This review of a new book by Cathy Davidson rings so true:

We’ve been trained to assume that working hard means focusing on a single task to completion, then doing it again. But, says Davidson, “the new workplace requires different forms of attention than the workplace we were trained for…

The result is that we feel anxious and guilty, convinced we’re not getting enough done, not achieving an honest day’s work, failing to live up to the iconic model of our hard-working, brick-and-mortar grandparents.

I am working on many things at once. I trust and hope they will all converge, but I don’t know if and when. I’m over my head trying to engage in a very complex world. That’s just as true in Cambodia, or more so, because the representatives of the developed world are here in full force trying to “help” and “make a difference” with so many anticipated and unanticipated results spiraling out of sight. This country is change too fast for anyone to keep track of. Sometimes I crave just one thing to do with my hands with simple results I can measure.

For any one of us who has been panicking about how to adapt to constant, ubiquitous demands on our attention—how to achieve relevant, quality work, even as the workplace is shifting beneath our feet—it’s comforting to know that most people have yet to figure this out, and that it’s not a reflection on our natural capacities or intelligence.

Do I need focus? Must I cut back my tasks and simplify my goals? Or do I need to embrace multitasking and a diversity of aims? Accept my inability to control results? Learn to think and focus differently? Find new and better ways to collaborate?

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Following is a prayer by Macrina Wiederkehr entitled “The Empty Water Jug” that I read on a friend’s blog today. My friend works and lives among the poor here in Phnom Penh. She is daily confronted with needs and suffering she can’t meet or alleviate, but she keeps going outside and facing what she finds there. Such living will strip illusions away. We live with overwhelming struggles and sorrows never far away, and beauty and abundance. What a joy it is when they really meet.

“…full of things…smothered by gods”

Jesus, I come to the warmth of your Presence
knowing that You are
the very emptiness of God.
I come before You
holding the water jar of my life.
Your eyes meet mine
and I know what I’d rather not know.

I came to be filled
but I am already full.
I am too full.
This is my sickness
I am full of things
that crowd out
Your healing Presence.

A holy knowing steals inside my heart
and I see the painful truth.
I don’t need more
I need less
I am too full.

I am full of things that block out
Your golden grace.
I am smothered by gods of my own creation
I am lost in the forest of my false self
I am full of my own opinions and narrow attitudes
full of fear, resentment, control
full of self pity, and arrogance.
Slowly this terrible truth pierces my heart,
I am so full, there is no room for You.

Contemplatively, and with compassion,
You ask me to reach into my water jar.
One by one, Jesus, you enable me
to lift out the things
that are a hindrance to my wholeness.
I take each on to my heart,
I hear You asking me
” Why is this so important to you ? ”

Like the murmur of a gentle stream
I hear You calling,
” Let go, let go, let go! ”
I pray with each obstacle
tasting the bitterness and grief
it has caused.

Finally
I sit with my empty water jar
I hear you whisper
You have become a space for God
Now there is hope
Now you are ready to be a channel of Life.
You have given up your own agenda
There is nothing left but God.

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John Walsh speculates in this article about why Ernest Hemmingway committed suicide.  He doesn’t deny Hemmingway’s brilliance and acts of bravery, but he paints of picture of a man captivated by an image, addicted to alcohol, and bent on self-destruction.

What was bugging Hemingway? Why all the drinking, the macho excess, the manic displays of swaggering? Why was he so drawn to war, shooting, boxing and conflict? Why did he want to kill so many creatures? Was he trying to prove something? Or blot something out of his life?

I’m struck that a man like Hemmingway, who seemed to live a BIG life that others aspire to, might have never been truly free; this man of far reaching imagination, a genius at crafting stories, may never have seen his own story truly.  Did he taste the fullness of life, or was he so desperate to escape a shallow existence that he attempted it with a pen and his imagination?

I know what it’s like to walk around looking for stories and pictures, spinning bits and pieces of narratives and dialogues as I walk like kicking stones. I can easily get lost in the words; it’s like listening to another voice, or voices, that can please the crowd better than I can — a fantasy. What if I got lost in that?

