Today, on this day of thanks, I'm reflecting on the joy I derive in mental agility. The delight I take in whimsy. While my overall constitution has been diminished by my five-year battle with multiple myeloma, my mental acumen has remained surprisingly untouched, and for that I am unalterably grateful.

So let me take you on a little journey I've been dwelling on…

The Joy of J

This past week I have had occasion to reflect on the power of simple words, comprised only of the consonant J and vowels (it's not a long list):

Jo

This, of course, is my daughter. Born Josefa, she has long preferred to be called Jo. On Monday she reached a particular geeky milestone (which likely would have gone unnoticed if I didn't call it to her attention): she turned exactly one-third of a century old: 33 years and four months. It seemed worth celebrating to me. Who has too much joy in their lives these days? I admonished her to go out and celebrate by thirds (not by half) and I'm confidant that she did.

Ja

While I'm basically a human mongrel (if you pay heed to the analysis 23 and Me) I'm more German than anything else, and have always had an affinity for German culture. I took three years of Deutsch in high school, but never lived there and never became fluent. Nonetheless, everyone knows that "Ja" is yes, and I've tried to live a life of affirmation (where it behooves one to try to say to "yes" as often as possible—life just works better for everyone that way). The life of ja.

Juju

Years ago, I lived at Sandhill (1988-95) with Julia Reed (from Big Lake MN). She was a dear friend and one-time intimate partner during that stretch. While our lives drifted apart when she left the community in the mid-90s, we reconnected when I landed in Duluth, while she's been living in St Paul. She found out about my cancer and visited me in the spring of 2016 during the annual Smelt Festival in Duluth (full of puppetry, parade, and goofball costumes). It's held in May and loosely corresponds to the annual smelt run on nearby rivers (where you can scoop up the little darlings in pots). For a northern culture that's desperate for a change in the seasons, it's often the first day that Duluthians come out of hibernation in numbers, and spirits abound (in both senses).

She and her partner Shari have been regular visitors to Duluth ever since (I think they'd come even if I didn't live here) but they always stop by for a visit, which I cherish. Based on a childhood appellation, she went by the moniker Juju at Sandhill, and I still call her that today.

Jeju

Years ago (2008) I conducted a facilitation training in Atlanta and when my partner (Mayana) and I lingered an extra day we used most of it to visit a Korean day spa called Jeju, and enjoyed a magical recuperative time. I have never been to anything like it before or since. For one fee, you can enjoy up to 24 hours on the premises, choosing from among saunas, hot tubs, massages (for an extra fee), light Asian cuisine offered on site al a carte, or meditation in salt domes. What a mix!

Although I don't have that many occasions to visit Atlanta, a return to Jeju, and another day of pampered relaxation, is still on my radar.

• • •

So those are the oddities that have drawn the lottery number in my brain for receiving special attention for thanks this week. I knew you'd want to know.

Qualities You Want in Community Members

Today I want to tell the story of someone I've become acquainted with in the context of doing work with her community over the past year. As I work with groups on the average of one or two per month and have been doing this for a third of a century, you can appreciate that a lot of hot water has flowed across my tea bag and I've met a lot of folks—many of whom are amazing. It's one of the cherished perks of my profession.

In any event, I'm taking the opportunity today to celebrate the qualities I've observed in one particular new friend that has touched my heart in a profound way (so much that I arose at 5 am last Thursday to compose this email to her, slightly edited to redact identifying descriptors):

We didn’t get off to a great start when I first arrived on the scene this summer and you were still in high distress following the precipitating incident, and you weren’t sure you could trust me. (On my end I have no trouble with your caution—it made perfect sense to me. You had been burned badly and didn’t want to expose yourself to more hurt. You were a wounded momma bear, and I was poking at the wounds.)

As you might imagine, it was not the first time that someone hasn’t responded well to me right out of the box. It goes with the territory. I’m brought in because of problems and it’s my job to go there. I never try to be mean, but I’m also direct, and that can be painful.

In any event, it was clear from your participation in the first community meeting (I try to track discontents pretty closely) that you were shifting in how you related to me based on what you saw—to the point where you volunteered to be in the circle with me for a clearing if someone wanted to do it with you, and that was not where you had started. I was impressed.

In my business there is a lot of easy talk about taking in information and adjusting one’s views, but I don’t see it nearly as often as people claim they are capable of it. You have been the real deal, and I’m taking time to honor you for it. You have been a delight to work with. Not because you agree with me all the time, but because you state where you are (I don’t have to guess), you listen to what I have say, and you sometimes change your mind. Not only that but you go through your internal process pretty quickly.

