official [person you respect] day

i went to a retirement party on thursday and can’t get it out of my mind. perhaps others have gone to party after party honoring friends’ or relatives’ years of dedication to tasks or roles, but i have not. i’ve been to a few. i’ve spoken at a few. and, every time, they deeply impact me.

retirement is something that only some folks actually do. anymore, by retirement age, many people have worked in multiple places or have held the kinds of roles and positions that don’t automatically qualify one for a work place sponsored retirement party. for other individuals, the positions they have held are within the home or family or sector of the work place where public recognition doesn’t happen. these people don’t have a formal time of honoring when they leave their position or post. in direct contrast, retirement parties provide amazing space for an important process of recognizing someone not so much for what they are leaving, but, rather, for who they are and who they are becoming.

i wish that everyone were able to receive such recognition.

the individual whose retirement i got to celebrate this week was being honored for 28 years of service as a county health commissioner. i have served along side this man in a relatively intense volunteer position for nearly 3 years. on thursday, in the short 45 minutes that his friends and colleagues spoke to him about what his presence has meant in their lives, i learned of a rich depth of experience that i knew nothing about. at the end of the formal part of the celebration the day was officially declared as gary oxman day in multnomah county and, at this, my heart swelled.

what would it be like if everyone were able to be given an official day of honor? what if each of us chose, at random and frequent intervals, someone to gift with a “retirement opportunity” of sorts? perhaps it would offer the following:

1 a chance for someone in our lives to be recognized for the tasks they perform every day that frequently go unnoticed but are vital to at least that persons’ survival. it may not matter to you that your brother carefully tends to his yard everyday. it may not even make sense. it may be, however, that it is deeply meaningful to him (and possibly even interesting or beneficial to others) and having it noticed would honor his sense of self discipline and follow through. the same might be said of the million small and large tasks the people in your life do every day to help them move through this difficult task called living.

2 the space for that person to reflect on how they have lived their life to this point with the commensurate opportunity to make changes. i’m not exaggerating when i say that every retirement party i’ve ever been to (with the exception of one) has included the honoree making some kind of statement about a regret. might it be possible that, if we took time to honor what someone is doing well or right they might be spurred to think through what they might like to do differently? mr rogers wrote a profoundly important song lyric when he wrote, “i’m proud of you, i’m proud of you, i hope that you are proud of you too.” when a person is gifted with pride (or love or recognition or honor) from someone else it often causes them to turn their thoughts toward how they feel about themselves. in so doing one is given an opportunity to reflect upon that which they might like to change. when this happens in the context of another’s support they can feel a sense of empowerment to make changes in a way they might not otherwise.

3 an expansion of our own sense of possibility. there is nothing better for our own development than allowing the greatness of others to inspire us. i’m not speaking of the kind of recognition of others that focus’ exclusively on their external accomplishments and that we use to beat ourselves up for being less-than. i’m talking about noticing in others the things that make them unique, special, a gift to the world. this is especially true when we find these traits in those who we would normally consider “less-than” ourselves in some way or another (age, position, appearance, status, spiritual belief, etc). humility and awe and vulnerability  are good for the soul.

4 a world where the focus is on colleaguiality and friendship more than competition and comparison. a favorite book title of mine is i love you the purplest, which focus’ on a mother’s love for her children and how she can’t compare her love or quantify it. my friend’s impressive and honor-worthy accomplishments in dealing with major public health crisis’ does not need to be what i measure my own success against nor do i need to use it to order my social circle or rank my connections. i can simply love my friends and associates in all their own “unique-est” ways and work diligently to be the most “doreen-est” person i can be.

i’m entering into this new week with the intention of declaring mini moments of honor for all the people in my life. i may not be able to declare entire days or plan elaborate celebrations but i can provide words and gestures that recognize the dedicated and unique contributions that those around me make every day. mini opportunities for reflection, connection, recognition, and meaningful encounter that make their lives better...and mine. 

finding the good

i am inspired today by the action of high school students in iowa who, in response to reading about cyber bullying, created a twitter feed dedicated to affirming their classmates and teachers. “it’s real easy to find the nice things in people instead of the bad things,” stated 17 year old jeremiah anthony who initiated the “@westhighbros” twitter group when interviewed by the national press.

i  first came across this news story on a day when people had gone out of their way to tell me how much i suck. a neighbor honked angrily as he drove by my house that morning, irritated by the excessive number of cars belonging to college aged visitors at our house. the person i parked next to at target felt that i hadn’t left enough space between my car and theirs and left an empty envelope with “NICE PARKING” scribbled in sharpie under my windshield wiper. an acquaintance was eager to report how hurt and angry i’d made her friend with something i had said in a blog entry. my server at lunch actually rolled her eyes and yanked the menu away from me when i asked for my salad to be served sans meat. and, to top the day off, a professional contact accused me of things i had never done based on a conversation with an unreliable source. it had not been a banner day for people finding the good in me. many hadn’t, and they’d expended energy making sure i knew this.

