A friend of mine is working in an organisation where someone is being a bully. We were talking about it today. On the one hand, we talked about taking a hard line. That is, senior managers in my friend's organisation need to be very firm with this person. On the other hand, thinking of compassion, we talked about the importance of remembering that chances are the destructive behaviours this person is giving to the outside world are also being turned inwards. Does this justify what she's doing? No. Why should we seek to understand why someone is behaving the way they are behaving and/or to look at how it might be affecting them? Well, wouldn't you want someone to do the same for you? Because haven't you been destructive to others at some point in your life?  And aren't you, or anyone else, less likely to keep up such behaviour if people around you try and help you to see what you are doing, rather than simply punish you for it?  At the same time, isn't the hard line part - drawing boundaries to wake you up - part of being compassionate? In other words, compassion entails both discipline, boundaries and firm words as well as empathy and sensitivity. 

Sometimes, no matter what we do - no matter how compassionate we are with someone - they will be unable to see what they are doing to themselves and others. When those moments come, we often will have a hard choice to make. We might have to let go. We can make it clear we are always there for that person to walk in and say 'I need help.' At the same time, we can make it clear that we are not here to be abused or harmed or to support destructive behaviours generally. This is tricky. It seems like this means placing conditions on love - when the ideal is unconditional love. 

Which makes me wonder  - ask myself - can we still love people even as we are asking them to stay away or as we keep a distance in order to protect ourselves? Yes, we can. In fact, as I suggested above, I'm inclined think that doing so - keeping that distance - is a loving act. Because that person who is doing the harm - well, chances are they do not want to be causing harm.  In this way, it seems that preventing them from harming you further is an act of love - though it might not seem that way at the time. I guess it is what we have come to call 'tough love.'

Something else my friend and I discussed about her colleague is that the colleague doing the bullying does not realise the impact she is having on people around her. And chances are if she knew and understood what she was doing, she would feel quite badly about it. And if she didn't - if there were no remorse - then we know she is suffering from something quite profound. For whatever reason - a congenital inheritance or a mental illness that developed in response to environmental circumstances - she is disconnected from her compassionate, creative and collaborative human spirit.  Surely, if we can help that person reconnect with her spirited self, we should try to do so. 

Some people are beyond help. But I think they are a very small number. The majority of us would welcome help - though it might not always seem to be the case. Help doesn't mean being the saviour or the hero. Sometimes our role is merely to plant seeds. Another person might water them. And yet another might check on them and do what they can to be nurturing. Another person might be the one to be there when the seeds start to open up. And yet another might take them from budding to blooming or bearing fruit. No single individual is fully responsible for someone changing - many people, especially the person with the destructive behaviours - play a role.

This has got me thinking about how I can be mindful of my potential to play any one of those roles in the lives of others  - be they strangers or dear friends. This means, taking with me a consciousness when I am speaking to people - including those who might be acting like a bully. Compassion means having a firm hand and also - as I'm now inclined to call it - a gardner's hand. In nearly every person who acts like a bully is fertile soil for sowing seeds of change.  What can I do to plant and nurture those seeds? That is the question I shall ask myself.

What would it mean for you to apply the gardner's hand the next time you encounter a person who is acting like a bully?  

In my last post "Responsibility: Where does Gandhi's Steer Take you?", I asked the question: What is compassion? I asked this because living the change I want to see means being a compassionate person. I want to see, give, and experience more compassion in the world. As a practicing mediator, I think about compassion a lot. The other day I found myself talking with a fellow mediator - Jack -  about compassion and hit on something I had not seen so clearly before: the connection between compassion and invisibility.  I am a woman very occupied by the importance of seeing our selves and allowing ourselves to see and be seen by others. And now I recognize more clearly that compassion is all about seeing and being seen.   

Compassion is a word that needs to be reclaimed. It feels as though to many it is a dirty word. Firstly, compassion often is equated with pity, which in turn is linked to a sense of superiority. But compassion is not pity and it does quite the opposite of creating a sense of superior and inferior: compassion connects us as equal human beings.  Secondly, compassion became political with the idea of  'Compassionate Conservatism' and Cameron's 'Hug a Hoodie' call to action back in 2007. This was a shame because we definitely need more compassion to be woven into politics. What we don't need, however, is politics being woven into compassion - because then the latter simply disintegrates. And what Cameron did felt more like the latter than the former.

