Utter helplessness. I feel connected to and caring for and liking and loving most people I encounter as a practiced response to utter helplessness in the face of death. I guess this means I'm getting ready to tell another hospice story -
When I worked in hospice, I often listened to the Be Good Tanyas while I drove around the city, county, and rural Missouri - a cover of the Neil Young song, For the Turnstiles. The line that just got me in my guts was this - 'Though your confidence may be shattered - it doesn't matter.' I came into social work like most good-hearted sorts of people - naive and probably a little irritating in our naivete or hubris - "I just want to help people,' But in the face of suffering, death, poverty and grief, I often felt helpless to help people. I quickly felt small.
So I went into Observer Mode - like noticing what helps and what doesn't as if I were gathering information for a research project. And what I saw was not every situation was bleak - sometimes things made a positive difference, even if it wasn't me. I wanted to find a pattern in that - what alleviates suffering, what helps?
I think of a man with late stage Alzheimer's, whose daughter came to the nursing home to have lunch with him literally every single day. He couldn't even remember her name and if you asked him about his daughter, he would say, "She never comes to visit me" in a bitter and lamenting tone. When he was finally dying, his daughter was stricken at his bedside. The nurse, an outspoken little Peruvian lady commanded the daughter - "Tell him you love him! He is waiting for that." When the daughter said, I love you, Dad, he sat straight up in bed after not having been able to sit up for days, and looked her right in the eye. In a few hours, he died.
I also witnessed less dramatic moments - another patient who had lost an adult child and had been on the receiving end of generally bad luck. In her late years she had become a lonely person, a hoarder, and lived in conditions that were quite overwhelming due to all the papers and junk in the house. Yet she was a sweet, gentle spirit and the hospice team really cared for her because she was with us a fairly long time. I don't think she had a very happy life, but I think the tenderness and care she received from extended family and hospice caregivers made a true difference in her quality of life and thought there was no pivotal moment of healing or change, I think she died feeling cared for.
So, what I began to notice was that love makes a difference. Some form of love that in Christian or Western tradition is called 'agape' - which means, the highest form of love, especially brotherly love, charity; the love of God for man and of man for God." (that's from Wikipedia) You might not be able to do much to change people or circumstances, but what happens, what opens up for someone when they feel your openness to them? When they feel heard and seen? When they feel liked?
I started saying to myself before I went to go visit a new patient - try to find something to love about them. When someone looks or feels like you on the outside, that kind of connection or love isn't that challenging to find, but if someone is very different, it can be harder. One patient that comes to mind is an African American man living in North County - his home was in disrepair and he had a fish tank overgrown with green slime, a big dead fish floating in the tank. I was challenged to not judge these circumstances, but what I found in being open and not judging was that he and I had something important in common. He shared with me that he had been a 'go go go' person in his youth and health - he was a do-er and his illness had robbed him of that. I felt I was a go go go person too and I wondered what illness and lack of financial resources would do to me. I felt connected to him because I looked for what we had in common, not what separated us. And he was kind enough to be open to that. After lots of hardship in life, not everyone is willing to be open to others - so I am grateful for that experience.
I think this started to become a habit for me - instead of worrying about whether other people like me, I flipped it almost all the time. What do I like about them? What do I see that's wonderful about them? The result, for me, has been a feeling of welcome in the world. I don't mean that I think everyone likes me because I like them - there very well may be people who don't like me at all, don't care if I like them, and God knows what else.
But again, what happens when your confidence is shattered? What happens when you are willing to be vulnerable, as Brene Brown http://brenebrown.com/ so often talks about. What happens when you're willing to give up trying to create an impression about yourself. I'm speaking only from my own experience when I suggest that instead of worrying about what others think of you, think about welcoming someone else, seeing something unique and beautiful in who the other person is. You can almost always find that thing if you look for it and when you see the unique and beautiful thing in another person, you don't feel alone or disconnected - you feel all the things most people want to feel - gratitude, joy and delight.
So I went into Observer Mode - like noticing what helps and what doesn't as if I were gathering information for a research project. And what I saw was not every situation was bleak - sometimes things made a positive difference, even if it wasn't me. I wanted to find a pattern in that - what alleviates suffering, what helps?
I think of a man with late stage Alzheimer's, whose daughter came to the nursing home to have lunch with him literally every single day. He couldn't even remember her name and if you asked him about his daughter, he would say, "She never comes to visit me" in a bitter and lamenting tone. When he was finally dying, his daughter was stricken at his bedside. The nurse, an outspoken little Peruvian lady commanded the daughter - "Tell him you love him! He is waiting for that." When the daughter said, I love you, Dad, he sat straight up in bed after not having been able to sit up for days, and looked her right in the eye. In a few hours, he died.
I also witnessed less dramatic moments - another patient who had lost an adult child and had been on the receiving end of generally bad luck. In her late years she had become a lonely person, a hoarder, and lived in conditions that were quite overwhelming due to all the papers and junk in the house. Yet she was a sweet, gentle spirit and the hospice team really cared for her because she was with us a fairly long time. I don't think she had a very happy life, but I think the tenderness and care she received from extended family and hospice caregivers made a true difference in her quality of life and thought there was no pivotal moment of healing or change, I think she died feeling cared for.
So, what I began to notice was that love makes a difference. Some form of love that in Christian or Western tradition is called 'agape' - which means, the highest form of love, especially brotherly love, charity; the love of God for man and of man for God." (that's from Wikipedia) You might not be able to do much to change people or circumstances, but what happens, what opens up for someone when they feel your openness to them? When they feel heard and seen? When they feel liked?
I started saying to myself before I went to go visit a new patient - try to find something to love about them. When someone looks or feels like you on the outside, that kind of connection or love isn't that challenging to find, but if someone is very different, it can be harder. One patient that comes to mind is an African American man living in North County - his home was in disrepair and he had a fish tank overgrown with green slime, a big dead fish floating in the tank. I was challenged to not judge these circumstances, but what I found in being open and not judging was that he and I had something important in common. He shared with me that he had been a 'go go go' person in his youth and health - he was a do-er and his illness had robbed him of that. I felt I was a go go go person too and I wondered what illness and lack of financial resources would do to me. I felt connected to him because I looked for what we had in common, not what separated us. And he was kind enough to be open to that. After lots of hardship in life, not everyone is willing to be open to others - so I am grateful for that experience.
I think this started to become a habit for me - instead of worrying about whether other people like me, I flipped it almost all the time. What do I like about them? What do I see that's wonderful about them? The result, for me, has been a feeling of welcome in the world. I don't mean that I think everyone likes me because I like them - there very well may be people who don't like me at all, don't care if I like them, and God knows what else.
But again, what happens when your confidence is shattered? What happens when you are willing to be vulnerable, as Brene Brown http://brenebrown.com/ so often talks about. What happens when you're willing to give up trying to create an impression about yourself. I'm speaking only from my own experience when I suggest that instead of worrying about what others think of you, think about welcoming someone else, seeing something unique and beautiful in who the other person is. You can almost always find that thing if you look for it and when you see the unique and beautiful thing in another person, you don't feel alone or disconnected - you feel all the things most people want to feel - gratitude, joy and delight.
