I was planning to make fudge and cookies for Valentine’s Day, but they don’t ship very well through email, and everyone complains that I’m wrecking their New Year’s diets. Instead, I’ll ask you the question a friend asked me recently. I’ve been thinking about it ever since, and hope you will too.
Are you in the deep water of your life?
In my days as a counselor I’d have wondered if I was in over my head, but my friend had been talking boating. In boating, deep water is open water, free of obstacles where you can pick up speed and focus on the journey.
A few years ago my husband proposed a way that we could chart our deep water together. We each start separately with a list of roles and consider the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions of our lives. We ask ourselves who we are or want to be and if we were living up to that ideal and write down our intentions for the year ahead. Afterwards, we come together and share our dreams. Typically, we keep our personal goals and merge our goals for our family and marriage into a plan we can both support. A few weeks later we have a budget meeting and flesh out the funding for special events and trips that year.
What started as a goal and budgeting exercise has become a treasured time of reflection, dreaming and sharing – together. It’s not unusual for us to show up at a restaurant, lists in hand and spend a few hours chatting over a slow dinner and dreams.
Deep water isn’t unique to spouses. We can find it in business and friendships as well. At work everyone benefits when the goal, mission and path to action are clear. In friendships and new relationships, I use a tip from Charlotte South Rotary and think of the acronym FORD – Family, Occupation, Recreation and Dreams. Asking others about these subjects navigates the way to deep water and what matters most to them.
Imagine yourself sailing toward the island of your dreams. You’re on open water, free and clear from obstacles. It’s a beautiful day, your favorite time of day. What’s your special destination? What’s your deep water?
I look forward to hearing what your deep water is and hope you’ll share it not just with me, but with others as well. In the words of Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act but a habit.”
How do you make your voice heard?
Recently, a dear friend sent me yet another political email tirade. Has this ever happened to you?
Did it motivate you to call your Senator, write a letter, or an editorial to the paper? Did you write a hot email back telling them they were a left-wing activist or a right-wing conservative?
Here are few things I’ve learned over 20 years of serving on the periphery of politics: as a journalist, activist, board member, canvasser, and, yes, even that person calling and asking for money.
The US has a system of elected representatives. They are supposed to represent our values and take actions that best represent the needs of the district. Who among us lives up to the responsibility to voice our needs? Recently, here in Charlotte, hundreds of parents, spoke up, lobbied, wrote letters, made calls and made our voices heard around school redistricting. It wasn’t a one-letter event, convenient, or what we had in mind for our free time. It was the price exacted by our democracy to have our needs represented, to have our voices heard.
I like to hear what people I know are doing on a local level or nationally to guide our country in the direction they think best. I don’t agree all the time, but sharing our personal experience and reasoning goes a long way toward finding mutual understanding. Are we leveraging our brains and experience by forwarding complaining emails? What about copying those you value on what you’re mailing to the President, your Congressional Representative, etc. Or, go a step further – meet with elected representatives. We pay them. Get some friends and meet with them. Make your voice heard.
About a decade ago I lived on the poor side of Charlotte and rode my bike to work through the “projects”. After a time, the projects were raised and a new neighborhood was built just a few blocks up the street, a much nicer neighborhood. The city blocked off the main access road (to deter theft) and, installed a sidewalk for people to walk to uptown. There wasn’t curb cut to ride a bike or a wheelchair up the sidewalk at the bottom of the hill. My direct route was gone (along with my beautiful morning ride), and people who rode bikes into town for work now had to stop at the bottom of the hill and walk up the sidewalk or take a much longer route around. A curb cut for bicycle or wheelchair access is a small thing that makes a big difference to those who need it.
I began calling the city. First, I was told it was someone else and someone else and someone else, then an oversight on the part of the contractor. Finally, Planning committed to fix it, and I followed up until they did. This is a small thing, and it took six months. It wasn’t my brains or who I knew – it was persistence. Sometimes, individuals are like a person on a brontosaurus’s tail trying to cause a change in direction.
My father often tells me that this is the best country in the world – that many others have tried and failed. He and many others put their bodies on the line to defend our country. Maybe, in some ways, that is an easier price than the slow calculated effort necessary to cause political, procedural or legal change.
Late in the Biblical book of Exodus, while the Israelites are wandering in the desert for forty years, Moses gets frustrated and says to God, “Remember that this nation is your people.” Likewise, this nation is our people, imperfect, falling short, grumbling and exacting a price from us to be heard.
When you make your voice heard, let me in on it.