These are the qualities I’m trying to highlight:

a) You are committed to self awareness, and understand that this has to start with your emotional response, if that’s a component. That means knowing what your feelings are, and looking at how those responses are serving you or not, so that you can make a considered choice about which feelings to feed and which to shift. (This is not so hard to write, but there aren’t nearly enough folks capable of that discernment.)

b) You are willing to own your shit. Mind you, everyone is bringing some, so the nuance here is not that you have any, but that you are doing the work to recognize it and admit it publicly. That’s gold. It's a terrific model for those you live with. We all have feet of clay, but not everyone can own it. (You need look no further than Trump to see a spectacular example of someone who can’t do it. What an awful role model.)

c) After doing your due diligence with self care and self analysis, you consider the impact on the whole—what’s best for the group, without betraying yourself or your family. Boy do we need that. To be fair, there are plenty of others in the community who bring that capacity to the table as well (thank the goddess), but right now I’m highlighting that in you.

This is an awesome mix, and I love it when I see it. It’s what gives me hope that we can build a better world after all, despite all our human frailties.

So much for the molasses; now the sulphur. Here’s where I want you to stretch, where I think you can do more: learning to see difficult dynamics through the eyes of the people who irritate you. That’s where the money is. While people do stupid and ill-conceived shit all the time, they rarely intend to be shitty. They’re just doing the best they can with what makes sense to them in the moment, and if you can see that possibility (good intent coupled with sloppy delivery) it can help enormously to not stay stuck in a story about how they’re the antichrist. 

I'm talking about the difference between containing or limiting your reactivity, and actually seeing irritating people as good-hearted, just not as able. Notice how I immediately worked to find Dale [a pseudonym] a soft landing when she spoke provocatively at the last meeting. That’s what I’m talking about. I defanged the poison right away by first acknowledging her good intent and then getting her to admit that it was in her interest to learn to be less provocative, which she freely did. (I can’t guarantee that that will happen every time, or course, but it’s worth the attempt.)

This is the response I received later in the day:

I will say honestly that I still don’t understand your method in how you go about establishing relationships with people in a group at the beginning, and freely admit I did not trust you at all after our initial conversations, but I remained open to the possibility and hope that we would eventually understand each other better. I can truly say I have felt safe and confident with you in every minute of every meeting. I don’t really need to understand that discord, I just accept it. I have enormous respect and gratitude for the work you’ve done and continue to do with our group. I have learned an enormous amount about active listening just by watching you do it.

You really understand my strengths and my weaknesses and it means a lot that you took the time to reflect that back to me. I am frequently the one in the group asking that we begin by assuming good intentions of each other, and I am perfectly willing to admit that is probably because that is where I struggle the most myself—maybe not in theory, but in practice. Can I objectively stand back and recite the reasons behind someone's actions that have nothing to do with her being a bad person? Yes, as I did at the last meeting. But I see that I lose my grasp on that when it comes to practical application in instances like this—when I felt angry enough to think that shutting her out of meetings was the answer. (For the record I don’t believe she is inherently bad, but neither do I believe she is a safe person for my family to be in relationship with.) Detached from my feelings, I have no trouble agreeing with you that they have good intentions and want good and reasonable things—the same things I want. Emotional safety for themselves and their families and visitors in our community. Trust in their neighbors.

Sometimes (historically often) my frustration and impatience with others get the better of me and that shows, and isn’t productive.

My therapist has also pointed this out and the big work I am doing in therapy right now can be summed up in the one word—acceptance. The more I am learning to accept what IS (rather than being stuck in anger/sadness/frustration that what I WISH WERE is currently NOT) the more patient I become. Because when I’m stuck emotionally in resistance—like I was this summer—it has a hold on me every minute of every day. When circumstances beyond my control have much *less* of a hold on me in my daily life, patience becomes much easier!

I had a big shift moment when my therapist asked me “Do you think your community will ever be 100% healthy?” And I said “well no, of course not,” and she said “Can you accept that?” It was the exact right moment to ask that question (after months of my life being far too attached to neighbors’ needs, feelings and actions). 

I’m always trying to grow. I like what Brené Brown says so much—“I’m here to get it right, not to be right.” Being wrong doesn’t threaten my sense of self and that is the greatest freedom of all.

Wouldn't you like to live with people like her? Don't you feel that by teaming up with allies with those qualities we could actually build a world that could work for everyone? I do.