this has me wondering, in a world where we expend energy hyper communicating, how and what messages are we sending? our communiques are so often impulsive, removed from human contact, and initiated with no follow through or consequence. we have great power to help or hurt those with whom we interact and we have the bandwidth to interact with more people than ever. we can publicize praise or criticism to huge audiences at the push of a button. are we aware, however, of the awesomeness and complexity of this new relational landscape?

we’ve all seen how a photo or status update posted impulsively can end a career, impact relationships, and generally humiliate the subject. a review posted in anger can have a damning and far reaching effect on a business or product. in a time where we use written words more than ever our words also have a greater heft, farther reach, and deeper impact than ever...and yet, so frequently, we’re unaware of this.

the trouble is, the present and prevailing forms and venues of communication have sprung up and evolved without any guiding principles of what is healthy and appropriate. we’ve simply let the medium shape the message and have tried to keep up. we feel as though we must “keep up with the times,” requiring us to demand of ourselves thicker skins, more “likes,” and the consumption of as many reviews as we can possibly take in. so much for requiring “effective” communication. so much for measured, sometimes slow and laborious, risk-taking person-to-person communing. so much for discerning the integrity and intent of the message and its sender.

instead we rely on push button intimacy built on full disclosure/exposure at the viewing of a profile. we no longer share a little, get some feedback, discern the trustworthiness of the other, and determine whether to share more. we throw praise and criticism out widely and loudly before considering a nuanced and more reasoned path of communication. we rarely take an opportunity to consider a source. benign comments turn to hurtful ones when the context of vocal inflection and non verbal cues aren’t available. misunderstandings are elevated to out in out fights when undertaken in the world of social media. tweets can yell and facebook posts can scream and silence can be the loudest and most painful form of communication in today’s social economy.

we live in a time where we have the opportunity to weigh-in on nearly everything. from product and entertainment reviews to contributing our two cents about someone’s face book photo or status, we can constantly feel as though our commentary is being solicited and will be useful. this gives us a sense of heady importance. the problem is that sometimes our desire to feel useful and important can outweigh our recollection of the common decencies and principles that effectively moderate healthy human relationships. principles like taking responsibility for our own emotions, speaking truthfully and with integrity, listening, making wise choices about who to trust, thinking critically, listening, taking responsibility, integrity, listening, taking responsibility, integrity, liste...you get the point.

and so i ask you, in what way(s) are you harnessing the power of the tool on your desk or in your pocket to be used toward the building up, informing, educating, and loving of people? the scope and reach of the tools at our fingertips provide us with communication “super powers” and it is up to us to make sure that we use those powers for good and not evil.

might you live a day as a “spreading good will wonder woman” or “super encouraging super man?” could you commit to a pause between your impulse to comment from a place of impulsivity, anger, or irritation and respond, instead, from a well considered calm? might you tweet about stories that educate, encourage, or build up rather than embarrass or tear down? might you emulate a 17 year old high school junior, who, even from the midst of high school snarkiness, is finding the good.

to check out the original news story go to:

http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50395735#50395735

how to honor a life lost too soon

in what is sure to be a week filled with media coverage surrounding last week’s mall and school shootings, it is important to make some decisions. these decisions, when converted to commitments to yourself, have the power to help you and the world.

this is likely going to be a hard week to move through. holiday music will be interspersed with news updates including information about the perpetrators and grisly details of how the impacted individuals died. this morning, in one such update, the news of the first funerals in connecticut was peppered with references to how many times the child had been shot. 

this kind of information does not help us.

this kind of information does not honor the life of the child who has been lost.

the power is in your hands this week to chose life with all it’s rich, difficult, complexities or to chose a powerless stuckness of sorts. it does not benefit the residents of the affected communities to ruminate on the tragedies that have occurred. it does not honor one’s life to focus on how one died.

unless you are actively working to determine more effective safety systems for shopping malls or schools, you are a coroner, you are a first responder who needs to work through your own trauma, or you are working to affect gun control laws or services for the individuals struggling with psychiatric disorders that make them prone to instability and violent behavior you will likely be more negatively impacted than positively helped by consuming alot of detailed news this week.

the individuals who died last week at the hands of gunmen were people with lives that i’m guessing were normal, extraordinary, interesting, unique, boring, and complex. instead of spending our time thinking about the way in which they died, let’s remember them for that...for having lived. for having been on this earth in their own crazy, unique, individual ways. for having mattered to those around them. 

so, when you feel tempted to ruminate on details, when you feel as though your heart might break for the families of those who are grieving, when you feel tempted to hold on to your own children (or mothers or brothers or husbands or friends) because you fear that they, too, could be taken at any moment, try to engage in life. breathe deeply, do something active to give voice to your hurt and sadness, love someone specifically and with wreckless abandon, journal, celebrate the life of someone important to you, write a letter, turn up the music and weep or dance or yell, pray, talk with someone that helps you feel better, and, mostly live. it’s the most potent way to honor the lives of those whose opportunity to do so has been taken.

