On Tending

Tend (v):

1. to attend to by work 

or services, care, etc: 

to tend a fire.

2. to look after; watch over and care for; 

minister to or wait on with service: 

to tend the sick.

3. to lead or be directed 

in a particularly direction

4. to be disposed or inclined in action, 

operation, or effect to do something: 

The particles tend to unite.

Having worked with young people on and off for the better part of my life, there is one verb I feel best describes the work of a caregiver, parent, or teacher: to tend.

It is a gentle but profound word.

We tend fires, we tend the sick and dying, we tend our gardens.

And we tend our children.

The fire. The dying. The garden. The child.

All these are potent signs of a Reality that requires tenderness, watchfulness, oxygen - a delicate blend of vigilance and space.

I have seen children who are carefully tended - who are trained and pruned with the greatest love and kindness. These children have a gentleness of spirit fostered by a deep sense of security and protection.

Of course, all parents lose their tempers sometimes. And all children test boundaries. We are learning as we go - and making plenty of mistakes along the way. Fortunately, children are supremely forgiving of mistakes made in a spirit of service and nurturance. And almost all wounds can be healed - as long as children know they walk on solid ground.

This ground is the love, respect and trust they have for their parents, caregivers, and teachers.

I feel the best way to establish this sense of security and confidence is for a child to know he or she is being tended. This includes, but is not limited to, being attentive to a child's needs. Being firm and sometimes unyielding, but also caring and receptive.

Beyond this, tending is a posture or stance we must adopt in every aspect of our lives - not only teaching and child-rearing, but self-reflection and mindfulness. It is an attitude of leadership, directed toward unity and integration. And it begins with ourselves.

We must learn to nurture and nourish both the fire of our spirit and the sick and dying elements of our bodies and souls. These wounded or dead parts of ourselves are not to be feared and shunned, but welcomed and healed. Or honoured and let go.

We must tend our interior garden with constancy and affection. For this is the only garden we can enter without fear of being cast out.

And once we are assured the ground will not give way - that we too walk on the bedrock of our soul's own love, respect, and trust - we will glimpse something hidden in the tall grasses and shy, blooming things.

A child.

This is the child we have so long neglected. The one who can bear too much. We must signal our friendship from a distance. Then, approach.

Reflections: Servant Leadership and Self-Giving

"Your work is to discover your world

and then with all your heart give yourself to it."

~ The Buddha

Last week, readying myself for another day at work, I listened to this interview with Adam Grant, a Wharton Business School professor and author. In his new book, he classifies professionals into 3 main types: "givers," "takers," and "matchers." Basically, the idea is that givers put others' needs and goals first, helping their colleagues succeed in work environments. Takers put their own goals first, using others as means to reach their own ends. Matchers try to maintain a balance of give and take in their interpersonal relations, keeping things on an even keel.

While any sociological breakdown of people into ideal types is bound to over-simplify a bit, I found Grant's research hopeful and reassuring. It also resonates with my own professional experience, working with a number of individuals who tend to be takers. Recently I've been feeling so tapped out. I wondered whether my approach - listening to others, taking time outside work to meet with staff and work through their concerns - is really beneficial, or whether it just leaves me feel like Atlanta after Sherman's march, a little plot of scorched earth.

Photo credit: artpunk

Grant has some practical advice for people who tend toward the giving end of the spectrum. First is to set clear boundaries and make priorities when it comes to who you support. Common sense, but hard to achieve in practice. In fact, balance and boundaries are only achievable by learning how to appropriately give to yourself - a subject I don't feel is adequately addressed or understood. And yet, I believe you cannot be a sincere and full-hearted "giver" without learning how to replenish your own well.

I read a wonderful quote recently by Maya Angelou who said,

"I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt." 

I feel something similar applies to leadership, specifically "servant leadership" - Robert K. Greenleaf's term for the centrality of service within positions of power. Giving of yourself requires, first and foremost, love. And love of others begin with love of self. Not "self-love" in its narcissistic sense, but a deep affection and honour for your presence in the world. For the kind of service only you can offer. This is the soil from which true leadership can grow.

Several words I see associated with servant leadership are "custodianship" and "stewardship". Both words imply taking care of others rather than pure self-interest. But, again, we must learn to balance giving to others (altruism) with giving to ourselves (self-care). How can this balance be achieved?

One comment I found enlightening comes from John Adair, Visiting Professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Surrey and Exeter:

"Although it is impossible to prove it, I believe that holding firmly to sovereign values outside yourself grows a wholeness of personality and moral strength of character. The person of integrity will always be tested. The first real test comes when the demands of the truth or good appears to conflict with your self-interest or prospects. Which do you choose?"

In my own life, I feel I can deeply relate to this dilemma. I have chosen a professional path which has taken me from volunteerism and internships, to freelance journalism/research/teaching, to managing a small NGO focusing on social justice through media - none of which are very lucrative or stable careers. I have also recently moved countries twice, meaning I am away from friends and family, in a country whose language I don't speak - which may sound romantic and adventurous, but in reality is often doubt-filled and isolating.

At the same time, I feel so drawn to unheard voices from the margins of society that despite the struggle, I can't turn away from this road either. So - which do I choose? A truth that is tugging me on, or a personal reality that causes much internal questioning and stress?

One of my university mentors gave me some sage advice, which I go back to at times like this. Whenever you are faced with a stark choice between two seemingly competing options, he said, find another way. Reframe the problem. Step outside the duality, and seek some resolution in a truth that is both internal to you, and externally rooted in the world.

