How to be a change maker in tumultuous times..
Before we drive to our son’s house for a Sunday of watching Chiefs football and playing with the grandkids, I tuck two little toys into my jean’s pockets. A giraffe on the left, and a bunny on the right. I’d bought them weeks earlier at a farmer’s market from a thirteen-year-old entrepreneur who had made the 1-inch toys on a 3D printer.
My Arizona grandkids are 5 and 3 years old. Perfect for pretending. Pros at instantly play-acting as talking animals.
And I get to be right in there with them, crawling on the ground, fishing out the squeaky baby-voice I buried long ago once my own kids became swaggering grade schoolers.
I pat the toy-lumps in my pockets as my husband and I pull out of the driveway. I lean forward. A smile plays on my lips.
I will wait to surprise them at just the right moment.
Doing Is Everything
I am a Doer.
Capital “D.”
Is this you, too?
Do-ing is my identity. I am an achiever, succeeder, dynamo, winner-driven, organizer woman of action. I am not skilled at everything. I like to work in teams so that others carry parts of the load that aren’t my skillset. But over the course of time I will experiment and innovate always with the intention to Do It Well.
Do-ing has brought me career promotions, which has brought financial reward, which has enabled me to have the ability to buy stuff and afford the opportunity to become a full-time author.
Being a Doer means I pre-book my time. Judge and prioritize my allocation of minutes toward getting things done. My mind—this sharp clipboard-clutching, checklist-making mechanism—is my reliable default. I figure things out. Project manage crisply. Praise my own efficiency.
For Doing is my ego, the voice that informs me whether I have value. It is only temporarily kind, giving me a nanosecond of attagirl before hurling me into the next item.
It is cruel. If I don’t complete something I’ve set out to do, then I’m good for nothing.
Worthless.
Suck.
These dear ones then—these weekend playmate grandchildren—are saving me.
For I have some un-doing to do.
Progress Is a Law of Physics
I am overdue for a change. In order for transformation to occur, old habits need to be shed. Former mental structures that have worked in the past need to be questioned, broken apart.
It’s a law of physics. Energy comes together to form a new creation, undergoes a period of stasis or balance, and then moves by way of entropy or decay toward disorder. Residual energy eventually begins to create and the cycle begins again.
Our life stages work that way. My daughter is a BFF now but I spent hours of sleepless nights during her years of desperate teenage rebellion. And more recently, retiring from a corporate life identity into this amorphous Author Thing has been fraught with doubt.
Yet, in both these cases, the upheaval and break from old identities brought needed change. We’d outgrown the old, though it wasn’t (and isn’t) easy to let go. And the way forward wasn’t clear. When you’re in the middle of kicking up dirt, that dust cloud can be thick. Frightening even.
Yet, we made it. On our very small scale—one American family in a nation of 300 million—patience and love and empathy got us through those chaotic transitions so that we’re in new spaces now.
I’m a BFF! And an author!
It makes me wonder if that small test could work on tumult of much larger scale.
A nation-size one?
A Case Study of Boomers vs. Millennials
Today’s fraught political environment has brought to mind research on large groups I did a few years ago.
When I worked in the corporate world, one of my marketing roles was a study of several generations (Boomers, Gen X, etc.) About every twenty years or so, a new demographic generation forms with a worldview distinct from the preceding generation. For example, Baby Boomers are characterized as workaholics. They came of age during a highly competitive period when their own bulging population numbers plus new entrants into the workforce like women and minorities all competed for jobs. Because of this, getting ahead became equated to long hours and earning merit by putting in the time. Not a surprise that boomers formed an identity around kicking butt at work.
(Yes, I’m a Boomer.)
Forty years later, Millennials begin entering the workforce. Coming-of-age for this generation included witnessing the Columbine shooting, Hurricane Katrina’s devastation and the 911 terror attack. As a result, they learned to live in the now. Nothing is permanent, therefore work is a means, not an identity. Immediate reward is important.