My fellow mediator, Jack, is well-versed in Buddhist teachings and is a very compassionate individual. On Saturday he was showing me compassion - doing a lot of empathic listening as I stood before him in tears describing what was alive in me with regards to something which had been unsettling me for the past two weeks.  Later, Jack would tell me that he really appreciated getting to know me better through that exchange. I was aware that I had allowed myself to show my vulnerabilty to someone I didn't really know that well - but knew enough to know he has a very gentle, open spirit. I felt safe in allowing my doubting, judgemental, upset self be visible to him. Receiving his compassion required that I allow him to see me- and I let that happen.

Jack also commented on how he had enjoyed getting to know me by seeing me at work - in my professional element.  On Saturday we had been out and about door knocking for some work we are doing together. At one point, Jack and I - along with a third mediator - were talking with a group of sixteen year old boys. I asked them : "Do you carry knives?" This seemed to offend some of them, but it was a legitimate question in the context. They all wanted to make it clear that they didn't carry knives and weren't interested in violence. In response to this exchange, I found myself asking them about they how they imagined other people see them and if they thought people were seeing them as they would like to be seen. 

Jack was seeing me. And I was also seeing myself - personally and professionally. As Jack listened to me empathically, I repeatedly would see myself in new ways - see what was beneath the tears, the anger, the frustration - what beliefs I am carrying that are weighing me down and feeding destructive tendencies (a good empathic listener can be a mirror to one's soul). Similarly, though not as deeply, Jack saw that I was trying to see those sixteen-year old boys and similarly hold a mirror up to them so they could see their selves. 

And what Jack and I discussed as we reflected on all this 'seeing' is that compassion involves helping people to see for our selves and show to others what we often keep hidden - render invisible, stashed away out of sight.  And what is at the heart of compassion is the idea that what we see in others is no more that what is in us. We connect to what we are seeing in someone else because it is familiar. We all know what it is to feel sad, angry, hurt, frustated. We all know what it is to lose trust and to fear. We all know how it feels to be invisible. The details of the experiences which give us such wisdom/insight will differ. Yet, the feelings are the same. 

The more we are able to see our selves, the more we are able to see others. This is one reason why self-reflection has such an important role to play in social change - if we are not visible to our selves, then we will have a hard time not only seeing others clearly but it will be challenging to see and connect with each other compassionately. For example, we might meet someone who has been bullying people and judge them for being a bully, for hurting others. We are likely to be angry with them, even feel hate. If, however, we have an awareness of the bully within - the part of us that we know is capable of being and has at times been, the bully - we can then find compassion in how we connect with that person. This does not mean we go 'soft' and let people get away with harmful behaviour, give them excuses. It means we respond in a restorative way - in a way that is intended to contribute to healing, to connecting with each other as one vulnerable human being to another. 

Compassion is about seeing self in other and other in self - melting down the binary of self and other. Let us reclaim compassion for what it is: our human capacity to connect with one another out of a desire to alleviate suffering because we all know what it is to suffer and what is to desire joy. In that way, we are all equal.  Writing this post makes me wonder how much of himself could David Cameron see in those 'hoodies' he wanted people to hug? And what are the different forms a 'hug' can take? For example, how comfortable would he feel letting the young people he and others call 'hoodies know how much they have in common? How comfortable would he be to listen empathically to the stories of these young people'?  This includes stories of destructive behaviour which I would say aren't about bad people but are about bad choices. And we've all made bad choices.

This post is also making me think about how (un)comfortable people generally feel with the idea of compassion - because a lot of people across the political spectrum let out a nervous laugh in response to Cameron's 'Hug a hoodie' call to action. Sure, in some ways it deserved some sniggering. Yet, at the same time, I can't help but think Cameron was on to something quite meaningful, albeit perhaps quite unconsciously and perhaps not so strongly rooted in true compassion. Unfortunately, in the political realm, we tend not to talk about compassion openly and honestly. We see it as a touchy-feely matter, not for serious deliberation. This is despite the fact that we often hear politicians say they would like to create more caring communities. Well, if we are going to do that, we need to create more compassionate communities.

When you are doing your work to help others, how much of them can you see in you and vis-versa?  What exactly does being compassionate mean for you? How compassionate are you being - with your self and those you are trying to support? How could you be more compassionate? What do you fear about being more compassionate?

