Welcome to Episode 7, in which we’ll explore the music of language – some of the ways the interaction of rhythm and repeated sounds contribute to (and occasionally detract from) what’s going on in a poem.

Enjoy!

Welcome to episode 6, where we’ll explore the line as a basic building block of the poem. How long should it be? Where and how should it end? What’s a good reason to end it?

Enjoy!

Welcome back!

In this just-over-sixteen-minute video we’ll play with word choice – diction, exploring the difference between the right word and the almost right word and how it impacts our poetry and writing in general.

As the video title slide points out, a bell may toll or jingle (or peal, tinkle, ring, or chime, among other possibilities).

Enjoy!

Early in 2019 my friend and colleague, Kent Frazier, and I began informal conversations about “mental illness” and “mental health” and how these two characterizations were showing or had shown up in our lives, in the lives of our families, friends and colleagues, and in workplaces we’d known or had heard or read about. While depression and anxiety were primary, they were not the only foci of our attention. As we talked and read and listened we bumped into a few sobering statistics. The following are representative:

• Workplace stress is estimated to cost the U.S. economy more than $500 billion dollars, and, each year, 550 million work days are lost due to stress on the job.¹
• Half of Millennials and 75% of Gen Z’ers have left their jobs for mental health reasons. ²
• Depression is the leading cause of disability on the planet.³
• The annual global economic burden of mental illness is $2.5 trillion, costing businesses an estimated $100 billion.⁴
• Health problems associated with job-related anxiety account for more deaths each year than Alzheimer’s disease or diabetes.⁵

Kent and I met in 2011 amid changes we were each seeking – traveling in what seemed to be “opposite” directions in our careers. I had spent some 35 years as a Catholic High School teacher and basketball coach, college administrator and teaching poet, and was looking for a way to ‘make up for’ the money I had not made. Kent had spent some 20 years (we have a decade-plus age difference) in Human Resources in the corporate world, rising up to the Vice Presidential level in two different companies, and was looking for a deeper sense of meaning in his work, despite the money he had made. We arrived at a shared perspective, to which abundant research⁶ already pointed, that meaningful work and earning income commensurate with the contribution to and impact on others’ growth and wellbeing were important aspects of creating a fully expressed and fulfilling livelihood.

As we worked with the language of mental illness and mental health at work, we began to consider the possibility that depression and anxiety were actually legitimate, understandable responses to “sick” places of work, and we recognized this as an echo of Krishnamurti’s assertion that “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”  

We began speaking about “Mental Fitness as an Evolutionary Imperative” with some of our friends and colleagues, and our language most recently landed on “Being Fully Human at Work – a 21^st-Century Imperative,” which cuts to the heart of the matter. We need to be able to show up fully at work, and we need to do work that honors our full humanness – whatever that might mean for each of us.

Fully Human at Work invites us to look at “the work” that needs to be done at this time in history, in our own lives, and in the ways we support and care for others. What if “our work” became more about connecting with our truest selves and building bridges to connect with and support our common humanity in communities; to uplift this common humanity and the systems that support it, rather than primarily serving the financial interests of shareholders and our own financial gain? What if our meaningful work and commensurate compensation emerged through a “what am I giving” rather than a “what am I getting” mindset? What might such a shift allow or invite?

We believe that each of us has what Frederick Buechner has referred to as a deep gladness, what Bill Plotkin calls soul work, what Howard Thurman called that which makes you come alive, and what Harley Swift Deer calls our sacred dance; and that we are called to manifest this gladness, this aliveness, this soul work or sacred dance as a gift to our people – to the world. Our charge is to recognize our gift and find a way to engage it while we also take care of ourselves and our families through what Plotkin calls survival work⁷ – and this is rarely an easy undertaking.

We may have to engage our soul work with no thoughts of compensation while we engage our survival work; we may find a way to bring our sacred dance into how we do our survival dance; we may be called to find an employer who will welcome our deep gladness in the workplace; we may begin, a little at a time, to find ways to get paid for doing that which brings us alive; and if we’re among the gifted, fortunate, hard-working few, we may find a way to merge our soul work with our survival work.

We invite you to explore these possibilities with us. What is your deep gladness? What brings you alive? How will you bring it to your people?

Please consider joining us for our 12-hour, 6-session online course, Fully Human at Work: A 21^st-Century Imperative. Tuesdays, January 14 – March 31, 2020. Register here. More details and registration information at https://www.fullyhumanatwork.com/. Registration is limited to 18 participants.

