2015

It is finally time, to say goodbye to the year 2014. I love the spirit of reflection a 'new year' conjures. It forces you to acknowledge,'yep, another one down, how'd you do? what could have been better? what are you proud of?'

This past year has been monumental for me, more so than I will admit. With it's inception, I felt lost, as if no place or person or purpose would tie me down, or make the fuziness of my viewpoint vanish. Sitting at the same place I was when I wrote this 'retrospective' post last year, hindsight is my friend. 2014 seemed daunting, but I breathed through it and unearthed some meaningful lessons.

In the past year:
I drank coffee while listening to the rainforest of Costa Rica hum
I packed up my belongings in my Jetta and drove to Montana, then to Portland to sleep in my sister's bunk house
I wrote dispassionate cover letters and scowered craigslists' pages like some 'how-to' guide to getting your shit together
I tickled my nephew to pieces, fed him, fell asleep with him on my chest, became inspired by his daily discoveries in our de-glammed quotidian existence
I listened to the rain and did my yoga and was rejected by more jobs than I am willing to admit
I slang coffee without latte art and contemplated my worth
I moved into a house with a duo of twenty-somethings and got a 'real' job at a behavioral healthcare facility
By clients, I was yelled at, laughed with, hit on, threatened, bullied, and enveloped into the strangest kinship
I learned how to listen to people, to bear witness to their experience
I am still learning how to leave my 'work at work'
I logged grueling miles up trails and over bridges and through logging roads to train for the Portland marathon (that I ran in 4hours, 4minutes)--with the deep pain, I felt daily endorphin-induced ecstasy
Running taught me how to let-go, to be one with the uncomfortability and keep going--that everything comes in waves--the pain, the numbness, the blisters, the adrenaline
'just for fun' with my college friend, I hiked 50 grueling miles in 72 hours over ancient lava fields and oceans of obsidian in Oregon's Three Sister's Wilderness--toenails and arrogance as collateral
I giggled with my room-mates, danced in my kitchen, had weekly 'family dinners' picnic style in our lawn made out of fresh-picked vegetables from my first garden
I fell in love on top of Table Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge and haven't looked back since.

And here I am, in my kitchen at my parent's house, in the same computer nook I wrote 5th grade poetry and googled how to properly adorn a condom. In years previous, I would be ruffling through contact lists to 'make a plan' for the best evening ever--to get that kiss with a perfect stranger. My plans for tonight consist of a casual dinner with an old friend, and then reading bad online astrology predictions for Aries in 2015 with my sister and my puppy before we fall in an undefined mass of goose down and wool socks on my parents bed, most likely between 12 and 1am. And I've never been more pleased. Everything comes around.

Time is not how we see time. It is not measured in days lived, but in lessons learned.
So here is to another year, making those gyri in our overwhelmed melons groove towards balance and content! 

Do Right, Fear No Man

All the translations of the Yoga Sutras I come across link brahmacarya, or moderation, with courage. The connection makes sense when we consider the state of intemperance. Nothing is more debilitating than the dread associated with immoderation in any area of our lives. The state of active addition is accompanied by an overwhelming sense of doom. Even in less extreme situations, that fear is profoundly destructive to our belief in ourselves.

At the core of intemperance in any form is the mistaken belief that we are not OK as we are. Convinced that we are imperfect, we carry real pain. The cause of our suffering, however, is not our imperfection but our mistaken belief in our imperfection. Acting under the erroneous assumption that we are imperfect, we reach outside ourselves to create balance, to end our suffering. Naturally this is unsuccessful, so we redouble our efforts and demand even more. All our effort, all our striving, merely worsens our situation and deepens our conviction that we are somehow flawed. Caught up in this cycle of chronic suffering and misguided attempts to relieve our pain, we spend our days out of balance and in conflict with ourselves.

The solution is twofold. To begin with, we have to stop whatever it is we are doing that creates imbalance. When you are stuck in a hole, stop digging. The second step is to examine the beliefs that drive us to intemperance in the first place. Brahmacarya concerns the first step, summoning the courage to step away from the downward spiral. We discover that there is a power in nondoing. As we practice moderation, a wind begins to fill our sails. We find that the ever-present anxiety that accompanies immoderation evaporates. We realize that our fear, which grew out of a specific behavior, had contaminated every aspect of our lives. And as we finally walk away from the food, the sex, the alcohol, the debt, the fill-in-the-blank, we leave our fear behind as well. Suddenly we can begin to meet people's eyes again. We are no longer making up excuses for our reality. The colors of our lives become brighter and bolder. We find that when we do right, we fear no man.

--- An excerpt from Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenisons' Meditations from the Mat 

Lessons for Practice-- Re: Haiti After the Earthquake

            The further I get in my education, the more I realize that learning is a never-ending process. A salient lesson I have encountered in my last semester of college has taken place in a final reflective sweep of my education at the University of Montana. I have recognized that any subject of any discipline can be viewed as the interaction of interdependent and cyclical forces. It is with this perspective that I approach Paul Farmer’s book, Haiti After the Earthquake (2011), in an attempt to siphon out lessons for practice in international social work from Farmer’s medical jargon and clinical mindset. Farmer’s account of pre and post-earthquake Haiti illustrates an exemplary case study for many issues of social work; in this essay I will focus on lessons of ‘acute-on-chronic,’ local expertise, transformation of worldviews, and assuaging the unremitting contradictions of humanitarian being.

