To Risk, From Singing the Living Tradition, #658, Anonymous
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another
is to risk exposing our true self.
To place our ideas—our dreams—
before the crowd is to risk loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
To live is to risk dying.
African proverb: (I found this in The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman)
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.
From President Barack Obama’s inaugural address, January 2009
Recall that earlier generations … understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please.
Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
We are the keepers of this legacy.
A version of the golden rule from Sweet Honey and the Rock
Shall I do unto others before they do unto me
Shall I arm myself to protect myself from harm and injury?
No, no that is not the message I learned at my mother’s knee
When she told me to do unto others only what I’d have them do unto me.
I offer these thoughts about mindfulness in leadership, something I was not always successful at maintaining as I served in political leadership. Many of you work for social justice through your profession, your business, elected office, volunteer social action and/or artistic expression. I imagine that you face a consistent balancing act between the goals and ideals that drive you and the need to maintain your personal balance, your sense of self, your internal grace. For many of us the need for change takes on the urgency of the parable of the race between the lion and the gazelle. It feels as if we are in a race against time. But, without a maintaining mindfulness we are less effective than we want and need to be.
I’ve spent a lot of time all over the state encouraging people to run for the legislature. People often recite to me all the reasons they think they couldn’t run or serve in politics. The list usually includes things like,
In fact, I tell them, those qualities make people well-suited to run for and serve in political office.
But, running for election and serving in office does require that we step out on a limb; that we reach outside ourselves, outside our own view of the world; that we take the risk of listening to others who have perspectives that are different from ours, the risk of speaking up even if we don’t have all the answers, the risk of looking foolish when the changes we achieve are imperfect, the risk of disappointing our friends, the risk of losing an election.
I served as a member of the Vermont House for 12 years, four of them as Speaker. This was wonderful, meaningful, frustrating, rewarding, fun and hard work and I am grateful for having done it. Some of the work has been scary. Risky. I disappointed people. Not because I made a wrong decision necessarily, but because I made a decision. I initiated action. I made choices with incomplete information and imperfect outcomes. I made people angry. My Freyne nickname began as Lady Gaye and was downgraded to Simple Symington. I’ve won many elections, but not all of them.
Leadership requires both a sense of purpose and being willing to take risks. To take risks and maintain a sense of purpose requires a centering force, a “presence of mind”. Some might call this God, others might call it love or grace, and there are probably other names for it. Mindfulness works for me.
Needless to say, I didn’t always succeed at retaining mindfulness. I found it particularly difficult when I was running for Governor last summer and fall. But, to the extent that I was successful, what helped me keep my mindfulness through the noise and vulnerability of political leadership? My family, my faith, reminders to listen first, and to breathe.
When I observe political leaders I look for how they keep centered or mindful.
Thirty years ago I had the chance to speak with Dr. Helen Caldicott, someone who was then and is still working against nuclear proliferation. I found the size of the challenge she was tackling so daunting I couldn’t imagine getting out of bed each day to face work of that scale. I asked her how she kept at that work. She answered that her faith gave her the focus and the strength to do her work. I remember her answer because it caught me by surprise. In my early 20’s, after a decade of not attending a church, I hadn’t thought about faith as a source of strength for social action.
I loved David McCullough’s biography of John Adams, our country’s second president. McCullough conveys Adams’ as a very human person, self-professed as “unsuited to the world of politics”. He was impatient and could lose his way by becoming overly pompous and self important. As vice president he would bore his senate colleagues with philosophical monologues and petty arguments over, for example, what title to use in addressing the President. But when his words were guided by his convictions and tempered by humility there was no voice as effective as his in conveying the innate freedoms on which the founding fathers declared the United States an independent country and established its constitution. He carried the day in garnering the unanimous support of congress for declaring independence.
What kept him mindful? John Adams said his wife and best friend, Abigail, was his ballast. He seemed most prone to lose his mindfulness when he was too long away from her. He also spoke about his daily prayers that “dispose me to bear with more composure some disagreeable circumstances that attend my situation.”
I imagine that President Obama has more than a few “disagreeable circumstances that attend his situation”. (This weekend I saw my first “Impeach Obama” bumper sticker at the supermarket.) One of the things I find so compelling about Barack Obama is his composure, his clear sense of purpose and seeming lack of pretention. He seems to always have his sights clear, his vision for the country at the ready.
In analyzing his inaugural address last month, the New York Times listed words that he used frequently. They missed or decided not to highlight two words that I noticed even in just hearing him deliver the speech: Faith and Humility. In fact, he began his address with the words, “My fellow citizens, I stand here humbled by the task before us…”
Humility makes politicians better listeners, better collaborators and more likely to focus on getting work accomplished rather than who gets credit for it. I hope President Obama will continue to place a value on humility throughout his presidency. Michele, Sasha and Malia will provide reminders that the measure of his success as a political leader can’t come at the expense of the humility required to be a parent and spouse, and that is likely to carry over to his leadership.
Clearly, Obama is a man of faith and will rely on his faith as a source of strength. Faith is a source of mindfulness, as a tempering force against pretention, distraction, or personal gain. In The American Creed, A Biography of the Declaration of Independence Forrest Church argues that throughout its history America’s leaders have recognized that our country is a union of faith and freedom, “in which faith elevates freedom and freedom tempers faith.” Faith “protects freedom from itself, tempering excess of individual license by postulating a higher moral code…"
Faith helps us check our sense of direction before, like the lion and the gazelle, we simply begin running.
Faith and humility will help President Obama maintain the mindfulness he needs to lead our country in this time of crisis.
President Obama cannot do this work alone. He needs all of us – all those people who stood on the capitol mall or stopped in the tracks of their days to hear him last month - as partners in mindful and purposeful work to strengthen the world we pass on to generations who follow us.
We need our families, our faith, our listening and breathing, to help us to use our voices well in that work.
In closing, from President Obama’s inaugural address, January 20:
The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit, to choose our better history, to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness…. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested,… with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.