Every year since 2007, a friend and I have created themes for the year. I’ve declared 2012 my Year of Responsibility and Service.  It isn’t witty, sexy, or funny. And it can be, I’ve found, a bit of a conversation stopper. Twenty-Eleven was Year of Abundance and Faith. When it would come up in conversation people tended to be curious, ask questions and consider what their own theme might be. In contrast, Year of Responsibility and Service renders people silent and – I get the impression – uncomfortable. If I’m talking with social change colleagues, I tend to move the conversation along by laughing and remarking: “I know, I know – it sounds so  Big Society.“ But Big Society was not the inspiration for the theme. Rather, my time spent at a Vipassana meditation course in November 2011 led me to this year’s theme.  What’s the purpose of the theme? I use my yearly themes as a point of focus. Throughout 2012, I will reflect regularly on the significance of responsibility and service to my life – to my well-being, to my relationships with others, to both my social and professional activities and commitments.  Today, I’m reflecting broadly on responsibility and social change. 

Back in the nineties, when I was working to promote the Human Rights Act and influence its implementation, I was frustrated with the language of responsibility. I was frustrated because it was being used in the phrase ‘rights and responsibilities’ with politicians and officials constantly talking about Joe/Jan public having responsibilities alongside having rights. I detested this language because I felt that it was distracting from the real issue: the government’s responsibility to secure people’s human rights (no, not citizens – this is the beauty of human rights, they are not linked with our passport identities).  

Some fifteen years later, I am still not a fan of the phrase ‘rights and responsibilities’ – but I’m much more interested to talk about responsibility and not simply with regards to government action. Passionate about contributing to social change with an aim to creating more caring, creative and collaborative communities, I now want to talk – get excited by it, in fact - about the responsibilities we all have to this end.

Invariably, when I think about responsibility in this context I come back to the Gandhi quote: “We must become the change we want to see in the world.”

On a day-to-day basis, what exactly does that mean? We say it a lot, but what of it?

Well, the key to the change I want to see in the world won’t be found in policy documents – though I have some ideas on what kind of policies might make the world a better place. The change I want to see in the world distills down to human relationships – human relationships which are nurturing, supportive, expansive, compassionate, creative.

If I follow Gandhi’s steer, then I must accept that I am responsible for bringing these traits to life in me. Again, what does that mean on a day-to-day basis? Well, to try and capture that would make this a very long post. But I’ll start with the idea that it means constantly reflecting on how I move through the world - particularly on how I am interacting with others, from a stranger on the street to my mom and dad.  It means exploring what each of those traits means to me in practice:

·      How do I nurture and what am I nurturing?

·      How do I create and what am I creating?

·      What does compassion look like?

·      How do I support others and what am I supporting them to do?

·      How do I relate to people in ways that are expansive rather than constraining?

What does Gandhi’s oft-repeated steer mean to you on a day-to-day basis? What responsibilities do you claim when it comes to social change?

This week, I'm going to let Researcher Brene Brown do the talking.....via a TED talk "The power of vulnerability"

Last night, I went to a performance at the Roundhouse: Unprovoked. The play was created through the work of The Forgiveness Project. The play tells the story of the knife-murder of a fifteen-year old girl by an eighteen-year old girl and how it is that the mother (Mary Folely) of the victim has forgiven the girl who killed her daughter. We had the privilege of being joined afterwards by Mary in a Q&A session. Not surprisingly, I think, the Q&A focused equally on understanding Mary’s journey to forgiveness alongside exploring how young people become subsumed by violence and destruction.  Mary, through the Forgiveness Project, is very active in giving talks at prisons, particularly those filled with young offenders. I concluded the evening with two ideas dominating my brainwaves: (1) at the heart of forgiveness is freedom (2) too many people in our society – of all ages - are feeling unheard and unseen and a critical a consequence of this is violence and destruction in big and small forms, directed inwards and outwards.

For this post, I’m going to focus on the first idea. In particular, I’m thinking about it in the context of social change and activism.

To some people, forgiveness is a somehow an act of weakness, a ‘giving in’ to someone who has caused harm to you – a ‘they win’ outcome. In the play, Mary’s character (and she said this herself after the performance) eloquently describes how the anger she felt towards her daughter’s killer, Beatriz, was changing her. She was becoming a type of person her daughter would not have liked and in some ways, she suggests, she was becoming little different from someone who kills – at least in her thoughts. She would consider what could happen to Beatriz in prison – how punishment might be inflicted on the girl. She distanced herself from her children and her husband. The on-going harsh and disconnecting thoughts and behaviours she was experiencing in her self were allowing one death in their family to turn into two.

Alongside Mary’s increasing discomfort with how she was being in her self and in the world, forgiveness popped into her head and heart. The first time it made an appearance, she quickly dismissed it. Then she starting allowing it to hang around a bit longer each time it came. Finally, one day, she embraced it and chose it as an action. She described to us how in doing so, she felt that a burden had been lifted from her shoulders.  Now Mary dedicates time and energy to turning her family’s tragedy into a learning tool – into a tool that can hopefully also lift heavy burdens from the lives of others – particularly young people who have committed violent crimes.

