Who Am I?

"Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it." William James*

My boss and I used to interview a lot together. We developed a comfortable rhythm. I was yin to her yang. Doing it enough times, we had rehearsed who asked which questions; when each paused casually and listened; when the other played off something the first said. It wasn't a written script, but it was an engrained script from having done the dance so many times together.

Then, we got away from doing it together. I was a seasoned human resources person and would interview myself and just bring the final candidates to my boss, saving her time. Recently, we had the opportunity to do it again together and as sometimes happens when you get away from something for a long time, you see how much you enjoyed it.

We each had a new shtick; we weren't dancing the same dance any longer having been apart for years. She asked the perfect new question. It was perfect because I found, among every candidate, that it elicited truly honest answers. We caught them off guard. This question gave me a truer picture of whom the candidate was than any other question we had ever asked. And then, it gave me pause to wonder how I would answer it myself.

The question was: tell me about the best work experience you've ever had -- whether it be a task, a project, a job -- and why it was so. And then tell me about your worst.

In the first few candidates, I saw quickly that the job for which they were interviewing was completely wrong for them; they were applying for a job so unsuited to what they loved and what jazzed them. When I saw it happening over and over, it made me wonder about how people choose jobs, firms, long term careers. In just needing something, do they apply, and settle, for anything available?

For me, my best work experience in twenty-seven years was the first few times I spoke publicly at the Advent Software, Inc. annual conferences of 1,000 attendees about ten years ago. My sessions had 75-100 participants. Initially, I was nervous; I had butterflies -- something I hadn't had since acting in middle school. I had to focus and prepare thoroughly; I was pushed beyond my comfort zone. I achieved far better results than I would have expected - amazing what we can do when challenged. And, the love and engagement I received from the audiences showed me that what thrills and jazzes me is being pushed/challenged, stepping outside my comfort zone, leading, teaching, and engaging with a group of people in a positive way.

My worst experience was running a giant project in our firm of revamping our (dirty) basement files to segregate those that had been used in our company performance figures (a regulation requirement). The job was so horrible to me that I let all my staff off; I felt too badly asking them to do such a boring, dirty, frustrating job, so instead I tackled it alone, and it nearly killed me. The worst thing for my personality is to be locked in a dungeon doing mindless, dirty work alone for which I see no measurable success.

These best and worst experiences give you (and me) a clear picture of who we are. Might it be time to ask yourself this question? The results are THE answer for YOU of where you should be and what you should be doing.

*Source: Digh, Patti. Life is a Verb. Guilford, Connecticut: skirt! The Globe Pequot Press, 2008. Print. P. 106
Photo: Shelburne Farm, Shelburne, Vermont

Living Downstream

Thanks to a suggestion from my friend Kim, I went to Bates College earlier this month to hear visiting author Sandra Steingraber discuss her book Living Downstream: An Ecologist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment. Sandra is brilliant; her book, well-researched and compelling; her life's work, a gift to our planet.

She grew up in central Illinois, on the east bluff of the Illinois River, from which they were never allowed to eat the fish. It has been contaminated over fifty years. Sandra was diagnosed with bladder cancer at the age of twenty. While some say cancer may be hereditary, Sandra offers that if the environment is key, isn't it natural that family members eating the same food, drinking the same water, and breathing the same air would likely develop the same cancers? Interestingly, even the animals in areas of our world mimic humans for the types of cancers they develop.

A parable opens Living Downstream:

"There was once a village along a river. The people who lived there were very kind. These residents, according to parable, began noticing increasing numbers of drowning people caught in the river's swift current. And so they went to work devising ever more elaborate technologies to resuscitate them. So preoccupied were these heroic villagers with rescue and treatment that they never thought to look upstream to see who was pushing the victims in."

Sandra says her research as a scientist for this book was her walk up the river. Once you read it, there's no going back. The evidence is too overwhelming to allow anyone to say there is no connection with what we, humans, are doing to our environment and the ever-increasing numbers of cancer patients -- an 85% increase in incidence from 1950-2001; 22% increase in childhood cancers, asthma, ADD, and the onset of puberty much younger. For persons 45-64, cancer is the leading cause of death - more than heart disease, accidents and strokes combined.

Sandra offers that the environment we are polluting had a huge uptick since World War II when the preponderance of DDT and other pesticides were introduced into farming. Sustainable farms with crop rotation were plowed down to plant overwhelming amounts of corn and soybeans and one-product farms bleeding the soil of its natural nutrients. We have thrown away the notion of "the circle of life" in our quest for more money and are becoming an ever-burgeoning wasteful and "throw away" society.

I am overwhelmed; it's easy for us to feel this way. There is so much I could change:

no microwave or dry cleaning
cloths instead of paper towels
cloth diapers instead of disposables
re-usable cups, not paper coffee cups daily
less make-up, nail polish, hair color
no chemical lawncare that seeps into my husband's garden
no harsh cleaning products
a clothesline
a bike, two feet

I should buy organic food, ride my bike with a basket to get there like I did in Denmark, go more frequently to buy fresh, use recycled bags, swear off pre-packaged foods, wash my dishes by hand, hang my laundry on the line, buy natural fiber rugs, furniture, and bedding. I should vote for people who agree with me, have a long term vision, and feel a moral obligation to do something, anything, one baby step at a time for our planet.

Sandra's book was published in 1997 and re-released this year. A documentary of it will be out over the next couple of weeks. She said this has become the issue of our time. In listening to her and reading her words, I wonder what we will do about it? What will we tell our grandchildren we did do about it?

She said when slavery was going to be abolished, people said it couldn't be done; the economy would tank. It was done because it was the right thing to do. When child labor was made illegal, again they said it would tank the economy; we needed those tiny fingers to produce the goods those kids were making. Again, the economy grew...and more importantly, it was the right thing to do.

What is the one right thing for each of us to do right now?

Steingraber, Sandra. Living Downstream: An Ecologist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment. Pennsylvania: A Merloyd Lawrence Book Da Capo Press A Member of the Perseus Books Group, 2010. Print. Photo: courtesy of Amazon.com