In the last few weeks, since I returned from Europe, I learned so much through the experiences that I found on my path, without planning to learn anything, that it became clear I wanted to write about the experience of learning all the time. I decided I wanted to expose the bits and pieces below for the purpose of showing, both myself and others, how everything that happens, happy or not, can support our movement toward where we want to go. If you are reading this blog, you know that I am plagued by a fundamental and deep impatience fueled by a deep longing for an entirely different way for us, humans, to live on the planet. The vision is strong, and what I most want is companionship, many people willing to join me on this amazing journey to a profound personal freedom that will allow us to take a stand and, together, turn the tide. I am dedicating this sampling of my learning, these very personal reflections, to this bold vision, without quite knowing what connects to what.

For years and years I’ve been mystified by the idea of acceptance. I could point to it as a need on the list that people who study Nonviolent Communication consult for their learning and growth. I could understand, in some general sense, what people mean when they say that they want to be accepted. I even included a commitment called “Accepting What Is” in the 17 Core Commitments. Still, all the same, there was something that simply didn’t make sense. So much so, that I didn’t even know exactly how to talk about it.

The core question that was so unsettling for me is remarkably simple: What does it mean to accept something we don’t like?

One loop I would go into in trying to understand this was the experience of the person who hears, from another, “I want you to accept me the way I am.” What’s the person hearing this to do if they don’t like the behaviors that the other person does? This would come up again and again with couples, in friendships, in groups I was leading. I couldn’t shake off the idea that, essentially, there was some subtle way that the person asking to be accepted is really, deep down, asking to be liked. What is the difference?

Managers, at all levels, often tell me how little patience they have when they hear complaints from the people they supervise, how their disempowered nature drags them down. Those who get pegged as repeat complainers are often avoided by their coworkers.

Outside the workplace, I also hear the echo of all the times I’ve heard parents tell their children to stop complaining, often with an irritated tone of voice. There’s something about complaining that most of us find very unappealing to be around – unless, of course, we ourselves participate in that workplace “ritual” that, for so many, is the only way to get through the day. Even then, when asked, we all know that our complaining arises from a sense of powerlessness, of having little faith that anything will ever change. Somehow, it serves as an outlet, and some subtle agreement exists about when and how to start and stop.

I know that even when a friend appears to me to be complaining I find it challenging, even, maybe especially, if I love the person. One of my most significant friendships took almost three years to bloom because I kept some distance in my heart. I couldn’t bear to see her act in ways that seemed so powerless to me. Then, one day, almost by some miracle, a window opened, I saw her power, and a new world of friendship opened up for us. What’s most amazing is that since then I have never heard her complain any more, though I am sure she didn’t change her ways of speaking so much all at once. Rather, I think that what changed was between us, not in her. We co-created a new dynamic of engaging with challenges in her life. With both of us connected to and seeing her power, we found ways of responding that were novel, connected, and focused on moving towards what she wanted instead of what was happening that she didn’t like.

It was only when I sat down to write this piece, some version of which has been brewing for some time, that I realized that it is, in some ways, a direct continuation of what I wrote about last week. It is a piece that’s about how we came to make money so central to our lives that it masks the fundamental dependence we have on each other. It is also about how our interdependence likely was and can become again fueled by a web of love and care instead of fear and separation, as it is now.

I get an inkling of this, in my own life, from seeing that, in some small and yet significant ways, I have exited the money economy. Even though I clearly have more money than the vast majority of the human population, I don’t have, and am unlikely to ever have, enough money to hire all the support I need in order to make my work possible. By necessity and by luck, I can only do my work because of the existence of people who, based purely on their love and the inspiration they get from my work, take on projects that would otherwise simply not get done.

Moving beyond Relying on Money

The reality behind this privilege, namely my access to far more resources than the money I have could ever buy, is based only on love. In this way, I have joined the large web of sharing resources that, I believe, is the underlying truth of our humanity, where we started and where I want us to move toward (I will have more to say about sharing resources and about love in a moment).

While I rejoice, I also recognize that I am still quite limited in my ability to fully relax into this web and to make choices about what I do or don’t do that are purely motivated by the intrinsic meaning of the action, without taking into consideration money. I am definitely part way there, just not all the way.

Although I have been writing some version of this piece in my head for some time, today is the first time I am venturing to actually write it. This is not a hopeful piece, and in this medium I usually shy away from sharing, in full, the pain that lives in me about people’s lives the world over. I know that many people read this blog and come to study with me because they are longing for vision, for some way to imagine a better life for themselves and for the world. I am glad, most of the time, to be able to offer that vision, which I have in abundance. It’s easy for me to see what’s possible, and I derive great pleasure from weaving stories about what’s possible and from finding companionship for those images. This pleasure, and the care for everyone’s longing, keep me from speaking about the acute and persistent pain I regularly experience about the gap between vision and reality. Why would I want to bring despair rather than empowerment to people? Nonetheless, it is part of my work, part of my integrity, part of my calling, to share truth as it lives in me, even if difficult. So, today, as I am sitting in an apartment in Geneva overlooking a river and the mountains, I am writing a piece about pain, little snippets about the world of work.