I think of Mary and I think courage. Yet, something in our society discourages people from forgiveness; as I’ve already said, some people see it as a weakness. But that isn’t all that is going on in the arguments against forgiveness.

Anger is powerful.

Anger usually tries to steer us away from forgiveness – wanting to protect itself and to grow and thrive, anger must keep forgiveness at bay. Anger heats us up, it can help shift us from feeling like vulnerable victims to empowered protagonists, it energises us. Anger can seem like a strong, reliable, protective friend.

At first glance all this sounds positive – anger as a valuable asset. And it is in this way that anger fuels the day –to-day movement of many social activists.

Anger. ANGER!

Mary chose forgiveness because it helped her to return to feeling whole and to connecting fully with her compassionate humanity.  We briefly touched upon the idea that forgiveness is often made possible because the perpetrator of harm has shown remorse and regret.  What if someone doesn’t even see that they have done anything wrong, let alone show remorse? In such a situation can we forgive?

I ask this, because often we social activists find ourselves in situations where we are angry because we feel we aren’t be heard or respected. We feel that, for example, policymakers are ignoring our needs. It is the sense of injustice that often keeps us going day in and day out and often under rather trying circumstances. We have no one to forgive because no one seems to be taking responsibility for what it is that we feel is harming us. But what we do have is anger, raging inside us. 

Mary is taking an active part in creating social change without anger – and this seems inextricably tied to her choice to forgive.  Her story has me wondering: What role might forgiveness have to play in social activism? Can we be credible and effective if we aren’t driven by anger? What does social activism rooted in compassion look like? 

Mary is a strong, powerful force.  I think of her, and I’m inclined to think that anger can be a valuable and perhaps necessary catalyst for change – it is what fires us up and it is a natural response to injustice – but then we would serve ourselves well to shift anger into another energy, into another type of fuel, one that keeps us more deeply connected with the truth of who we can be as human beings – compassionate and nurturing.  We would do well to be aware, I think, of the ways in which anger can easily become a false friend. 

Forgiveness is intriguing me right now. I feel like it turns conventional approaches to social change on their head. It directs us to find freedom, strength and power by letting go of our anger. It almost feels counterintuitive. 

But then breaking old habits often does feel strange, uncomfortable and wrong – so much so, that we struggle hard to succeed in making the break. And now I’m inclined to ask and consider: what are the habits we have as social changemakers/activists that feel ‘right’ because we are accustomed to them – but actually are doing us a dis-service? In what ways – as was happening to Mary – are our reactions to injustice taking us away from being the people we want to be and creating the society we want to see?

I’m a practicing mediator (including as a volunteer with an East London mediation service, Common Ground – yes, I am making a flagrant pitch for the organisation!). Today I did some coaching. The objective of the coaching was to help a woman who had requested mediation, but the other party – who had initially said yes - pulled out before the scheduled meeting. The idea with coaching was to work through different options for moving forward. This case was unusual for me – the primary dispute and request for mediation was in relation to a husband and wife.  I suspect I will be thinking about this coaching session a lot over the next days – I was deeply touched by it. And I ended it thinking – and saying to the interpreter – “Wow. I bet there are so many women like this one. It’s heartbreaking.” And so it is, that I want to tell her story – making changes, so that her anonymity is guaranteed. I have no concrete purpose in telling it, except to bring visibility to women like her.  I say ‘women like her’ with a bit of reluctance – because I believe that ‘women like her’ aren’t all that different from ‘women like me’  - that the story I heard today unfolds in different forms everywhere – cutting across class, race, religion, ethnicity, educational background etc.

I also believe that the fact this woman is experiencing what she is experiencing is a damming statement about our society. Yes, our – not ‘society’, not ‘the society’ or ‘her community’ – our society.  I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – we all have responsibility for the culture we live in and the destruction around us. Our contributions to and involvement in our society take many different forms including, silence and passive complicity, active encouragement, active challenge, and unconscious encouragement (by unwittingly behaving in ways that undermine ethical values).  But that’s enough of my soapboxing – here’s Sasha’s story (with a few bits and pieces about our exchange).

Sasha is thirty four year’s old. She’s been this country for sixteen years. When she came she spoke no English. She had come with her new husband who spoke English to a decent level. She was scared, but excited to go live in another country. Eventually her family would be coming, too. She soon realized that the man she married was not the kind, gentle individual she had seen when they met and got to know each other. When they arrived in this country, she started to see his need for control, his temper, his impatience and what she would call his ‘cleverness.’

