same. unlocking my phone even to takes notes about our conversation or to make a date for our next meeting tends to invite me to leave where i am. by jotting notes on a napkin and transferring them, later, into my phone, i will be more internally directed to the one that i am with. by actually leaving my phone in my backpack or, actually, my car when there is no urgent reason for anyone to contact me, i will arrive to my encounters more fully present and less distracted. this matters.

3 the way in which i am present communicates volumes about my level of care, respect, and value of the person i am with. if i am ordering coffee while on the phone with my friend, i communicate my values. if i am listening to my meeting mate but looking everywhere but into his eyes, i am sending a message. if i’m present at the table but texting under it, i passively communicate that my presence in the text communique is more important to me than are those in the room. there are no calls, i believe, that are so important that they need to be answered when a service person is helping me. few texts are urgent enough to require response while i am in a brief conversation with someone face to face, even if it happened unexpectedly during a text conversation. if they are, i will sit and complete them prior to engaging a sales clerk, or receptionist, or my friend. if i am physically with someone, there are few instances where i need to invite the digital presence of another. when i do this i communicate that my relationship with my phone and all it’s contacts is more important to me than your actual embodied presence. i want to treat you respectfully in this brief moment i have to do so. 

4 an awkward moment or two (or ten) will absolutely, under no circumstances, kill me. i can handle it if you and i come to an impasse and there is silence. i do not need to bow to the peer pressure of engaging with my phone while in line or waiting for my meal or when you get up to use the bathroom. neither do i need to tame my inner need for constant stimulation by giving in to it. i  am capable of waiting, and looking, and listening, and attending, even when it is uncomfortable, counter cultural, and messy. and so are you. and, together, perhaps we can attend fully in such a way that the people in our lives (and our interactions with them) are as familiar to us as are our phones.

blankies

when my photographer brother was preparing my son for his senior photo session, he asked connor to bring along a few of his favorite things. his thinking was that interacting with these objects might make for some natural and contented portraits. connor brought his inline skates and guitar. two years later, having been given the same pre-session speech, my daughter brought her “momma blankie.” my favorite photo from the session is of her from behind, perched atop a four foot tree stump, blanket wrapped around her like a cape, and hair blowing in the wind. it reminds me of when i would pull up to kindergarten car line to find her with that same momma blankie wrapped around her head like a turban. that blanket has an important place in many of our family stories and she claims that i periodically threatened to take it away if she got out of bed as a preschooler. i cringe to think i may have done this. it seems a discipline far too harsh to imagine...even now.

today i took my nephew shopping for his 10th birthday. among all of the objects in the brightly lit toy store was a small section of “build it yourself” items that caught his eye. after several minutes of comparison shopping he settled on a very fancy “security safe.” not only would this amazing container hold his most treasured objects (at least those that would fit in a 3 inch by 3 inch cube) but it also touts a buzzer alarm, a combination lock, and a key (that could be added to his new lanyard). “this is not just a toy, this is an important present” he said, on the way home. when i inquired what made it important and what he might keep in his heavy duty safe he responded without even thinking, “my blankie.” this is not what i had anticipated as a response.

blankies are important. most of us have one. some of us have several. many of us don’t realize we have them nor do we cuddle up with them because they have taken on different shapes altogether. technology, hobbies, habits, possessions of all sorts, and even people have come to fill the role of security blanket in so many of our lives. these things make us feel less alone, give us something to hide ourselves in, and often come to mean so much to us that we are loathe to go without them.

security blankets are part of a category that mental health professionals call transitional objects. transitional objects are things that help one hold on to important aspects of a person, place, idea, or feeling as they move into relationships with new people, places, ideas, or feelings. when a parent leaves their newborn they may leave a t-shirt they’ve worn as a comfort object for the baby if he or she cries. the shirt smells like the parent, therefore, easing the discomfort of being with another caregiver. this is a transitional object. when moving from one home to another a person might bring a momento from the first home to the second to make the new dwelling feel less foreign. this is a transitional object. coffee doesn’t just wake people up in the morning. it also serves as a transitional object from home to car/bus/bike to work/school/meetings. the warm cup, the smell, the feel of hot liquid down the back of your throat. all of these things make you feel good and comforted and, strangely, less alone.

hence, the blankie.