Virtual Surprises

We're now about eight months into the guarded physical and emotional reality forced upon us by Covid 19. I came home from a road trip March 12 and haven't left my state of home quarantining since. What's more, it could easily be another eight months before an effective vaccine is widely available. I'm thankful that my Amtrak travel credits don't expire with temporary inactivity.

While the pandemic has resulted in all manner of strains on individuals and households, I want to focus today on some of the impacts I've observed among cooperative groups—some of which are not very surprising, but some of which are.

1. The Tension Between Individual Rights and Group Safety

Interpersonal friction among groups didn't cease just because meetings in the same room came to an abrupt end. If anything, the cracks that existed before are likely to open up under the strain of travel bans, and social distancing. It can be particularly cruel on folks living alone, who were likely drawn to community for its social benefits and are now proscribed from enjoying them face to face.

On the one hand, communities are almost certainly doing a better job of checking on each other and supporting one another as they can, within the context of health limitations. On the other, a number of communities (especially the ones meant to be senior-oriented from the get-go, but also those who have grown their own senior class merely be being successful) have a significant segment of their population in the high-risk category and thus need to be on their toes (just not on anyone else's).

While no one build their communities or developed their social norms with a pandemic in mind, here we are, and the adjustments have not all been characterized by laminar flow. In particular, there has been strain in many places that mirrors what we've seen at the national level between those who: a) feel it's a fundamental individual decision to determine what constitutes risk management and they are loath to have their rights trimmed by the anxieties of their neighbors; and b) those who are horrified with the concept of trusting their neighbor to determine, without a conversation mind you, what behaviors should be acceptable to them. They want a collective conversation about safety in the time of Covid, and struggle to understand what they see as unconscionable selfishness by those who don't want to talk about it. It can get ugly.

What constitutes an appropriate level of home quarantining for an entire community? What can be expected (required?) in the way of testing for community members? These are not simple questions.

To be fair, my sense is that communities are working through this stuff, but the road has been bumpy and the collateral damage has not all been addressed or repaired. There is clean up work here.

2. The Potency of Zoom Facilitation

Over the course of my 30+ years as a professional facilitator and process consultant, I've held the view that there was no substitute for being in the same room, where you can feel the energy and track nonverbal clues. While I've always maintained a lively email correspondence and steady phone traffic, these were invariably meant to augment my working with groups in place… until the last eight months, when the only place that existed for a consultant has been virtual.

Forced by Covid to adapt to a changed world, I have experimented with facilitating from afar, via Zoom, and have been surprised to find how effective it can be—even with groups I've never met before. This was a happy discovery—and one I didn't expect. Unless the group is larger than 24 (I can get a 5x5 array of boxes displayed on my laptop screen—numbers above that result in multiple pages of participants, which are much harder to visually track) I've been impressed at how well it can go. 

I've thought a good deal about why that might be, given there is necessarily a loss of granularity with Zoom—that is, there is clearly less information available to work with. My best guess is that I have developed a certain amount of refinement in my skills over the years and redundancy in the ways I take in input, even at the cellular and intuitive levels, such that the loss or constriction of some channels still provides enough bandwidth to do my work, even when the dynamics are messy and complex (which is probably redundant).

Given that messy and complex is more or less my specialty, it's a damn good thing that I can still deliver. I experimented cautiously at first (not wanting to overpromise), but now I have enough Zoom experiences under my belt to feel confident in what I can deliver. I'm even resuming the delivery of three-day facilitation trainings, entirely by Zoom. It's a brave new world.

3. The Courage of Zoom Participation

Finally, I want to make a surprising observation about doing emotional work via Zoom. As you know, our wider culture is not known for its forthright acceptance and facility for meeting one another on the emotional plane, and it's my firm belief that we have to develop that capacity in order to realize the potential of community living. Without it, our interpersonal relationships—the heart blood of community—are stultified and incapable of fully blooming.

What I've discovered, while endeavoring to work sensitively with feelings using Zoom, is that many people feel less trapped in the spotlight when unpacking emotional distress from the comfort of their own home. Neither are they as prone to indulge in rants as they are via email. It's a double blessing. On the one hand there is more accountability when addressing one's neighbors through the visual pane of a laptop. On the other, I suspect people may feel safer than when working these dynamics in the same enclosed room. It's an unexpected sweet spot.

To be clear, I'm not reporting a sea change. Distress still exists and groups still struggle with how to respond. I'm only reporting a certain subtle shift in there being somewhat less reactivity via Zoom—an unexpected yet nonetheless welcome deescalation in work that can be often be highly volatile. In any event, I'll take it.