Fast forward, she is thirty four years old and her husband has left her. She has three children who are nine, thirteen and fifteen .  She is taking classes and her English is slowly improving. She understands more than she speaks. Her children are bilingual though their English is better than their mother-tongue. This means, she has discovered, that they do not do a very good job at translating for her – for example, when she has to talk with their teachers.

Sasha has no friends.  Her family has been in this country for almost all of the sixteen years that she has been here. When she told them of her situation, they offered up advice on different people she should talk to – mainly, public agencies – but no one from her family would go with her to make inquiries, support her with language or emotionally.

Sasha feels totally alone.

She also feels angry, frustrated, sad, and powerless.  And tired. She’s very tired of going from place to place to sort out different issues. And often, she has to struggle with language and/or poor service. When she goes to the Job Centre to sign on, she cries the whole way there because she is afraid they will yell at her. Her experience has been that they like to yell and talk aggressively. She has bad knees and a bad shoulder (the shoulder problem, I once heard is a common female ailment – our rotator’s cuffs get worn away and I imagine by the time she is forty, she’ll need surgery). Physically she is tired. Emotionally she is tired.

And, I feel it is appropriate to add, that I imagine she is soulfully tired.

Her children aren’t much help.  The teenagers, likely many young people their age, like to talk back and feign aloofness. When she asks them to help with household chores they resist. They say they are tired or too busy. Same goes for when she asks them to help her on the computer.  She’s aware that learning English and using the computer could open up her world – but it is a very slow journey when she is getting no support at home. She fears her children cannot be changed. 

On that point, we had a lovely exchange where she remembered a time when they were very small and used to pull up chairs and stand on them and help her with the dishes. One day her husband said that she shouldn’t let them do that – it would be bad for their hands. He said he would help her. And sometimes he did. But more often than not he didn’t. One of his ‘clever’ approaches was to send the children upstairs and stay with them, only to go down and offer to help when she was pretty much finished with all the washing up.

As we talked about this I encouraged her to see that her children once –upon-a-time wanted to be very helpful. I suggested that that desire is still within them, only right now it’s hidden. It can, however, be uncovered again. They can change.

We also talked about how the children must be struggling. They are probably feeling all that she is feeling and must be very confused. She would like to talk with them about what is happening in their family – but when she asks them to talk (as is often the case with children and teenagers) they say ‘I’m fine.’ She gave examples of how the children have expressed their frustration with their father and how they do not like having to ask him for things on her behalf.  The children, at times, just seem fed up with both parents. She thinks that they go back and forth between blaming each parent – if they are having an argument with her, for example, they will blame her for the family breakdown. If they are having an argument with their father, they will blame him.  We agreed that they must be very confused.

And we talked about her. ‘What are you good at?” I asked. “I’m not good at anything” was the reply. “Everybody’s good at something.” was my response. Eventually, she told me that at holiday times, when people from her ethnic community would get together, she would often have ideas on what food to make and how to arrange the table. The other women usually loved her ideas and wanted to use them. There we had it, something she’s good at. I suggested to her that she is also good at being organized – after all she runs a house with three children on her own. She keeps it clean, she looks after her children (cooking, cleaning etc), she’s studying English three days a week. 

And how about making friends – I asked if she was interested in doing that. Well, it turns out that she is worried about what people will think when they find out her husband has left her. She feels ashamed.

Shame. Wow. Tough stuff. We talked about how she isn’t unique in having a bad marriage. About how having a bad marriage doesn’t make her a bad person. Eventually we talked about the importance of her connecting with her own strength, with her power  - even though right now it feels like she doesn’t have either.

We talked about going on strike. Could she, I wondered, send a message to her children by going on strike – not cooking or cleaning. She figures that wouldn’t work – they would just happily be messy and go live on junk food. Maybe. It was only an idea – an idea for someone who felt like she had no options – like she had done all she could. 

Throughout this conversation, Sasha cried periodically. Nothing dramatic. I would first see the water fill up her eyes. And then a few tears would trickle. Early on she had left the room to get a stack of tissues. When it was all over, I asked Sasha what she felt she had got – if anything – out of our conversation. She said she felt more confident that ‘social workers’ – though she knows I am not a social worker ‘ could come over and hear her story and listen without judging her.  She felt more confident that they wouldn’t simply take her children away from her. That was a light bulb moment – she’s scared that in seeking assistance, her children might be taken away.