nostalgic connections with our blankies aside, the goal of using a transitional object is to eventually be able to do without it. kaija no longer wears her blankie as a hat. she can sleep without it. she can leave it at home. she’s moved past needing it. this is because transitional objects are healthy when used as tools. they are useful in helping an individual overcome the fear of the unknown or the gaps that are encountered in moving from one developmental stage to the next. while attachment to them is necessary for their usefulness, full fledged, long term dependence upon them transforms them into something else altogether. many of us understand this and live packing our transitional objects from one place to another, making it difficult for us to fit into spaces of all kinds.

the world can be an unsettling place. we move at a rapid pace. in moments of stillness or stress we find ourselves bereft of healthy coping strategies. in the absence of such, we grab for those things which move the stillness or numb the stress. we reach for something to eat. or drink. or watch. or listen to. we check facebook or instagram or tumblr or twitter or any other number of technological transitional objects. we busy our bodies and minds. we titillate our emotions. we find ways of bringing ourselves from one moment to the next instead of being fully in the moment we are in. and all the while we become less capable of coping. of being present. of thriving.

kaija wrapped herself in her momma blankie at school in order to hold on to the comfort of home even when away from it. i am guessing that many of us can relate. we aren’t comfortable when we’re alone in a crowd so we gather our digitized social network around us like a blanket, burying ourselves in our phones and rescuing ourselves from the moment of discomfort. we don’t know how to slow down when we’re moving too fast so we escape the moment of pressure with all its accompanying messages (yawns, tension head aches, distractibility, fatigue, racing thoughts, and the like) by grabbing yet one more caffeinated beverage to get us to and through the next action packed moment. 

what would it cost us to put our blankies down? to leave them at home? if this feels like too much, what would it look like to at least use them with intention? what skills might we seek to learn to help us use our transitional objects as, well, transitional? not habitual. not as crutches. to use them, rather, as tools to help us move into places of greater comfort, freedom, and groundedness. might we need to learn to be uncomfortable? to handle awkward moments wherein we feel bereft of skills? could deep breaths, prayer, meditation, asking for help, or any other number of actions help us remain in a moment without having to rely upon an object? if the goal of an object is to help steady us as we move into new spaces then shouldn’t we be preparing to give them up? anticipating the freedom of moving about in the world unencumbered by them? learning to leave them in the safe?

what i learned at summer camp, part 2

i just returned from my second year of high school camp. serving in the roles of “camp elders” this year, my husband and i were responsible for encouraging and caring for the counselors and staff and stepping in wherever else was needed. over the course of the week i had both beautiful and difficult conversations with staff and campers, helped out in the infirmary (i have come to believe that every camp infirmary needs a mental health expert/volunteer), led the staff in contemplative prayer and meditative exercises, delivered a lot of encouragement notes and tokens, and generally loved on everyone present. what surprised me most, both this year and last, is that i was lonely for the experience as soon as it ended. exhausted, completely spent, and ready for the week to end, i also felt sadness as i loaded my car to depart.

the lessons i learned this year were different from last. i share them here as a form of motivation for each of you who read this blog. volunteering is costly. it is inconvenient. it certainly rarely wins one raises or rewards. it stretches and shapes and moves us into new, and sometimes uncomfortable, spaces. even still, it is important. so much so that i believe it is essential for a life that values empathy and other awareness. it grows us, i believe, and shapes us. here is what my week of volunteering taught me.

1 it isn’t all about me. given the way in which we live these days, it’s easy to believe that everything really is all about “me.” the ads flashed before us on facebook are chosen based on our clicks and likes, the videos suggested to us on youtube are done so based on what we’ve enjoyed in the past, push notifications seem to anticipate our wants, 24 hour available customer service means we never have to make time today or wait until tomorrow, and netflix is happy to make entertainment suggestions based upon what we’ve watched. unaware of these “ploys” we simply bask in a world in which our preferences are catered to. in direct difference to this, when you spend a week sharing time, space, and a communal schedule with 250+ others, you give up seeking only what you’d like. you’d like to stay up to 2 a.m. working/watching youtube/trolling facebook/answering email and sleep in until 9 a.m. or later? too bad...meeting with your community begins at 8 and meals are only served at set times so it’s best to think ahead/important to live by lights out guidelines. basically, to go to bed at a reasonable time tonight so you’ll be refreshed in the morning. to participate in hang time now because it’s when others are available, to pay attention to a shared rhythm because it gets us out of ourselves. this actually works.