Of course, once these two groups begin to work together the conflicting worldviews clash. Boomers label Millennials lazy for not refusing to work weekends; Millennials tag Boomers tyrants for even suggesting it.
No wonder they battle at the Keurig coffee maker.
Following this research, over the next few years I did nearly one hundred talks sharing generational insights throughout the company. It was fun. I relayed how and why each generation had a distinct grasp on how the world was supposed to work. Inevitably, there’d be a gasp from the audience and a comment like, “No wonder my mother-in-law acts that way.”
I saw the new understanding edge closed doors open.
Look at that: A little bit of insight and suddenly bias against an entire demographic group is eased.
My “Truth” Is Different than Your “Truth”
I don’t know what kind of attitudinal insights can cut through the clutter of media news and headlines and social and podcast noise today. I think most of us are aware that our news sources are different from each other’s. Thanks to algorhthms and incentivizing platforms to keep and hold engagement the version of “truth” I read and hear is different than other people’s versions of “truth.”
We are all fed an echo chamber of our own opinions, which makes it really hard to empathize with others who hold differing views.
This realization hit hard when I found myself disagreeing with my own family members. It took me awhile to realize we are reading and seeing and hearing totally different things.
This is new. Growing up there were just a few tv networks and they all basically used the same script. I’m not saying that was good. Just that I took for granted that there was mostly one way to view the world.
We no longer live in that ubiquitous luxury. Divisions are causing untold chaos in a country I love. Predictions claim that more havoc threatens, especially post presidential election.
What’s a Doer to do?
What can I know for sure?
I grapple with this all the time.
This is where the giraffe and bunny come in.
A Return to Being
I know that I want to be someone who welcomes transition. Someone who meets discomfort and fear with compassion. Someone who is intentional about how she shows up.
I strive to do that by living my values. To be a part of the change I want to see in the world, I aspire for kindness to be my starting point in my thoughts and words.
Is it enough that I value generosity over meanness? Inclusion over division? Truth over lies? Love over hatred? Is it enough to start there? Dwell there—in a space that’s not my usual intellect-governed, go-to spot—but instead a heart space that is willing to expand to be big enough to bear witness to the good in all of us.
Let that be large in me.
Large enough for the possible.
Large enough for the impossible.
Instead of doing, focus on Be-ing first. Let any action come inspired from there.
# # #
We get to my son’s house. The kids gallop up, tackling me and spilling giant puzzle pieces out from two big floor puzzles I’ve brought. We assemble, disassemble, reassemble the ABC train and dinosaur pictures a bunch of times. We talk about colors and shapes and sing the ABC’s though I am instructed to listen more than perform it.
I’m agreeable. (I know my ABC’s.)
But now the Chiefs game is starting. The 5-year-old disappears to play with a neighbor’s child, but the 3-year-old pulls on my sleeve. The puzzle pieces lie about scattered, abandoned.
I want to keep an eye on Mahomes’ quarterback escapades. It’s time for the surprise.
“Something is tickling me,” I tell my granddaughter.
She stops pulling, cranes her neck to see where I’m pointing.
“Oh!” I squirm, and pat my pocket. “Right here.”
“Let me see,” she says and quick, quick it takes a nano second for her eyes to light up when her small fingers pry away the pocket edge, revealing a glimpse of brown spots.
“Grandma!” The giraffe and bunny see light.
In between football plays and during commercials, I hop and bump the little figures, following my granddaughter’s imagination, tucking the figures into her socks and bouncing them on her nose.
I am simply Being—bringing loving attention to another— yet we are opening worlds. There’s something to that.
Plus, I make a giraffe talk.
See?
Nothing’s impossible.
P.S. A friend shared this quote with me from author Soren Gordhamer: "I know that growth, be it individually or collectively, often emerges in the most challenging of times. It happens less when life is easy and pleasant. It seems to be how we humans generally do it. And maybe most importantly, when the boat of life rocks the most, we learn to hold hands, so we can sway together, and possibly make it through when trying to stand by ourselves would lead us to fall overboard."
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