ARTICLES

badhairday I have a lot on my mind. I think about the big issues - global warming, the ongoing wars in the Middle East, mistreatment of animals, human rights crises all over the globe, destruction of the rainforests, the lingering recession and more - and wonder whether I’m even close to doing enough to help resolve them. I think about things that are of a more personal nature, such as tracking down that intermittent yet persistent leak in my garage, trying to coax myself into adding more vegetables and whole foods to my diet, the eternal yet unrequited quest to organize my basement, deciding whether to use Frontline on my indoor cats, figuring out how to market my services creatively and with integrity, updating my budget - and again, I wonder whether I’m doing enough to address them. I think about how to be a more giving friend, sister and daughter. I think about how to better serve my clients. These things are, I feel, worthy of my quality time, energy and attention. They are weighty and important. They are the kinds of things mature adults think about.

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lostandfound “This is the first time I’ve decided to leave a job without having something else lined up,” my friend Tonya* confessed to our small women’s support group. We applauded her daring, self-affirming choice and offered words of encouragement to bolster her confidence in stepping into the unknown. She knew she was doing the right thing, but wasn’t at all comfortable with the prospect of not knowing what was next.

perfect_assistant A couple of weeks ago I was on the phone with my fabulous assistant Joanne, who had emailed a file for me to review. It was a PDF file, and after a recent hard-drive crash I had forgotten to download Adobe Reader to my shiny new drive and so, alas, I could not open the file. I spent a few minutes fussing and fuming, then realized what needed to be done and began the download process. At first I figured it would be best to call Joanne back, after the download was complete and I’d had a chance to review the file, but decided instead to use this found time to go over the many items on our joint to-do lists.

ItAllCounts My client sat before me, shoulders slumped and eyes downcast. She sighed heavily with an air of somber resignation. Just moments before she had been brimming with enthusiasm, her posture erect and her voice alive with possibility. Together we had brainstormed different ways she could explore an idea she had about work – not a practical idea about ways she could improve her current job, but a sparkly idea for an entirely new form of work. Work that might fulfill her sense of purpose and nourish her soul. Work that could nudge her lovingly out of bed in the morning. Work that would allow her to develop her innate talents and creativity. Work that that might even be fun.

I turned the music up. Maybe the extra volume would supply me with the Christmas spirit I seemed to be lacking and jumpstart my enthusiasm for putting up decorations. Pausing in a roomful of opened boxes and tattered bags stuffed to the brim with memories, I waited for the music to work its magic. Nothing. I sat down and closed my eyes, giving myself full permission to halt the decorating process and, instead, simply invite my favorite Christmas music to infuse me with its exuberant energy.

truelove At the risk of being seen as hopelessly clichéd, I decided to write about love for my February column. With the inevitable onslaught of media attention on the commercial ways our culture defines and celebrates love, I felt a certain responsibility to offer a different view, one that doesn’t romanticize romance (lovely as it can be).

I think, for the most part, we’re terribly confused about love. We often equate it with a certain kind of feeling that is reflected through attraction, affection and acts of caring, bravery or even wild abandon. Love has been described as a force that sweeps reason to the side and calls us to do things we might never consider in our seemingly saner moments. And that’s the particular aspect of our cultural beliefs about love that I want to challenge: the belief that love is somehow separate from reason.