We came up with a few steps she could take immediately. One included going to her GP and explaining that her language skills are not good enough to respond to the letter she received about a psychological consultation (for her depression). The letter was asking her to call for an initial consultation on the phone and had a form to fill out with a number of questions about her mental health. It has a two-week response deadline on it. Thankfully, this had come up in our conversation and we could point out to her that she needs to take action by the last day of October. 

She clearly needs an advocate – someone to bat for her with all the public agencies. Often, when she goes to talk with people they are not very nice and/or they are rushed. Her language constraints become even more constraining in this kind of environment.   She needs emotional support. We agreed that there are organisations that might be able to help her with all these things.

It wasn’t said out loud, but it was clear. Sasha also needs love, tenderness, caring, and affirmations of her worth as a human being.

When I asked her what she was looking forward to over the next couple of weeks, she started to cry. Nothing. She isn’t looking forward to anything. She cannot imagine anything that was going to happen in the next two weeks that would make her smile.

She asked us if we wanted a drink. Previously we had said ‘no, thank you.’ But I asked the interpreter if she had time to stay. When she yes, I said we would very much like to stay for a drink. And so Sasha brought out a tray of biscuits, candy bars, two glasses of soda. She was smiling when she did that.

So much more I can/want to say. But it seems best to end there…thinking about our society how alone, tired, frustrated and scared so many people feel within it.

I am in the line for security at the airport. It is a longer line than usual, but thankfully I arrived early enough to not care. Behind me stands a daughter and a mother. At one point, daughter says loudly: “I was so calm this morning. Now I’m totally stressed out. Mom, you’re stressful. Travelling with you is stressful. I hate this. When I’m alone, travelling is not stressful. This is awful.”  About thirty seconds after she finishes her last sentence, I turn and look at her, catching her eye. I say nothing. The line moves slowly. I badly want to speak to the daughter, but as she continues in angry mode, I assume it would not be well received. At one point, the mother is commenting on how she had been cold outside, but now inside is warm and so she will take off her sweater. As she takes off her sweater, I observe: ‘Of course, you know it will be cold in the airplane.’

I hadn’t done it consciously, but I quickly realize this was a tester – to see how they might react to me entering their verbal space. The mom, sweater off, simply says – ‘Well, yes’ and in a tone that doesn’t seem inviting to me. I’ve started enough random conversations with strangers to know when they aren’t interested. I look at the people in front of me. I look at the floor. 

Finally, I cannot bear it anymore – the bubbling inside me. We are at a standstill for a few minutes and the mom-daughter conversation gets loud again. When there is a pause, I look up and catch the daughter’s eye and I say it: “I’m sorry, totally none of my business, but when I hear you, I hear myself. I mean, before, when you were saying how stressful your mom is – that was me, before, maybe five years ago. Thing is, yeh, your mom is going to do stuff that annoys you, but how calm you are about it is up to you. How much you enjoy your trip is up to you.” Pause, while my heart quickens its pace as I wait to for her/their response.

“Yeh, I know. You are totally right” shrugs daughter.

And with that, we continue to talk. Turns out daughter is twenty-three and mom fifty-six.  The daughter is thin, perhaps five foot five with long straw blond hair. She looks quite soft. But then she talks and you can feel the anger she carries, the hardness inside her. She thinks her mom is the cause of it all. She explains how she is worried about this, how she wonders if she should talk to someone professionally about this (remember, I’m in the US). She thinks she should meditate. “After all”, she observes, “I’m never like this with my friends.”  

We behave with immediate family in ways that we do not behave with others – we have no boundaries. I say this and daughter gets excited: “Exactly – she has no boundaries!”  I don’t want to take sides, but I am feeling for mom here. Using an example of conflict they experienced before coming out to the airport, I observe - based on something she says  - that it seems if the daughter’s friends behaved the same way, she wouldn’t react with such levels of stress – and she nods her head. I’m thinking at this point: daughter has mom in a box labeled in capital letters, perhaps red: STRESS. She sees mom and she sees the box.

Most of the conversation is with the daughter. The mom is silent except when I ask her something directly. She is soft-spoken. She explains they are on their way to a brother’s/son’s fiance’s bridal shower, going first to LaGuardia and then Newark (daughter criticizes her for giving too much detail).  She is looking forward to the trip. Daughter is not. Mom confirms she would like for the daughter to have fun and that whenever they travel she enjoys it and wishes her daughter would also.