If I write, or tell stories with pictures or video, I want these to come from myself.  I don’t want to craft myself from the stories.

I’d rather give up playing with words and images entirely than lose my own often tenuous connections to the world and people and God in this moment — to my own wife and children, who are upstairs going to sleep as I type. The greatest story I know is the story I get to live, and it’s happening way to fast, or slow, to write about.  I suppose I could write about watching the wind blow through the grass as I walked by the river this evening, but who would want to read about that — or write about it (once the moment passes). Okay, Annie Dillard. I don’t know how she did it; and I could only read half of that book.

I think I’ll go peak in at those kids now.

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Change that comes quickly, or easily, doesn’t last. Authentic change takes time and a process, but it runs deep and follows through.

Seth Godin writes about three ways to motivate people to achieve: by pushing them relentlessly, by creating competition, and by giving them freedom and opportunity. The first two produce results, but only temporarily. As soon as you stop pushing, or when the competition ends, the motivation fades. The advantages of push and competition are speed and control; the disadvantages are felt down the road. Athletes who won championships don’t know how to motivate themselves apart from competition. I was a pretty good runner in my day, but I was never able to run consistently without a coach pushing me, and I ran for the thrill of racing and beating people. I’d love to be running today, but I still haven’t found it within me.

How will I work for change in society, or a better world? Whatever I want to change, it means people must change. But how?

Here in Cambodia, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of non-government organizations are working for change. There are hundreds of orphanages “saving”children, and many say they intend to raise up a new generation of leaders. How? By pushing kids relentlessly to learn more and faster? By emphasizing grades, scholarships, and and education so that the kids will be better equipped to succeed (i.e., compete) in society? We have been thinking about kids coming out of orphanages and the problems most face, because they so often flounder. They have been institutionalized.

Maybe what they need is not a better formula, but freedom to see opportunities and take chances. The people we want to work with need to change in a way that comes from within.

Give people a platform, not a ceiling. Set expectations, not to manipulate but to encourage. And then get out of the way, helping when asked but not yelling from the back of the bus…

No, most people can’t manage themselves well enough to excel in the way you need them to, certainly not immediately. But those that can (or those that can learn to) are able to produce amazing results, far better than we ever could have bullied them into.

I think Seth has it right. I love his positive spin on both the freedom to succeed and the necessity of allowing some to fail. Not everyone manages themselves well, but if we create systems for those who can’t and force everyone to participate in them, then everyone ends up wings clipped, living small stories, and in boxes.

I think this also epitomizes a key difference between the way God raises up people spiritually versus the way religion raises up people religiously. The message in the Bible, taught by Jesus and his followers, is that we are set free as we come into relationship with God, and we have God’s Spirit of Love and Truth within us. What could provide better guidance or motivation? But religion, seeing the potential for some to falter, or fly too high, has a way of asking everyone to fly low and succeed in smaller ways. It talks of the Spirit but constantly pushes and pits people against each other through comparisons and outright competitions.

Real change comes from freedom, not the push and competition of development or religion.

To become a person who walks in and dispenses freedom, I must give up my habits of pushing relentlessly and creating competitions. First, I must give up my habits of relying on such things myself.

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Seth Godin keeps writing things that challenge me to live to the fullest, not settle for life in a small story.  He writes:

…a never-ending cycle of optimization can become a crutch, a place to hide when you really should be confronting the endless unknown, not the banal stair step of incremental optimization. While Yahoo was optimizing their home page in 2001, the guys at Google were inventing something totally new.

There are so many ways we settle for less. Another is competition. “Winning” is supposed to have value. Demagogues are people willing to “wreck the system” to win. Demagoguery seems to be on the rise. What is the bigger story? Godin writes:

What happens when you define a win as getting closer to someone who wants the same thing? Or when you define it as improvement over time? Or in creating trust?

He’s talking about love, at least in part. Winning is nothing if the story ends there. Movies that end with the cheers of the crowd at the end of the game conceal that point. Victories in the big and small games we play recede with time into nothingness, and so do we if we attach ourselves to them. Love creates bigger stories that ascend and expand as they go.

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