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¹Harvard Business Review online, December 2019

²CNBC online, October 2019

³World Health Organization online, December 2019

⁴OneMind.org, accessed December 2019

⁵The Atlantic online, February 2015

⁶See Edward Deci’s and Richard Ryan’s work on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), Daniel Pink’s Drive, and Frederick Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations, among many others.

⁷Survival work (or survival dance) is not a pejorative term. From Plotkin: “Our survival dance, a foundational component of self-reliance, is what we do for a living – our way of supporting ourselves physically and economically…. Everybody has a survival dance. Finding or creating one is our first task when we leave our parents’ or guardians’ home.”

Additional References:

Frederick Buechner. Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC [revised and reprinted with the subtitle: A Seeker’s ABC]. https://www.frederickbuechner.com/

Howard Thurman. [I have been unable to find an accurate citation for the origin of this quote]: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Thurman

Bill Plotkin. Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World. [Harley Swift Deer is quoted in Plotkin].https://animas.org/

Welcome back. Here are the subtitles of the fifteen essays in this conversation series with links to each individual piece. As the writing unfolded and the content found its way into a workshop at the Unitarian Society of New Haven in early May, the following sub-headers (bolded) began to make sense. They are currently useful (to me), and they may continue to evolve. Stay tuned for more about upcoming workshops.

NOTE: These blogs were revised and published in book form as Enough With the Talking Points: Doing More Good Than Harm in Conversation in 2020.

Updated versions appear in the Healing America’s Narratives newsletter and podcast on Substack in April-May, 2024. Each newsletter and podcast is free for 4 weeks and then is available to subscribers ($6.00/month or $60.00/year). I’m in it for the love, but I’m not above the money. Learn more on the About page.

#1 – Introduction and Overview

Knowing Yourself, Your Biases and Your View – Working with What and How You See

#2 – Who (You Think) You Are in Conversation – Culture’s Hidden Influence

#3 – Who (You Think) You Are in Conversation, Part 2 – Beyond Culture

#4 – Suspending Preconceptions, Judgments and Assumptions

Honoring Facts and Identifying Opinions – Really? Will That Hold Up in Court or in the Laboratory?

#5 – Avoiding Labels, Insults and Generalizations

#6 – Honoring the Difference Between Opinion and Fact

#7 – Engaging Specific, Factual and Preferably Personal Examples to Support Opinions

Learning Intentionally – How Do You Want to Be, and What Do You Hope for, in this Conversation?

#8 – Curiosity, Knowing and Not Knowing on the Path of Learning

#9 – Learning, Understanding and Clarifying (Rather Than Teaching, Persuading or Disproving)

Acknowledging the Forest and Staying on the Path – Wow, You’re Human Too!

#10 – Finding Similarities as Well as Differences

#11 – Staying With the Agreed-Upon Topic

Emotion, Empathy and Ripple Effects – Feeling, Honoring and Regulating Emotions  

#12 – Recognizing, Understanding and Regulating Emotions

#13 – Understanding, Feeling and Embodying Another’s Story as if It Were Your Own

#14 – Who Wins and Who Loses if You Get Your Way – or I Get Mine?

Truth – Understanding “Truth” and “Truthfulness”

#15 – The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth

While some of these subtitles/topics are more complex, and require more work than others, each provides a foundational element for conversation that does more good than harm. Some are more or less “mechanical” skills that can be learned, but even those will be interpreted, understood and manifested differently based on the participant’s worldview (essays 2 and 3), and the extent to which the participant is aware of this worldview (i.e. does the person have a worldview or does a worldview have the person?). The worldview will also impact the intentional choices that are available to (that can be seen by) the participant.

Generally, someone who primarily identifies with a fundamentalist, absolutist, black-and-white view of the world is more likely to intend to teach or persuade, as opposed to learn and understand, than is someone who primarily identifies with a scientific, rational, evidence-based, okay-with-the-gray view of the world, and is more open to curiosity, following the evidence, understanding and clarifying. In the most extreme cases of these two views, the individuals effectively speak different languages – as much a barrier to resolving a dispute as, and perhaps more than, any of the content about which they disagree.

Each of us needs to ask how important consciously civil and intentionally mutually beneficial and respectful conversation is to us. Each of the subtitles above requires a deeper dive in order to be understood and embodied. Any one of them can enhance the quality of conversation. If you choose to begin, perhaps begin with something that feels easier; or begin with the one you know you need to develop; or take them in the order listed.

Just begin. Practice. The world needs you.

Welcome back. Previous essays in this series are available at https://reggiemarra.com/blog/.

