Do less, part 2

I just finished another funny little cartoon movie about a serious environmental topic. My Son the Radiologist introduced me to the technology a few months ago and we have both been playing with it.

A note comes from Peter, beloved environmental elder and former chairman of my organization’s board: “This is wonderful. I do believe you have found your medium. Please do more and more and more.”

This is true. I have found my medium. Little skits and cartoons. Who knew?

I have done and tried to do much bigger things but the emerging theme for me is one that I learned from My Daughter the Feldenkrais Practitioner: Do less. I have an uneasy relationship with ambition. On the one hand, I recognize that because women of my generation were never encouraged to do much at all, we have a duty to make the most of our gifts. On the other hand, although I have successfully pushed my own envelope and that of other women, ambition sets a trap for me. It can get in the way of my truth.

Pardon me while I navel gaze intensely for a moment but parts of this may speak to you.

I have to hold lightly this new discovery about my knack for cartooning because the ego would like to make a whole new career path out of it. Ego would put significance ahead of the truth. “Significance” says this is a way to get important information out—stress important. Truth says that I have a natural gift of humor and a way with words plus intelligence and goodwill—none of which I am responsible for but all of which can be cultivated and can be of service.

My truest path is to be of service. Others can and must be ambitious. That doesn’t work for me. Yes, I push my comfort zone but the moment I do so because I think I should, rather than as a joyful exploration of possibilities, I run into ego. The ego wants to make more, more, more of things.

Even with the little cartoons I see this happening. What? Only 87 hits on my first one? Nobody has sent the second one out to their Facebook friends? Sandra hasn’t responded to it? I did it for her!

The reason I have come to hate persuasion/promotion activities, and yet inevitably get involved in them, is because I have gifts related to the essence of persuasion but I can’t exercise them without getting tangled up in my ego. There is a push-pull that leaves me emotionally exhausted. I not only want to do the work I can do; I want it to work. And when it doesn’t seem to work in the way I think it should I get disappointed, feel sorry for myself, and give up. These are ego responses. Wanting response is an ego response.

Still, response is important. Peter’s response was important. Being of service means responding to needs, occasions, people, and triggering response of some kind, often the same kind. It is a dance back and forth, keeping in touch with the wellsprings of joy in oneself and the response from others, without being too touchy about the former or too dependent upon the latter.

But the recurring motto for me seems to be, Do less. (See my post from last year.) Take everything I have learned and do small things with it, not big things. Throw a spontaneous dinner party for visiting Congolese. Write Bible story skits for church. Make funny little cartoon movies about serious environmental topics. Go back, as a mature woman, to a country where you lived when you were young and didn’t fully know yourself. Teach a friend how to make a simple jacket out of beautiful cloth. Keep learning from your children. Keep in touch with the unfolding personality of your precious grandchild. Write a blog, not a book.

I can think of ways to enlarge each of these things, to expect more of them and extract more from them, to take them to the next step, to reach more people, yada yada. But that quickly translates into “should.” After a lifetime of “should” I want to step back from that, to discipline myself to hew close to the truth.