2 recreation and arts and crafts are important. i cannot imagine a camp devoid of scheduled recreation or a place to do crafts. these times of whacky, exertion- or creation-filled wonder are important. physical challenges and arts and crafts opportunities allow us to open our creative potentials while, at the same time, busying our bodies while we engage with those around us. when we don’t move our bodies during the day, when we avoid fresh air and sunlight (or rain), when we don’t work together physically for a common goal, when we don’t give ourselves opportunities to stretch ourselves creatively, we miss opportunities for health. we are made body, soul, and mind. each needs time for recreation and refreshment. solo time, play time, time to create, and spiritually directed time are as important as work and learning time. why not build games, barefoot walks, sketching or sculpting into our days? it takes a little effort yet the pay off is a more well rounded and grounded sense of self.

3 love languages matter. many authors posit sub-types of love languages. gary chapman suggests five: words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, physical touch, and gifts/tokens. i find these to be effective categories. not everyone feels loved by a hug. not everyone needs note after note of encouragement. not everyone is refreshed by lots and lots of information. by paying deliberate attention (and possibly even taking notes) you can learn how those around you best receive the love and care you have for them. when you pay attention like this you can begin to minister to others in much more meaningful ways. you’ll also begin to feel freer to ask for what you need in the way of support, making it easier for those who love you to do so tangibly. this helps build and maintain community and gets us out of the myopic thinking (everyone likes what i like and will also read my mind so i don’t have to ask for anything) that reigns today.

4 how you look (externally) does not matter (if you’re willing to take risks). yes, first impressions happen. they just do. i hate this. they are, however, changeable. so what if someone sees you and labels you upon meeting you? this does not mean that you have to fit their label. similarly, others that appear to have the least in common with you may just surprise you once you actually encounter them, talk with them, share time and space with them. given this, it is essential to keep a strong check on the tendency to categorize people upon initial meetings (or even sightings). a highlight of my camp experience was found in watching kids and staff who would appear to have nothing in common bond and begin to relate authentically with each other. this is community in its richest form.

5 dancing is a great way to end every day. there is nothing like a huge group of folks you know dancing to the village people (or any other number of dance classics) to bring a day to a close. even if you’re alone, hearing songs that bring a smile to your face and a lightness to your step helps usher you into a new time of day. 15 minutes spent dancing, with no care for how you look, heals a multitude of stressors and leaves you tired. try it. you’ll see.

6 there is no difficult/hard conversation that is not worth having. over the course of the camp week everyone present was given ample opportunities for challenging conversations. getting straggling couples to head to their respective cabins, telling a counselor that home is not safe, confronting rumor and bullying, and more provided opportunities to wade into the deep end with people. this is where growth occurs. it feels convenient to stay in the shallow end, to avoid topics where disagreement, emotion, or discomfort might lurk, and yet in doing so the opportunity for growth is cut short. every time i entered into a difficult conversation at camp (as in life) with the goal of listening and working hard to communicate well, i left it feeling more empathically engaged, resilient, and connected. i hope my conversational counterparts felt the same.

7 it’s important to be kind to everyone. at high school camp, as in life, it’s easy to want to avoid the others you suspect will take every bit of energy you have and natural to want to write some off as “that” way, “unreachable,” or “disinterested.” it’s human to hope that someone else will be the one called to love the “thems” among you. naming people is easy. it’s understandable that we’d like to identify those that will be easy for us to serve versus those that won’t. the reality is, however, that we each have a difficult (and sometimes parallel) journey to those we encounter when we serve. once we engage with someone lovingly it’s often not long before we realize that we share the same limiting reality of being human. whether we volunteer with habitat for humanity for a day or a pet adoption service once a month, at a library weekly or a political campaign bi-annually, we will encounter people we wouldn’t otherwise meet. it’s important to take the opportunity to get to know them and to encounter them well, attending to our deep and shared common humanity rather than our more external differences. we just might come to love them or they us. some of the kids and staff that would have been easiest for me to label and avoid ended up sharing life stories that made me cringe, cry, or laugh out of deep connectedness and a longing for them to feel loved. i want to be a person who welcomes them up front....not only after hearing how they became who they are. 