While the importance of a commitment to truth is implicit in our exploration of opinion and fact in essay six (and, I hope, throughout this series of essays), truth deserves a more explicit starring role. Most of us have heard or read somewhere along the line that prior to testifying in court, we promise, swear or affirm that we will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Those words are generally familiar and in many ways carry meaning that is obvious (which won’t stop me from unpacking them):

• Tell the truth: answer the question that was asked and don’t lie
• Tell the whole truth: don’t leave anything out regarding your answer to the question that was asked
• Tell nothing but the truth: don’t add or intermingle anything that’s not true in order to help your cause

While this essay does not address what happens under oath in a court of law, these three tenets are worth keeping in mind as we navigate the fate of truth in our day-to-day conversations – whether we are disagreeing, agreeing or casually passing the time. Also worth keeping in mind is the distinction between “the truth” and “truthfulness” – a distinction that informs this essay, and that I believe is accurate and useful. As we’ll use these terms here:

• the truth refers to what is empirically provable¹ and can be agreed upon by honest, competent observers who have no interest or investment in this truth being one way or another;
• truthfulness refers to an individual’s honesty – choosing in any given moment to be honest –

“tell the truth” as he or she understands it; it is possible to be truthful and not tell what is empirically true.

If we revisit essay six’s auto collision at the four-way stop sign, the truth is that two cars made contact and sustained damage. Assuming for a moment that the drivers are honest and do not want to wrongfully vilify each other, each of them might be truthful in explaining what they think caused the accident (beyond agreeing that the cars collided and sustained damage), and each may be completely accurate, completely off the mark or somewhat accurate and somewhat off the mark amid their truthfulness.²

That’s a simple example and enough to make the point. In our disagreements and agreements with others, underlying our commitment to differentiating fact and opinion must be a corresponding understanding of and commitment to the truth and our truthfulness. Clarity of language is essential for such a commitment as is a willingness to do the work that clarification requires.

The complexities that characterize the content of much contemporary disagreement, the over-abundance of easily accessible information and much intentional misinformation that internet sources invite and allow, and selectively edited and sound-bitten televised news offerings render “the truth” at best difficult to identify, and at worst an unwelcome and troublesome nuisance. The ramifications of this complex over-abundance is especially evident among individuals who seem more committed to incessantly reasserting their biases in order to “win” the social media tit-for-tat or televised eye-rolling and shouting match of the day than to working toward an agreed-upon “truth” and negotiating in good faith with others who differ regarding how to interpret and act on this truth when it comes to local, national or international policy, whether to buy or lease, or which movie to see, diet to try or get-rich-quick scheme to purchase.

We return to intention. Why are you, am I, in this conversation at all, and what, if anything, does the truth, or our respective ‘truthfulnesses’ have to do with it? If nothing, then why bother? If something, why not everything? If everything, how might each of us behave if we were genuinely concerned with and committed to the truth and to being increasingly able to see each other’s truthfulness even as we disagree?

Don’t look to apparent leaders as exemplars for this behavior. Very few of them are up for the challenge, and while some may be, your best bet is to look within. Be the conversationalist you aspire to be. Take the risk of showing up with the intentions of understanding and learning, with nothing to prove, nothing to defend and nothing to lose.

In the next essay we’ll take a brief look back at the preceding 15 and explore a few exercises that can be helpful on the path.

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*What we’re attempting to point to in this essay (and in this series) are useful, practical considerations for authentic conversation. We’re not delving into differentiating the mystical/spiritual realms of what is manifest-relative truth or Unmanifest-Absolute Truth; there is a time and place for these (even if time and place only exist on the manifest-relative plane) and this is neither.  

¹What is “empirically provable” – i.e. true, shifts over time and with development. Cultures have (ever-evolving) maps of “reality” that represent what they believe is true. If something fits the current map, it’s “true,”; if it doesn’t, it’s not. E.g. prior to the mid/late 19^th century bloodletting was an accepted “truth” in treating human ailments; over millennia it was true that first the earth (religion’s view), then the sun (early science’s view) was the center of the universe; the current (more advanced science) truth tells us that the universe is ever-expanding.

²Distraction, confusion, mechanical failure, etc. may come into play here, and even if each driver is honest, when faced with the possibility of insurance premiums going up, moving violations, having to explain to parents or spouses what happened, the temptation not to tell the whole truth or to in some way embellish it (telling something beyond the truth) might be tempting – putting them at odds with both “truthfulness” and the “truth.” That the two cars collided is the truth, as far as it goes. If our goal were to get to the truth of the cause(s) of this fictional collision we’d pursue this further. It’s not, so we won’t.