Go Your Own Way

You gave away the things you loved, and one of them was me

Q: Hi Nilofer, I've been enjoying this column and getting value from it. It is startling how often you speak to something very present for me on that day. I'm wondering if you would be open and interested in sharing and expanding on the ideas in your last post about power for our podcast audience? Aka, a recorded conversation for my podcast, this week. I think your authority and wisdom here could bring a powerful message for our audience. Let me know if you would want to do that. Thanks.

Hey there, This Week,

Thanks for finding the value in this column. Paul and I are not kidding when we say we do a happy dance with every share, every comment, every sustaining dollar. "Startlingly” applicable is the kind of compliment that makes us want to do the full-on Snoopy fast-feet-type dance over here.

Normally, @work columns are about helping someone in a situation with someone else. My contribution is to add whatever perspective or framework I can.

But this email has raised a big question for me, as This Week and I have a history. So, I’m going to process it in public here, even as I worry I’m too close and still too raw, reader.

The underlying question was already in my heart for a different reason. It seems like all my different circles are talking and yearning for unity, civility, and kindness. Saying how 2020 voters should reach across the divide and “bridge the gap.” Each time that’s come up, I’m like, what does that even mean? I understand that to unite is to form a whole. But what if you and I don't share values, or if you and I don’t agree on the facts, or how one’s person’s interest was served far more than the others? What is wholeness without Onlyness?

In other words, if we bridge the gap, what are we fighting for, together? Until we know that, we know nothing. I don’t want to stay in a relationship with people with whom I hold no common bond. I want to work alongside those who share a common aim.

HOW IT ALL STARTED

Your email was surprising to receive, This Week. You remember our podcast context, don’t you? At TEDWomen 2018, you approached me with an offer of help. You said something like, “wouldn’t it be amazing if we could create a podcast series on Onlyness?” You had been podcasting for a year, and each conversation you had used the Onlyness framework because I had done a pivotal interview for you, early in your first season? 

Would I be interested in joining forces with you? 

You asked that we turn the Onlyness Canvas into a This American Life-type story. I would teach and structure the methodology; you would bring all the podcasting mojo and marketing. Because it was “your” audience, they would see themselves in you. Listeners would discover meaning by tuning in. And your podcast guy would narrate the whole thing.

That was the deal. 

Do you remember how, despite how much you struggled, I stuck with you to work through it all? Even now, I’m keeping your confidences by not spilling all the gory details. You might especially remember that dramatic moment, where you just couldn't or wouldn't do the final bit of work. I had to ask us to hang up our call so that you could go do the work you had promised to do.

I held all that space for you. So you could come to see the light of your own being. You had what then you described as a near-orgasmic moment of clarity. You swore you were changed by it. 

And, then, shortly thereafter, you went dark. Instead of getting to work to create the podcast with your partner, you ghosted me.

I felt like screaming as I told you how egregious it all was, but since I felt that would be unkind, I worked to say it softly. I “suggested” we stop working together on the podcast because, from my perspective, I was giving fully to my side of our social contract, but not getting what we had agreed to. We hadn't agreed for me to be your Onlyness coach, and for free. Our stated purpose was to create a rich piece of podcast content. To craft a multi-part series others could trace in their own journey. A show that would shift the loneliness so many feel, by showing them the ways they are distinctly, meaningfully, connected to the world. 

So let’s go our own ways, I suggested. As I think of it now, it was like asking permission to get divorced. But, I wanted an amicable breakup. 

No-no-no, you argued. We were soooo close; definitely a podcast series here. "Just" work with the audio guy, you asked me. I wanted to believe that request meant you really cared about our shared goal.

But, it turned out you were just asking me to do even more than I’d already done. I only understood, finally, when even after I did all of that... neither of you ever got back to me. 

Until I finally had to ask. 

WHO ARE WE TO ONE ANOTHER

So, This Week, I am simmering . . . what does it mean to be an “us?”

Who are we to one another? 

Is our “us” like that story, The Giving Tree, where the little boy first enjoys the tree’s apples, but soon enough takes all its limbs, so there are no more apples? And then returns later for its trunk? So that all that’s left of the tree is a stump? Yes, the loving tree has been “of service” to the boy. And the boy surely valued the tree, just as you valued my work as “startlingly” applicable and “wise.”