8 intergenerational interchange is important. people under 25 should get the opportunity to teach their elders about snapchat, messy buns, and the current cost of higher education and impossibility of finding a job. people older than that should have the opportunity to tell those younger than them about what it’s like to age in this culture, what kinds of music they like, and which old movies simply must be watched. both groups, and all those in between, benefit by simply sharing time and space around a communal table, on the frisby golf course, during hang time, and in settings of all kinds. we have so much in common and, at the same time, so much to learn from each other. it’s important to find ways of being within each other’s radius so that we can do so.

9 saying goodbye should be hard. if you’ve spent a week with people (or a few hours or days...whatever you can afford) and you feel nothing at leaving them, you have likely held back. volunteering provides an opportunity to be among people who share an interest or passion. these are people who are giving of themselves as you are. taking the opportunity to inquire beyond the normal, “what do you do?” and to answer with more than the traditional, “just fine, thank you.” might provide you with profound opportunities for community building. take them. relational risks toward connection are worth it...every time.

10 giving yourself away is something that is rarely regrettable. staying up too late to answer just one last (o.k., admit it, 20 more) email(s)...regrettable. eating the entire bag of chips...regrettable. unnecessary purchases...regrettable. huge debt incurred for outlandish vacations or ridiculous “toys”...the same. giving freely of yourself to a task or need or cause or idea or person for its/their benefit is rarely so. on the front end it can feel costly to commit to time spent for others and yet, on the back end, it is almost 100% of the time life giving, instructive, and rewarding.

in what ways have you been grown by giving yourself away? i’d love to hear about it here.

conformity, complexity, creativity, and growth

years ago, before blogs were on my radar, i frequently wrote rants. i was a part time psychologist and a full time mom. i had a boatload of opinions, boundless intensity, and a serious desire to have a voice in the world. the only reality greater than these was my need (for me it was a need) to be a mostly at-home mom. mothering young children didn’t make the best context within which to rant so i wrote. after a day of insights and experiences i would sit down at my computer and type strongly opinionated essays on all manner of topics. knowing no one would ever see them, i let the full weight of my opinions and emotions flow. these were not papers for the faint of heart. they were strong. ridiculously so. a favorite of mine from that time is a four page piece i wrote after my first real clothes shopping experience with my daughter.

a little background is in order here: i have never been a shopper. not only have i long abhorred our consumer culture, but i also wanted to raise children who wouldn’t fall prey to peer pressure about how they dressed and thought. malls have always felt like hotbeds of peer pressure to me with store fronts screaming what should be worn, given, and received to be cool/beautiful/smart/hip. when my kids were in 3rd and 5th grades, they asked me what a mall was. they kept hearing their friends talk about them and had no idea what they were referring to. in 4th grade my daughter suggested that she might like “one of those sweatshirts that everyone has that has a hood and has the letters ‘g’ ‘a’ ‘p’ on it...whatever that means.” a gap was a space, not a store, at our house. 

with this in mind, you can imagine that i had a lot of self talk to do before kaija and i embarked on our first real mall outing. i wanted it to be wonderful. i wanted to have the dreamy kind of experience other moms described where we’d try on clothes, stop at the food court for hot chocolate, and leave, hours later, giddy with excitement over shared time and a new outfit or two. kaija was in middle school and there was a new (at the time) store that she really wanted to visit. we made our way there and i smiled and interacted positively with the sales staff and kaija. i feigned interest. i chose a few things to try on in an attempt to show my solidarity. i “oohed and aahed” over all manner of clothing and accessories, seething inside about oh-so-many things. that night, i unloaded into my computer. my rant flowed forth without thought or effort. at the end of four typed pages i went back to the top of the first page to add a title. there, in a caps, i typed, “I’VE BEEN TO HELL AND IT’S CALLED HOLISTER.”

now that i look back on both the experience and the essay i can laugh. a store cannot truly represent the pain that has been associated with hell and much of my response was overly emotional and simplistic. even still, much of what i wrote that night rings more and more true to me with time. let me explain.

