Hello, Whole Life Leader

As August winds down, our household has been preparing for a big change. College orientation, of course, leads to college attendance. Our younger son just headed off to Lubbock to begin the Texas Tech chapter of his life. We are excited for him, we have been anxious about making sure we help him remember all the details, and we have noticed our sadness. We have been a little too busy with the transition to sit quietly with the sadness right now, but I have no doubt that is coming.

Navigating change and choosing perspective
As a counselor and coach, I know the grammar of navigating change and choosing perspective. Endings lead to beginnings, and beginnings can’t happen without endings. Change wisdom tells us all change has an element of fear, which can be exaggerated. It says a change in the amount of time spent with a loved one is a type of loss, and it can feel like a huge loss. It says the closing of a chapter can feel like the end.

Wisdom around choosing perspective tells us we can anticipate the fear, breathe into space to be compassionate with ourselves around fear, and sort out the likely from the not-so-likely threats. It tells us that as our time together changes, we can plan with intention to connect regularly by phone, video calls, and text; and that those less frequent conversations can still include the good stuff, the connected, attuned, heart-based sharing. It tells us the end leads to a beginning so we can remember to anticipate and enjoy the newness and not get distracted mourning what was.

Wisdom is empty if it’s not applied
There is a distance between knowing where this wisdom can lead us and where we start out. The distance is crossed by doing, by setting intention and acting on intention, and by breathing into our vulnerability and allowing the hard feelings to flow through. Wisdom is the easy part.

I am looking forward to this next leg of my son’s journey. The community at Tech sounds fantastic and the activities will be great for him. Hearing him describe his new challenges and new discoveries and new friendships will be wonderful. Also slightly sad, as it is a world I don’t inhabit, and as it nudges me to realize some day he may have a lot of things in his life that are just occasional anecdotes to me. But I can open myself to sharing his enjoyment by connecting with him. Through that connection I can experience what matters to him, what he values and enjoys. That’s transcendence.

Troubling times raise the stakes
I also worry how this other part of the world will treat him. He is Hispanic, adopted from Colombia. He is going to a school in a rural part of the state where a lot of students are from small mostly white towns. The campus has a lot of diversity compared to the rural community, but he may hear more cruelty than he’s used to. Recent sickening events in Charlottesville, where white nationalist supremacists felt free to chant hatred and physically attack people, have angered me and caused despair.

But I won’t give in to despair. I want a country where nobody is threatened or has to feel threatened by hate groups. Not just because I want my two sons to be free of bigotry as brown men in a majority white nation. I want this because I deeply value that all people are created equal. Every human being has inherent worth, which in my belief comes from their connection to the divine. I want this virtue honored, I want all people to be valued, and I want the better qualities of humanity to prevail. That is also transcendence.

No easy answers
How I wish I had greater wisdom to share with my sons. And how I wish I had greater wisdom to share with the world. But “here are some pointers on how we can rise above the sickening hatred” seems trite. Instead, I realize I have a lot more questions than answers, a lot of unknowns. What I can do is commit to going forward seeking to keep my heart open and my mind open, so both can grow.

My Commitment to Openness

It is our capacity to feel attunement with one another that tells us we are connected as human beings. When we feel understood there is mental connection. When we share resonant feelings there is an emotional, heart-based connection. I want to engage my compassionate curiosity to be able to share this experience with other people more often. When we experience connection we realize we are connected. I want to cultivate connection.

Judging is too easy
It is in closing our minds and our hearts to other people that we decide they aren’t like us, are not part of us, and are less human. I want to catch myself judging and blaming and notice it. Just observe it. Then invite my curiosity to teach me more about myself.

I’m going to fail at this repeatedly. Fairness is one of my top strengths and I overuse it all the time as I judge those who seem unfair. Perspective is another of my overused strengths, and I quickly get frustrated at people who refuse to consider any viewpoint but the one they are defending. So I commit to noticing when I judge people, observing it, and being curious.