            Paul Farmer eloquently weaves top-tier and on-the-ground perspectives through a handful of coined phrases, my favorite being ‘acute-on-chronic.’ As a medical professional, he reminds us that immediate illnesses and social ills alike must be viewed in terms of the chronic history of symptoms and infrastructural fragility facilitating the onset of struggle. With this, Farmer reminds us to always contextualize the present issue with knowledge of history, systemic injustice, generational trauma, and other contributions to the social mélange. In essence, Farmer reminds practitioners to confront problems with a holistic lens—to account for the delicate ecological nature of social ills and not attribute blame to any one cause or propone any one solution.

            The idea of ‘acute-on-chronic’ segues into Farmer’s dialogue about the importance of language in our conceptualizations of practice. Through language, ‘experts’ construct certain realities. Farmer uses the example of the use of  ‘natural disaster’ to describe the earthquake in Haiti. He claims that the disaster in Haiti was in no way ‘natural,’ but was a social disaster resulting from, “policy decision[s] made far from the…affected areas,” (213). Farmer challenges the reader to recognize who is present at the table when big decisions or definitions are made; we should always question the agenda at hand, examining who is benefiting from the policy prescriptions. Furthermore we should identify whose perspectives are missing from the equation and “[seek] to echo and amplify the voices of those we encountered as well as those silenced,” (2).

            As Farmer stresses in the aforementioned quote, and to continue with the role of language in social work practice, I am learning that it is essential to let those affected define their experiences, problem, and solutions. It is necessary to vouch for the inclusion of locals into the decision-making and implementation process. As Farmer quotes Hillary Clinton, “we cannot any longer in the twenty-first century be making decisions for people and their futures without listening and without giving them the opportunity to be as involved and make as many decisions as possible,” (90).

The case study of Haiti honestly examines the role of humanitarian aid in the development process. His account attests to the fact that ingenuity and hard earned experiential knowledge should not be wasted on top-down innovation and implementation, as this route often proves futile. There is a vast potential of local expertise that often goes untapped. Our role as social workers should be to crack the well—organize an efficient means of fostering the flow.

             Even on an interpersonal level, I must practice letting go of a solution-driven mindset and recognize when bearing witness is the deficient resource. As well-to-do Americans, in the words of Farmer, “it’s tempting to focus on immediate clinical questions,” (118) and facilitate the urge to ‘fix,’ as opposed to recognizing the value of inaction. As a westerner I put a premium on visible progress, but there are times when my agenda does not suit the present situation and in fact can stifle change. I have to remember to let go of my way of doing things and practice holding the uncomfortable space, allowing for a humble exchange of knowledge and experience.

            Farmer speaks to the interplay of praxis and policy in one of his chapters; I can also apply this to the conceptualization of opposing tensions within the self—that social work is the interplay of action and reflection. As social workers, our engagement with individuals or communities has reciprocal, and indeed transformational, effects on our personal selves. It is essential to examine the push/pull factors within our own selves in order to explore the motives behind our participation in this work.

            Taking from Fetcher’s Professional is Personal, one can recognize that our work is not passive. Social workers are racialized, socialized, historicized creatures who cannot help the tides of sociopolitical time nor check our worldviews at the door. Personally, I must be aware of the deep-seated guilt that accompanies my status as a privileged white American. I must also reconcile with the fact that people may only view me as a potential dollar sign, temporarily invested in a project for self-centered gains. As Isla asked recently in a class lecture, “how do we balance the responsibility of coming from a country that has access to virtually all of the world’s resources,” and in contrast practice being present with a humble spirit?

            In learning from Farmer, my classmates, and various voices from the readings over the semester, I believe this is answered in the process. To paraphrase Rilke, we must live the questions themselves. We must also learn to balance the fundamental tensions between being, at all times, the learner and the teacher, the researcher and the subject, the doctor and the patient, the sojourner and the native. Likewise at the micro-level are macro-level tensions between relating international experiences back to local issues in our home communities. How can we transform the vision of globalization to facilitate connections in terms of promoting social justice?  

            Social work is a balancing act; we straddle incongruous paths, digging for a nugget of change out of obstinate soil. Farmer’s book has reminded me to always remain a humble learner, even if social norms label me ‘the expert.’ Every human’s individual experience is incomprehensible, yet it is through the power of human stories that I believe we can reconcile coming home to advocate the process of reverse mission and accompaniment. In the end, as Farmer alludes to, we must put our energy in drawing out people’s stories—look for shared patterns, themes, to develop deeper discussion that probes into peoples’ experience so that we can extract, expand, and humanize the struggles against injustice abroad and at home.

           

Adjust My Sails

Sometimes it is so difficult for me to be grateful for the space I inhabit in the moment. If it's not school today it's work tomorrow--why do we always need a scapegoat for the discontent? 

I only have 5 weeks left of college. That statement incites terror and elation in one deep breath. The closer I get to the end, the more menial the tasks seem. I am itching for the future--the unremitting gaze towards a place beyond the present could be the source of much angst. 

I must learn to bask in gratitude for the tasks at hand because what lies ahead will come with a-whole-nother goodie bag of challenges. The reality is we have to do things we don’t want to in life. 

We have to fight apathy every day when all we want to do is play. Yet it is about flourishing in both acts--finding the way to make your rock your thing, like Sisyphus. 

Merely by a shift of cognition can we somersault the negative resistance. Right now my studies feel like a current I arduously paddle against, if merely I adjust my sails I can gain some mileage from this peculiar vessel we call ‘higher education.’ 

I still have so much to learn, I must practice patience--life's greatest lesson. Everything has a lesson, a purpose. Don’t rush it. Time is not as we see time, not in minutes lived but in lessons learned. I must rejoice in the lesson for today.