the retail establishment of which i speak is one that screams “conformity!” upon entrance, a person’s entire sensual experience is controlled. the entry is small and windowless and looks like the front porch of a beach house. when entering there is the distinct feeling that you’ve entered an environment rather than a mere store. the sales staff is young, visually attractive, and perky (and unhealthily thin). the music is pumping, the lighting is low, and there are large overstuffed chairs scattered at just the right spots. the walls are covered with ever changing digital images of sand and waves and surfing. magazines, placed strategically near those big, comfy chairs, advertise the clothing on the shelves and the air is constantly infused with the company’s signature fragrance. the clothing items intended to look “worn” (think well washed, slightly torn jeans) are made to look so in the exact same way on every single item in the perfectly folded pile. each garment is emblazoned with the corporate logo and, for the right price, you can take every part of the experience home with you (dvds, music, fragrance, etc are all displayed at the registers for you to notice as you’re making your clothing purchases). it’s all so “nice.” so nice and so neutral. so contrived and so controlled and so loud with the message, “conform! be just like us. wear our clothes, listen to our music, hang out for a while. look like us. be like us. smell like us. we have your ticket to cool.” 

let me be clear, i don’t think that holister’s executives or staff are malicious nor are their shoppers necessarily immature or followers. the words hell or evil don’t actually apply here at all. my point, however, is that experiences in places such as the one i describe illuminate that we live in a world that values conformity to a norm over celebrating differences, uniqueness, complexity, and growth.

this all came back to me tonight as i read sir ken robinson’s the element: how finding your passion changes everything. a brilliant advocate for people discovering, and then living into, their own unique way of learning, robinson asserts that the most creative and well functioning groups are those who have people of different interests, learning styles, and giftings. these groups have members who challenge and stretch each other and who capitalize on each other’s strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. groups composed of homogenous members, he has found, tend to be less dynamic, creative, and generative. members of these groups tend to fall prey to group think and are prone to have limited impact. this got me thinking of the intersection of conformity, creativity, and personal growth.

not long ago someone asked me how i might discuss the topic of prejudice with high schoolers. as i pondered this question i kept coming to the realization that our prejudices hinder our personal growth and cause us to associate with homogenous groups. this lead me to think that we might all expose our prejudices as well as our creative stuck places simply by considering the groups with which we associate. just as frequenters of certain stores recognize each other by the tell tale logos they wear, we often identify (and associate ourselves with) members of our “tribes” by the ways in which we are similar. when this is true, our individual and communal lives become more about conformity than creativity and growth.

how many friends do you have who hold dissimilar political opinions from your own? when you are “choosing your teams,” do you consider ease of fit over dynamic (sometimes difficult) or growth inducing interchange? shared life styles over different ones? those who look (and dress and smell and shop) like you over those who look (and dress and smell and shop) like you never have before? do you lean toward the conforming or stretching side of the affiliative continuum? is your contact list diverse? have you ever considered this? 

to see where you fall, take out your cell phone and a piece of paper. on the paper make columns for as many categories as your contact list might have dimensions. title the columns with the categories your friends are likely to fall into. these could be anything from more obvious traits like “gender,” “hair and skin color,” “age,” “partnered/single,” and “likes the same kind of music as i do” to more complex categories such as “shares a basic world view,” “ascribes to a similar theology,” “had a similar up bringing,” or “agrees with me politically.”

now go through the contacts stored on your phone, making a mark in every column that each person fits within. if you are like a majority of people, you will begin to notice some major tally-heavy  columns. take a look at these and see what you learn. if nearly all of your friends share your relationship status what might you be missing out on in the way of understanding and relating to those in different relational spaces? what might the consequences be if everyone you’re connected to shares your world view, politics, or theology? if the bulk of your community grew up in the same kinds of situations or places or homes that you did, what are you doing to make sure you don’t assume that everyone comes from the same place?

while it is comfortable to blend in to the crowd or to surround ourselves with people who agree with us, it is also stifling to our growth. putting aside our feelings of needing to be right in the eyes of others in deference to encountering others authentically, causes us to examine our own choices and affirm them or alter them accordingly. reaching out to another’s shared humanity rather than reacting to the ways in which they are different causes richness in our relational lives and expands our ability to live empathically. having respectful interchanges with people who disagree grows us. having a diverse community of contacts boosts our creativity. ensuring we are, at times, uncomfortable and stretching, seems to mature us. sure, living this way is no trip to the mall but, it just might get us closer to heaven.