#1: About Menial Labor

Before embarking on my trip to Europe, I got some support from a local teenager who packed my impressive collection of supplements into little plastic baggies. This was work for pay, quite decent pay for a 14 year old. It took her four hours, and she delivered it almost flawlessly. She told me afterwards that it was really tedious and annoying. I asked her if she regretted it. She didn’t, she was glad to have the money, she said, though she wouldn’t do it again. Then she added: “I’m not cut out for menial labor.”

Ten years ago this week, Leah and I joined a group of peacemakers in Baghdad during our government’s “Shock and Awe” campaign. The experience has shaped the rest of our life. As I remember the millions of people, both Iraqi and American, whose lives have been affected, a reflection on what I learned there:

I am sitting in the lobby of a small hotel in Baghdad, listening to an American grandmother who has spent her last six months in Iraq. She is a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a literal reserves for foot soldiers in the army of the Lord. Since 1986, CPT has made it their mission to “get in the way” of violence by practicing direct action nonviolence in conflict zones. I grew up singing camp songs about being in “the Lord’s army,” but never imagined the call of duty would lead me here. I am in a war zone, my head foggy from several nights of interrupted sleep, looking to a wiser soul for direction.

A few years ago I published an article in Tikkun magazine called Wanting Fully without Attachment. In that article (an excerpt from a book in progress called The Power of Inner Freedom), I describe the foundation of what I see as the spiritual path underlying the practice of Nonviolent Communication. It is a passionate and courageous path that calls on us to keep opening our hearts wider and wider and wider to all that deeply matters to us, while at the same time developing more and more capacity to accept the possibility of not having what we want.

In the absence of developing this capacity, we tend to go in one of two directions: either giving up on what we want as the only way we understand of what it means to let go of attachment, or removing ourselves personally from what we want by claiming it to be bigger than ourselves, outside ourselves, because it “should” happen.

This mural in Vicksburg, Mississippi, honors the social, political, and religious contributions made by African American residents. Vicksburg was home to Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first African American U.S. Senator and the pastor of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Credit: Creative Commons/Paul Lowry.

The majority of African Americans believe in God, and the large number of independent and denominational black churches spread across the United States suggests many of these believers spend Sunday morning recognizing and worshipping God. This is the common story of African American religious expression – black churches shaping the private attitudes and practices of the faithful. Few debate this narrative. More controversial and less easily captured, however, is the public profile of black churches. I don’t mean the private indiscretions of ministers and members made public, nor do I mean efforts to evangelize beyond the walls of a given church building. Instead, I have in mind involvement of black churches in public issues – black churches attempting to influence policy and other markers of collective, secular life.

Collaboration, like empathy, is something we hear about more and more as a general abstract good, and yet are given so little by way of the how. What happens as a result is that we try to collaborate without knowing how, or we don’t even try because we are too consumed with fear, overwhelm, or outright judgment.

Collaboration is the purest antidote to either/or thinking because it rests on the faith that, in addition to a solution that works for all involved being possible, it is also potentially better. The biggest obstacle to collaboration is whatever commitment we continue to maintain to seeing our own needs as separate or even opposed to what someone else wants, even if we philosophically believe in collaboration. This is part of why I am so often suspicious when parents talk about “cooperation” as a need – it’s too easy for that to mean “getting my child to do what I want.”

When collaboration is challenging, often enough the form that this residual commitment takes shows up as speaking in the name of fairness. Two stories will hopefully illustrate this profound challenge.

The Supplier who Didn’t Provide

A manager in a company somewhere in Europe, let’s call her Agnes, paid a supplier to prepare a detailed proposal for a complex project. It took him much longer than he had estimated, and, when the proposal arrived, it didn’t have anywhere near as much information as Agnes needed. When confronted, all the supplier said was that he was really sorry, and wasn’t going to be available for another month. Meanwhile, the project was on schedule to start, decisions were waiting for this proposal, and Agnes was beside herself with frustration.

In our habitual ways of thinking, this supplier is at fault, and the “fair” solution is to coerce him, one way or another, to provide the necessary information. Before talking with me, Agnes had tried this path. Her emails to the provider remained unanswered. What could she do instead, she wondered?

I can’t think of much personal advice that we hear more frequently than the idea of not taking things personally, and still, despite being told repeatedly and even being committed to it, we rarely know how to implement it. Why is it so difficult, and is there any clear practice that can help us get better at it?

Why We Take Things Personally

Unfortunately, the answer to this question is quite simple. It’s because everything reinforces the sense that whatever is being said is indeed about us – both from without and from within.

Here’s an example of how that works from the environment. I was sitting at a management meeting where the finance person was expressing her huge frustration that when she comes to other managers with feedback about how their departments are doing relative to their expenditure budget, they become defensive and provide excuses about why things can’t change. One of the managers immediately started arguing with her, whereupon she expressed even more frustration.

After a while I stepped in, because it was clear neither of them was able to hear the other. I wanted to see, first, if I could hear what she was saying. I asked her if what she wanted was to have some sense of trust that people on the team would come together to hold accountability for the whole instead of advocating for their own departments. She breathed a sigh of relief, and said that was exactly what she was trying to express. That wasn’t, however, how she had expressed it. Instead, her language was full of expressions about the other manager. So I was entirely unsurprised when, at one point, he exclaimed that he didn’t want to be blasted each time he spoke with her. I said to him that I was hearing something different, and repeated what I had said previously. I added that I can see that he could take it as an accusation, whereupon he said: “It was an accusation.”