I learn a bit more about their family dynamic – the daughter has four brothers and no sisters, while the mom is one of five daughters, no brothers.  “Perhaps” observes daughter “this is the thing, I’m just so different from her. I can’t be the sisterly type. I’ve got a lot of boy energy.” The mom suggests that it might be a big load to be the only girl in a family.

We shift subjects when focus on taking off shoes and putting stuff in in security boxes. I think we will part ways after a few words about my being off to London, but then I find them next to me while I am on the bench putting on my shoes. I am about to say goodbye, when I have that bubbling again. “So, I know that your mom does things which annoy you – it is hard for a mom not to and it is easy for a daughter to get annoyed. But I sense that your mom loves you. And she doesn’t want to stress you out. It’s a gift – a mom who loves you and wants to spend time with you. Not everyone has that.””

 “I know” daughter says “I know and you know what, I don’t want be like this. I don’t like being like this. This isn’t me. It’s who I am in response to my mom”

“No, its not you” I venture. And then I add, “It’s who you are in this dynamic.”

“Exactly,” she says “It is who I am in response to my mom being so stressful.”

“Hmm. Yes, you are stressed out by a dynamic between you and your mom” I feed back, as I sense that our conversation is ready to close.

“Do give meditation a try. And it is great that at 23 you are aware that this is not you, and that you want to change it. It is an early start - I did not come to such awareness until I was a lot older.  I hope you enjoy your trip.” I offer up as a conclusion.

The mom leans over and gives me a hug with a quiet “Thank you.” The daughter says warmly “Thanks for saying something and sharing your experience.”

Sometimes I get it wrong – I stick my nose in it and people get annoyed and angry. I rarely do it to give advice. I usually do it just to be social and because I enjoy conversation and learning about/from other people. Nevertheless, it isn’t always welcomed.

But it is exchanges like this that make the risk of random connections worth it.

And it is exchanges like this that I look back on and wish I had expressed my gratitude, had said ‘thank you’ to mother and daughter. Not simply for interesting conversation – but for helping me reflect on and learn from/for my own relationships.

They won’t hear it, but I’ll say it anyway here (and now, as the plane starts it’s descent into London): “Thank you mom and daughter. Thank you.” 

 "...how to engage and connect...recognising our shared values was crucial.  These laid important foundations for our dialogue. In an organisation that emphasises rules and targets, compassion and empathy for others has been lost. Restoring this to our workplace conversation has been empowering, and opened up the possibilities of change." Jane Lanley - a changemaker in pursuit of greater equality in her workplace

In my last post, I posed the question: “What gifts can compassion bring to us when we are engaging with social challenge, change and collaboration?”  Well, this past week I got an inspiring answer to that question, courtesy of one of my clients - Jane Lanley (not her real name). 

I wrote about this woman in Engagement - What's is it? She has bravely raised the issue of gender discrimination/inequality in her workplace. Here is our story. We were at a meeting together where one of the speakers talked about the importance of promoting gender equality. I commented that in doing so we often focus on numbers, i.e., how many women in senior roles in a workplace, and engage very little with the crux of the matter: values, beliefs, behaviours and culture change. Jane came up to me afterwards and said she wanted to know more. I sent her the Runnymede Trust report, Snowy Peaks. She read it and told me that she valued how it affirmed her perceptions of what was going on in her workplace. I sensed that the story in the report helped her to feel less isolated and more confident in her conclusions. This is important because, when she raised the issue with colleagues, some were more than ready to respond with:  'Oh, you women are being too sensitive.'   

After a meeting where the Chief Executive in her organisation announced a new member to Executive Board, she spoke out about the need for change – asking if the new Board member was ‘another White male.’ She subsequently drew upon the findings of recent research from the organisation's equality team and wrote a letter setting out her concerns about gender equality.  They weren't her concerns alone. Amidst bullying and sniggers, she got over a hundred signatures from other staff members before sending a letter to the Chief Executive. 

I saw Jane two weeks ago. She mentioned that she was scheduled to have a meeting this week with the Chief Executive to discuss her letter. She was clearly nervous about it and I offered to help her prepare. On Tuesday last week, we had an hour-long coaching session. Jane started out the conversation in what I would call typical activist positioning. She was focused on the power and status gap between her and the Executive, on his lack of 'enlightened' understanding of the situation, and on the likelihood that the meeting would start off with him reeling off a list of all that he has tried to do for gender equality to date. She also kept reminding herself of how invisible she would be to the Chief Executive - to the Oxbridge man in a suit.

 "I felt invisible, and [I came] to realize how I could be visible without being aggressive." 