This internal/external grounding reminds me of Professor Adair's advice to hold firmly to "sovereign values outside yourself." This could be taken to mean adherence to some moral code of conduct. Or it could be allegiance to a political ideology. It could mean belief in religion. Or being guided by the values of your family and social group.

I think there is some danger inherent in any of these "sovereignties" because they are all, in some sense, subjective, and can set people against each other. At the same time, I am a firm believer in human beings as open systems. Unlike closed or isolated systems, which have limited to no interaction with ideas or energies beyond themselves, humans are in a constant state of (ex)change and (hopefully) growth. Yes, our bodies, and even our brains, may deteriorate over time. But there is an essential part of ourselves that, if given enough space and nourishment, continues to learn and expand.

No doubt this part of ourselves is guided by certain sovereign values - values I believe are universal, not culture-dependent. It would take the combined brainpower of people a great deal smarter than me to parse out exactly what these values are, but I feel they do exist.

Even if we can only vaguely agree on what these values are - honesty, respect, generosity, compassion - they are essential in crossing the divide between servant leadership and self-giving. Because people who stand firm within themselves, who are grounded in values beyond self-interest, are those human beings who do not seek from others what they cannot learn or practice themselves. They are not "takers" because they have internalised Plato's maxim:

"Be kind: everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

Moreover, they witness and respect the soldier doing battle within themselves. They are kind to themselves, forgive themselves, because they recognize their own struggles and do not make the war harder by a barrage of friendly fire.

These are the leaders - the people - I look up to. They are not perfect. They may even be embattled at times. But they are people who have learned to find moments of peace within the war. They stand firm within themselves as they step out into the world. And they do their work gladly, with all their hearts.

Reflections: Wisdom and Service

"One who has merely heard of fire has ajnana (ignorance). One who has seen fire has jnana (wisdom). But one who has actually built a fire and cooked on it has vijnana (practical spiritual insight)."

~ Ramakrishna

I've always felt pretty comfortable in academic settings. Schools and universities are places where ideas get discussed, deconstructed, and hopefully rebuilt. But the phrase "ivory tower" is used for a reason. There is a divide between theory and practice that most schools have trouble crossing. No wonder many students emerge with their diploma into the "real world" with little preparation, dumped unceremoniously out of the glittering tower into the muddy streets below.

Those who are able to survive the dethroning, who can dust themselves off like Adam and Eve and walk bravely into a world of fragility and confusion, these students will be initiated into a new and more powerful magic: the combined power of independent thought and creative action.

Building and then crossing the bridge between thought and action is a theme tackled in Hermann Hesse's book The Glass Bead Game. His words hammer home the realness of the world, as well as the need for thinking people to be a part of - not apart from - it. After all, "abstractions are fine, but I think people also have to breathe air and eat bread." At the same time, learning (wisdom) imbues action with meaning and spirit, so life becomes more than mere survival. It becomes service.

There is a saying that the longest journey is from head to heart, but I think a parallel journey leads from idea to actuality. The mind is a place of ideas and ideals. Yet both can become idols if they are not broken on the sharp edge of the heart. Because the heart of man is not a smooth, untroubled paradise. It is a jagged wilderness that is the only door to the "real world" we can ever know. For it is not the brain or the senses that grasps reality. It is the heart.

Once a person becomes aware of this interior doorway and takes the trouble to pry it open even a crack, it does not matter whether they remain perched in their ivory tower, or trawl the back-alleys of slums. Because Life will find them. And once Life enters through the heart's rusty door, a bridge appears. It may take a lifetime to cross it, but the wilderness will no longer be completely pathless.

You will find that all the thought and work and theory crafted in school will have formed a very narrow, very treacherous bit of trampled ground. It's not much, I know. Believe me, I've stared at my own meagre beginnings of a path and wondered if all the years of learning and thinking was worth it. Not to mention spending! Over $100,000 and all I get is a few muddy footprints in the forest?

But the farther I've gone, past my first wobbly steps into a terrain where the only guideposts are Trust and Faith and a bit of Chutzpah, I've found a strange truth. It takes years of education to beat down a few feet of bracken, but Life has a wonderful way of clearing whole empires for us - IF we only learn to read the signs we've secretly been scratching to ourselves during all those years of study.

Because no one - no teacher, mentor, parent, or friend - can give you a better start than the one you've given yourself, despite (and because of) any failures, mistakes, or misdirections. This is the only difference between people who've heard of fire, people who've seen it, and people who've learned to make it for themselves. The latter are those who see in their own beginnings the bridge between thought and action. They have broken themselves on the raw edges of their heart, and found that these ruins are really runes - an ancient language of wisdom and service that the world is waiting to hear.

Reflections: Love and Education

"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

My mother used to tell me stories of her time as a teacher in Australia. Once, at a teachers' conference, in a room full of white Australians, a single Aboriginal woman stood up. She had been listening to the day-long discussions about how to teach indigenous children. She faced the audience and said, very simply: 

"If you don't love us, you can't teach us."

This, in essence, is what is missing from so much education today. We don't discuss love because it seems out of place in academic settings. The pressures of economics, immigration, and international competition are examined in great detail, but matters of human connection, respect, and affection are not. And in the climate of fear and legalism brought on by sexual abuse scandals, we are in danger of losing sight of this basic truth:

If you do not love, you cannot teach.