It is hard to slow down, actually.
Even when I have the chance for some rest or spaciousness, I often find myself filling up the time with all the things I had put off prior. So the time away becomes still about accomplishment somehow. I am afraid that I don’t know how to slow down, or that my nervous system won’t let me, or that I may disappoint others if I do.
It’s so baked into everything – this productivity thing. It’s a constant fear that’s been installed by capitalism, an economic system which consolidates power in the form of wealth. Its dear colleagues patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, etc. all dictate who is worthy of that wealth. In my family/culture/religion/society, I learned that worthiness was tied to how much value I produced or created.
Sometimes that pressure seems inescapable. I feel at times like I’m falling in and out of the system, continually, based on how much attention I’ve paid to my email inbox or my Twitter feed. What an artificial measure.
What about making soup for my dear friend’s family? The 15-year-old is down with COVID and my friend is trying to keep her husband healthy, a doctor who treats COVID patients in our hospitals here.
What about having to make the decision to walk out of my art class because there were unmasked people and a total lack of social distancing between stations?
What about being available for my friend when they calls to say that they lost their relative to addiction, after their accompaniment of him through rehab and recovery last year failed? They couldn’t pull him from the darkness and needed someone to hold the grief and regret and anger at his family, toxic individualism, toxic masculinity…so much churning pain.
What about processing the latest news of continued violence against Asian Americans, enacted state violence on women’s bodies, or people…children targeted and gunned down in yet another place people considered “safe”?
What about going to the river, to take time to notice the ever-moving water and listen to the birds, because it all just feels too heavy to carry alone?
How does this figure into my “productivity” today? How does this figure into my rest?
We are in a time of collective upheaval, grief, and crisis. Yet, in the social good sector, we keep requiring ourselves and our colleagues to go at an unsustainable pace. And it’s hurting us, our teams, our organizations, and most disappointingly, our partners and those working closest to the ground.
Because I had some financial pressure after moving to Nebraska last year, it was hard to stave off the money fears. To cope, I upped my pace. I took on more work. I worked harder. I worked more. I put aside my art. During this time, I also witnessed how much this pace has become toxic within our global development organizations. Our proclivity for planning, our bias for action, our empathy, our ambition, our urgency mixing together and hurting people’s well-being in specific and harmful ways.
We cannot do things as we once did.
And we have to start right where we are. We can pause the rushing and name and interrupt the anxiety. We can mirror and help soften each other’s constant alert mode. We can commit to quiet and calm. For so many reasons, we have to.
Note I switched from “I” to “we” intentionally here. What I always have to learn during my “breaks” is that I cannot rest if I’m the only one holding these hard things. I’ve got to be able to trust that nothing will drop if I close my eyes for 30 minutes. I’ve got to trust that it’s not only the “work” that ends up on client invoices that matters. Because of my upbringing and identity, I’ve got to be reminded that I’m not the only one struggling with all of this.
We can’t stop working. We have to continue with the long, hard work of solidarity and institutional change. Perhaps more importantly though, we have to find a sustainable pace through all the unknowns of this time. We have to nap, go to bed earlier, find five minutes to breathe or go outside.
Most importantly, we have to offer this gift to each other.
I’m still uncertain how my relationship to work and rest and flow and pace will evolve in the second half of 2022. One practice I’m embracing is to read each morning my Great Aunt Helen’s daily diary, which she wrote from 1953-1956.
Her and my great uncle Bud were newly married, young farmers at the time. I hope there will be some wisdom in it for me, for us. So much of it is a recording of what they accomplished each day, but it also tells of such significant time spent with others. Even amidst all they do each day, they spend time with neighbors and friends or are involved in some civic or social activity at least bi-weekly if not more often.
They worked hard. But they had a pace that always made time for community.
In this daily flow with them – across space and time – I’m also dreaming. What would our organizations look like if we created a pace that always made time for community?
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