when children are murdered

when children are killed everything feels wrong in the world. and it is.

twice this week, irrational acts of violence have taken lives in public places where murder should never happen. not that murder should happen anywhere at all. in both cases, children were impacted. some by bullets that took life or left scars and some by visions and experiences creating invisible scars deep inside the soul. 

it is not only the children at clackamas town center in oregon or at sandy hook elementary school in connecticut that will have to struggle to come to terms with what they have witnessed. because of a constantly connected population, it is nearly every child today who will see images and over-hear conversations that will likely trouble them and lead to disorienting questions about why such tragedies occur.

for this reason, and so many others, i beg of you to have self control when “consuming” the media. both today and in the future. both when you are alone and when you are with others. especially children. seriously.

some will say that staying in near constant touch with a trauma and it’s unfolding details helps people gain “mastery” over situations that are frightening and out of ones’ control. still others will offer that a deep sense of empathy can result from taking in the immensity and pain of a trauma by flooding onesself with visual and written accounts of the event. i’m not sure i support either claim.

i find that staring at a screen, gobbling up gory details, past the point where the basic facts are given typically leads people to feel powerless, paralyzed, angry, and scared. none of these responses help ones own internal sense of stability nor the internal worlds of those around them. passive consumption does nothing.

active processing, however, helps. talking about what has happened, in appropriate ways with appropriate people, gets it out of our heads and into a space where we can share the burden. answering the questions that children have with just what they’ve asked for (no more or less) makes them feel empowered to ask about that which unnerves them without the secondary trauma of being given information they aren’t ready for. being open to wondering with yourself, with God, and with others about why pain exists and how you, as someone outside the trauma, might be able to help soothe the hurt that exists in the world. mr. rogers once said, “whatever is mentionable is manageable.” if you are paralyzed with fear (or rage or sadness) you are not likely to “mention” this in ways that it can be worked with and through. the children and more vulnerable people in your life will see this. you and your entire community need to be able to mention that which is upsetting (in appropriate ways) and then move to active ways of working through.

talk about what’s bothering you, ask others what is bothering them, listen, draw a picture, run as fast as you can around the block, take some deep breaths, pray, write a letter to someone you know who has faced a loss in the recent past and who could use you reaching out to them, hammer some nails, jump some rope, pound some clay, cry, yell, and then...sing, hug someone, tell someone they matter to you, give your lunch to the homeless guy you passed on the way to the restaurant, go give blood, keep breathing, keep praying, keep talking. just, whatever you do, don’t just sit reading/watching the news paralyzed by the tragedy. that is no way to to live and certainly no way to honor the loss of life you are reading about.

as a person who has lost loved ones (including children) to murder i will tell you, the press wants the story. traumatized witnesses and communities want details in order to make sense of what has occurred. everyone else buzzes with anxious sadness that is palpable. just look at how social media has “lit up” today. 

when children are murdered...when anyone is murdered...they don’t need to be remembered by their deaths. their family members and loved ones don’t want the trauma surrounding their loss to be what is held on to. death by murder is such an ugly reality to try to wrap ones head around. so...today...right now...get the smallest amount of information you need then get moving. loving. living. empathically. lovingly. in ways that honor the lives of those whose lives were cut short.

gifts of another sort

i recently struck up a conversation with the kind gentleman accepting my returns at target. it was a bizarre transaction since i was exchanging 16 sports bras for a cart full of paper products. when you volunteer for a theater company you just never know what you’re going to be buying and bringing back. i thanked him profusely as he patiently scanned in the bar code of each bra, checking it against my receipt. he seemed surprised at the gratitude, which made me feel sad. come to find out, it’s rare for customers to exercise their freedom to give feedback when things are going well. “typcially,” he said, “the only time anyone comments on our customer service is when they find it lacking.” 

i thought about this all day. isn’t it grievously true that too often we save our comments for complaining? we may enjoy seven fantastic meals and only think to actually talk about the one we hated. we’re quick to return our “not quite to the perfect temperature” latte and yet never think to look into our barista’s eyes to thank them for doing the job they do. we enjoy clean bathrooms yet look away when those that make them so are pulling their cart in or out of the door and we only ask to speak to the manager when we are dissatisfied.

i am making a commitment to give comments of another sort this month. when i speak with a customer service rep of any kind on the phone and they simply engage with me efficiently, i’m asking to be transferred to their manager so that i can sing their praises. i’m taking 60 seconds to fill out comment cards and list peoples’ names that have helped me. when a manager is present i’m walking over to them and pointing at the amazing clerk and saying, “fantastic job you did hiring that wonderful person there! way to go!” i’m looking the person who pumps my gas (we can’t pump our own in oregon...i know...weird...) in the eye and saying, “what you do matters. thank you so much!” and i’m leaving notes and tips in my hotel rooms thanking those that clean and tidy. 

i am determined to give gifts that matter and gifts that last. gifts that are loud and bold enough to counter the criticisms usually spoken with little regard for their lasting effects. for gifts of graciousness build up and grow into graciousness in return.