By the end of the conversation, Jane was in a different position. Firstly, she came to recognise that she can control her visibility in the meeting - and this need not require her to be aggressive, loud or adversarial. Secondly, she saw the Chief Executive in a different light. For example, she supposed he could be equally as frustrated as her by the situation. After all, he seemed to genuinely feel he had taken a lot of positive steps to address the issue. Yet, he had been publicly exposed as having made little progress on the matter. She speculated that he might be struggling with the organisational culture himself – like her he is likely to be surrounded by supporters and aggressors alike. She considered that he didn’t lack a serious interest in the issue, but lacked a full understanding of it. 

She also, by the end of the session, had thoughts about what they might have in common, e.g. a desire to uphold the values of their organisation and a passion for social justice (she learned he was once an energetic political activist). She became determined to go into the meeting in the spirit of pursuing common interests and collaboration. And she realised that the very skills which made her good at her job could also be useful in managing the meeting effectively: the ability to be a an active listener and to engage people with the tasks they tend to resist the most.

Jane went into the meeting nervous, but confident and looking forward to making a connection with the Chief Executive based on shared values. We haven’t done the full debrief on the meeting, but she has reported via email that it went exceptionally well. He made good eye contact, asked questions, listened to her observations and acknowledged he needed help finding the answers. They not only found common ground but he committed to taking personal responsibility for delivering an improvement in the situation.

What does this have to do with compassion? Compassion is about understanding, non-judgment and forgiveness. Expressing compassion can mean putting away the labels, asking the ‘why’ when it comes to someone’s behavior and remembering our common vulnerabilities. It seems to me that this is what Jane did. As a result she connected with her Chief Executive in a way that laid a foundation for frank discussion and a commitment to collaboration.   As a result, she took a significant step in her journey to create change - and brought the Chief Executive with her.

Last night, I gave a talk at an All Ears event on my personal journey with compassion. Seven years ago, even three years ago, I never really thought about compassion - or at least not with that word. Despite working for the last fifteen years in social change, human rights and equal opportunities, 'compassion' has not been a word much used in my vocabulary - neither by friends nor by colleagues. A reference that stands out in my mind is David Cameron’s 'compassionate conservatism' which I associate with his 'hug a hoody' comment in 2006. When I think of compassion in that context, it makes me think it refers to middle and upper class people having pity for 'poor' and 'disadvantaged' people. As the story of my personal journey illustrates, I now believe that compassion is not about 'pity', but is about human connection, understanding, forgiveness, non-judgment. Compassion, if not synonymous with, is at least an essential element of love or loving-kindess. I concluded my talk by saying that I've spent the last year or so integrating compassion into my work. This means I try to embed it into how I interact with people and address social change. And now, today, I've been wondering:  “What gifts can compassion bring to us when we are engaging with social challenge, change and collaboration?”

As the speakers (Fight for Peace) who followed me last night affirmed, one quality compassion brings is a particular lens through which to see people. Conventionally, policymakers and perhaps society more widely tend to see low-income communities through a lens of lack and deficiency. We are repeatedly shown images of violence and told about lack of education, lack of 'family values', lack of social responsibility. Infrequently, do we hear the stories of people abundant with love, creativity, strength, and wisdom doing the best they can in the circumstances that surround them - often sadly constrained by the attitudes of others, structural barriers, and sometimes their own narrow sense of self-worth.  Compassion guides us to see everyone for their worth, not their lack. A compassionate assumption is: every single human being has worth, value and a positive contribution to make to those around them. Compassion also guides us to see our selves and others through a lens of kindness and understanding.  Every single human being is vulnerable to doubt, making mistakes, getting lost, becoming confused. Yet, we sometimes find it hard to accept and forgive human frailty.

Too many of us connect with our selves and others through stories of blame, guilt, regret, criticism, and judgment. Such stories usually guide us to move through the world with anger, frustration, resentment, sadness, low self-esteem, low confidence, a sense of isolation and distrust of one another. Compassion has the power to unleash us from these stories. Guided by compassion we are more able and more likely to ask: 'What are our dreams, what do we value in ourselves and how can we work together so that we can all shine?"

Some questions about compassion alive for me today are:

"What does it look like when we formulate social policy and create public services based on belief in the worth and value of every human being and recognising that everyone has a gift to share?"

"How do we grow more leaders who nurture compassionate human connection and sow seeds for creativity and collaboration?"

"What happens if we address challenging social issues, e.g., workplace discrimination, using the lens of compassion? How would our conversations and collaborative efforts differ from what we often experience when trying to be changemakers?"