If so, my “value” comes merely from what I do or give, and your role is to value all that generous giving. But because you had read and said you loved Onlyness, I thought you had proposed an “us” that was more mutual (as chapter 4 explained); one where we could lean softly on each other.

How can you write a note asking for something from me (and podcast related no less) that doesn’t acknowledge our earlier breached agreement? Maybe it’s that you didn’t want to face your discomfort? But if you won’t face it, who will?

So, I am thinking about how discomfort applies to the larger American context, with calls for unity without acknowledgment. Of how terrifying it is when you hear a leader call on the white hate group the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” Of telling four elected American leaders to go back to “shithole countries” simply because they are brown and women. If the people who voted for all of that and more don’t want to face their discomfort, fine.

I mean it’s the worst, and it sucks, but it’s their call. It makes clear they're not fighting for us, by acknowledging harm and seeking reconciliation. Instead, it seems they are fighting to deny any harm was done, which will make it better for them but not for “us.”  

The calls for unity without reckoning means nothing changes for one group while the other side does futile work. (Sort of how I’m sitting here laying out receipts because you didn’t acknowledge our broken social contract.) 

Even as you read this, you’re probably thinking that your intentions were “pure.” But the facts are the facts; the agreement wasn’t honored, and harm clearly happened. If you want to go forward, together, you have to do some work to actually make it right.

Reparations are to do the work of repair, and by actions (not words), showing (vs saying) that there IS an “us” worth fighting for.  

Will I ever trust you again? My husband of now 18 years often says that he loves how I give people second and third chances. I dunno about that. It could also be that I have incredibly poor boundary management and need to make a therapy appt, pronto.  

I’d like to think that if I said the issue to you kindly (like when I told you it was getting egregious) and patiently (like when I insisted you do your work), it would have given you the room to show up and deliver. But you didn’t show up. Instead, you ghosted for a year. And when you finally reemerged, it was with compliments coupled with a new ask. Which, I guess, signals. . . everything.

Until each of us is as interested in our shared goals, the “we” won't be what it needs to be. 

And right now, we still don’t have a shared purpose. We have me serving you.

FINDING AND FORMING “US”

I’m sad, of course, as I process all of this. 

Sad. Mad. Reliving Pain. Not sad about you and I per se. That ship has sailed. But this question — how do we form an “us” — isn't ever over. It is the core question we warriors of love and light must face and fight.

That’s why the central question of Onlyness isn’t how “you be you,” but how we find and form us. So you find those who see you, and you become more yourself. So you find those with whom you can do great big things. So that new ideas can make that proverbial “dent” in the universe. 

The warriors of love and aliveness know that living is not about avoiding the fear of rejection, but finding those we can lean on; not about avoiding the pain of someone being untrustworthy, but letting people show us who they are. 

This is the work. 

Despite all the advertising slogans, the world doesn't change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form around nascent ideas, then works to build them into reality, so the new is then made possible. (it’s what Margaret Wheatley first described as “emergent strategy” in 2006, and what Social Era mapped across the Value Chain in 2012.)

It is how we relate — and the underlying social constructs — that will create the next new way. 

As we find our purpose, we find our people. As we find our people, we find our power. Onlyness.

WHAT NOW

We're all a work in progress and this is me, working on progress. This column was never about me knowing the “answers.” I am a fellow seeker on how we do things of being fully alive at work. Yet I always hope that somehow I can escape these feelings of rawness as I “progress.”

As I write, I am now clearer on the question of what it means to be “us.” We each want to contribute with love, not for love.

It seems so strange — if that’s the word? — that ThisWeek approached me to seek my “authority,” and “wisdom” and “powerful message for his audience” as he equally ignored his broken commitment to “us.” I think of how in America some people are being asked to “bridge the divide” when there is no equal admission.

That’s not the path to wholeness, or onlyness is it?  It is, at best, hiding. And we — each of us, all of us — deserve better.

As the incredible author of How We Show Up, Mia Birdsong recently wrote, it’s accountability that leads to redemption. And a reckoning that allows a reconciliation. We cohere not by disappearing from the fight, but by fighting for our common cause. In love.

We do a happy dance every time we get your financial support:

We sing a little song every time it starts a conversation:

Fill our hearts with joy by pressing one or both buttons.