The Art of Being Good

 

When I was about nine years old, I wrote a letter to God and asked, “Help me to be a nice person”.

There is nothing unremarkable about that hand-drawn note. I was socialized in a culture that liked kids quiet, studious, and helpful. Women and girls were encouraged to help in the kitchen, keep their anger under wraps, and act as peacemakers, often hiding their own perspectives to create ease for everyone else.

More remarkable though-  I kept that hand-drawn note in a special wooden box until I went to university.

Now there’s some truth-telling.

Being ‘nice’, as I understood it then, was about being “good”. I wanted to be nice to people in my class, not hit my sister, recycle and save Brazilian tree-frogs. To do this well, I knew that I had to stay quiet, accommodate others, and put my own needs or desires in the backseat.

Over time, this tending habit- to people and suffering in the broader community- drove where I put my attention. Along the way, it felt, at times like I ‘cancelled’ myself on behalf of being good. 

Performing Care: My Check-List

 

More recently, I’ve noticed how much energy it takes to execute this ‘tending’ habit.

It’s not the caring that is the issue, but the performance of my care. What brought it to light, is when I hit the ‘high point’ of my typical energy cycle. I began to notice how much I am doing, and the cost of that doing.

Here, an image of a “check-list” kept showing up. The mental list of people- extra-large because of social media- who I am aware of and their various degrees of suffering.

What happens then is my drive to ‘tend’ and check in with all of them and alleviate their suffering.

My ‘tending’ is motivated by a sense of guilt that I am ‘not doing enough’ and that ‘checking-in’ equals being a good, conscientious person. (And, OMG, as I write this, I am poignantly aware of how many emails I write that have “checking in” as the subject line.)

I feel a bit ashamed admitting this- but particularly for women leaders, our drive to ‘care’ is exacerbated during the pandemic. And for many of us, this ‘keeping track’ of our caring takes up mental energy and undermines the integrity of the care itself.

Enter my second image: two rivers coming together, creating a ton of turbulence and froth on their intersection.

For me, this turbulence speaks to the unsettled nature of my own performative caring. There is an aspect of my care that becomes shallow and disingenuous, because it is on behalf of satisfying my ego, vs. the spontaneous arising of genuine care.

In the process, my check-list becomes exhausting and my river breaches its banks and floods the willows. Further, the quality of my energy feels chaotic and I feel disconnected from the deeper truth that we’re all holograms of interdependence.

 

Self-care: the answer to balance?

 

Like me, you might find yourself feeling stretched and pulled to care for ‘everyone else’ while also sensing your shadow side.

And then do you do this: flip-flop to the other pole and become indulgent in self-care? A totally natural tendency, I think, when our ‘care for others’ feels exhausted. It is right and true to rest, nurture and rejuvenate.

Yet often we make an assumption (I know I do): that when we’ve forgotten or ‘cancelled’ ourselves in the process of tending to others it means we’re out of gas.  So we get out the blankets and books, escape for a weekend, drink a lot of tea, or go adventuring or sporting to either gather in, or blast out, our energy. Self-care becomes the antidote to our resentment for performing an ideal version of ourselves (the “good person”).

And while our inclination towards rejuvenation is necessary, I’ve noticed that it leaves us feeling unsatisfied. Because when we wall ourselves off from the outside world, it can feel lonely and insular if done as a reaction against a performance that wasn’t entirely genuine in the first place.

Sitting in the truth of our experience of dissatisfaction becomes a portal to a new way of balancing both self care and care for others.

 

Right Relationship

 

Back to the river analogy.

As I watched myself become exhausted with my ‘do gooder check-list’, I decided to get quiet and still.

In doing so, I tapped into the current of my own goodness, truth, and power- and felt the emergence of my own creative energy and passion. I realized that this river, was the current of my own self-expression. Inspired by a natural creativity and planetary care, I noticed when I came from this place, my desire to “be good” or “available” for the sake of my ego dissolves.

Instead, what emerges is the realization that when I am IN this deeper flow that my care spontaneously arises in right relationship.

When I let go of my attachment to a particular identity, my check-list falls away and I respond effortlessly to those around me.

So my realization of late is that I’m called to be in the deeper flow of my own life, which naturally expresses care, generosity, and curiosity about those around me. I’m also called to be suspicious when the distortions of my ego try and maintain an idealized perception about who I think I should be.

This time calls for us to hold a lot. Both care for others and self-care. Yet caring for others, does not mean forgetting ‘me’, and centering ‘me’ does not undermine service. Rather, how we root ourselves into the deeper current of our own lives, moment-to-moment- enables us each to offer a limitless presence and availability. 

 

PRACTICE FOR YOU: Self-Observation and Reflection on Two Levels of Care

 

I invite you into some compassionate self-observation around care on two levels: self (ego-centric) and others in your family, friend group, colleagues or community (ethno-centric). Over the next week, take some time to witness the following:

1. How are you expressing care for others? Self?

2. How might your motivation for doing so, be attached to a certain ideal identity you want to portray?

3. To what extent have you created a false dichotomy or dilemma between self care and care for others? Consider when you put your focus on either ‘pole’, it can leave you feeling unsatisfied?

4. If so, what does this experience illuminate for you?  

5. How can you consider self-care/service less a polarity, and more as my teacher Diane Musho Hamilton would say, “nested’ within each other?

6. What does open up for you?

And then, I’d love to hear what’s coming up for you! Comment below- what are you noticing about how we hold self-care/care for others? How can this both be helpful and unhelpful in the process of living in ‘right relationship’ with our true selves and the expression of our care for the whole?

Our experience of a meaningful life, and an equal world stands to deepen and grow as we wrestle with this dynamic emergence of care.

Jennifer