my confidence may be shattered

When I worked as a home hospice social worker, I spent a lot of time driving in my car.  My car was my little respite from work and music was a big part of my "self care" after my hospice visits.  A wonderful nurse, Angela, burned a CD for me - The Be Good Tanyas (http://www.begoodtanyas.com/) , which for my last year or two working in hospice, I tended to listen to over and over - one of the songs covered Neil Young's, For the Turnstiles.  That was my favorite - both for the haunting sound of it and for the way it articulated one of my personal philosophies.  Here's the lyric:  "you can really /learn a lot that way/it will change you /in the middle of the day/ and though your confidence/ may be shattered/ it doesn't matter."  It was a nice way of saying to myself, "you jerk, you're not that important."  And, I don't mean that in a pathetic way - I hope I can do an adequate job, explaining what I mean: 

I began learning this lesson long before hospice work.  I remember when I was 15, on summer break, and received a heartfelt and teen-angst- filled love letter from a guy friend of mine who was away for a month on a foreign exchange program.  According to him, he loved me and needed to know that I loved him back.  He was such a good friend and I fretted and fretted and giggled and went crazy over how in the world I was ever going to break his heart when he got back to the U.S.  How could I let him down easy?  Would it ruin our friendship? Had I led him on?  It was very, very dramatic.  When he returned to St. Louis, I remember dreading to see him for the first time.  I wondered if I would be up to this challenge of being oh so gentle with his heart.  Yet in teenage time, 3 weeks is a very long time.  All the energy I'd spend worrying and feeling my own importance, knowing that I was so integral to this guy's emotional life and well-being was wasted.  In three weeks, he'd fallen in love with a European girl and his love letter had become nothing more than a trifle from his youth. 

I can't say my confidence was shattered, but maybe my ego was a little bruised.  I took it pretty well to heart though.  Maybe I'm not as important as I think I am.

Or maybe, the times I think are important or that I'm  really DOING something aren't the important ones.  Maybe the important times, the times I am of the most influence, or of the most help (hopefully) are the ones I couldn't have foreseen.  This is what I learned in hospice.

My days started by calling a voicemail where staff would report on new patients, medication changes, status changes, and patients who'd died.  I remember certain mornings listening to voicemail and thinking, "Oh my God - I've got 5 new patients from Wildwood to U City - how am I going to see all these people in the next 8 hours?!"  Panic.  Yet often, not everyone wanted to see me that day.  Again, my panic at my own importance was a waste of energy.  Or, I'd spend an hour on the phone to plan all my visits only to get a phone call from my manager saying, "Joe just died and I need you to go."  My whole "plan" would have to change - and fast!  

There were also patients and families that I cared about a great deal and I wanted to be a person who really made a positive difference at a terrible time.  I'm sure I was, on occassion...but I was also part of a team and I never, never forgot how important a nurse or chaplain or massage therapist was.  (Remembering how others can be a positive influence is a good thing to remember in parenting, too.)  Sometimes in hospice work, if felt like timing was everything.  Or maybe it was some combination of me being the right person to help at the right time.  It didn't ever feel like part of my grand design.  Having my confidence "shattered" didn't necessarily feel like a bad thing - it was just realizing how much was out of my control.

I guess it was freeing, too.  To realize "I am important and I am unimportant.  I make a difference, but I am not the only one who makes a difference.  I matter, but my ego doesn't matter."  There's a quote from Ecclesiastes that warns about 'vanity and striving after the wind.'  I think Neil Young said the same thing, in a different way - "in the stands/ the home crowd scatters/ for the turnstiles."