Bailing out is too easy
I commit to staying engaged, not tuning out. As a white man I can withdraw because hateful bigotry doesn’t directly affect me. It affects my sons, so I can’t really withdraw fully. But I live in an affluent, majority white bubble so it’s easy to step back and tune out. That’s called privilege.

I have pushed back on the word “privilege,” saying I understand the concept and believe white people have advantage, favor, and bias. But “privilege” always implied an elite minority, so I thought it was the wrong word. I understand now that privilege doesn’t imply a minority. It just implies class-based favor.

The poor white Appalachian has privilege. Compared to the poor black Appalachian, it’s easy to see that privilege. Compared to a middle class black person with a good education, it might seem ridiculous to call it privilege. But the poor white Appalachian doesn’t have to worry about being considered less intelligent, angry, rebellious, or prone to violence just based on the color of his skin.

I mean it would be really, really easy
I have male privilege. I have white privilege. I also have affluent suburb privilege. We bought a run-down farmhouse on a piece of property over 20 years ago in a farming community. We eventually removed the farmhouse and built our home on it. The farming community has become an affluent suburb with “starter mansions” and a few actual mansions throughout the town. It really is a bubble. The few people of color in our community are high-level executives and professionals, like doctors and attorneys, who are mostly Indian, Arab, Persian, and Chinese. There are very few black or Hispanic people in this town, and almost no poor people.

It doesn’t make me awful that I have male privilege, or white privilege, or the privilege of living in an affluent suburb. It’s not something I feel “blame” about, nor should anyone feel blame about their class. Blaming and shaming and demeaning are the opposite of bringing people together. They create “the other” and lead to disconnecting, separating, and dehumanizing. I don’t bear blame for the privilege I have. Nobody chooses the privileges culture hands them. But I bear responsibility for seeing the system that grants privilege and how that affects people, and I have a responsibility to respect and care about the outsiders and educate the insiders.

Engaging is the right way forward for me
From my position of privilege I will look to and connect with people of color. I will hear their stories and I will speak up for what is right. I will also invite other people of privilege to understand privilege and see what the world is like for those without that privilege. There are lots of kinds of privilege. People of color can have many kinds of privilege without white privilege. White privilege and male privilege are just the most dominant kinds of privilege in our society right now. We will be more a compassionate community when more of us see these dynamics at work.

Inviting other people to see their privilege is really inviting them to experience empathy. I agree that a man cannot fully know what it’s like to experience life as a woman. A white person in the U.S. cannot fully know what it’s like to be black in America. A degreed professional raised in an affluent family cannot fully know what it’s like to grow up poor with parents who just finished high school, or didn’t even get that far.

We are human; we create connection through empathy
But we have an amazing human capacity for imagination and empathy. Our minds learn best through story, and they have underlying archetypes that help us understand story. We have mirror neurons that help us feel what others are feeling. We cannot fully know another person’s experiences, but we can learn about them and resonate with them as we experience them as complex, nuanced, individual human beings.

I commit to going forward with curiosity holding space in my mind to keep it open. I commit to going forward with compassion holding space in my heart to keep it open. I commit to engaging in the difficult conversations, to hearing the hard-to-hear truth, even though I have the privilege of withdrawing to my protected bubble.

I am human; I’m going to struggle and fall
I will fail sometimes. I will grow weary and retreat. I will judge angrily and hastily. My commitment is not that I will always be open-minded and open-hearted, with curiosity and compassion leading the way. My commitment is that I will value and honor open-mindedness and open-heartedness, returning to them when I have fallen, with them leading my path like a a guiding star.

Leading myself forward: Being open is how I can do my part to bring our community together. I commit to this.

May we all be well, may we all do well, and may we all Thrive!

Take Care,

Stephen Coxsey, MA, LPC, PCC
Whole Life Leadership Coach

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About Steve Coxsey

Steve collaborates with people to design and implement a customized Whole Life Leadership plan that promotes success, fulfillment, and well-being for themselves and the people they lead and influence. They thrive on a personally meaningful path and promote a culture of thriving wherever they are in charge, from families to professions, from small businesses to organizations.

Steve is a supportive ally. His typical clients have to juggle competing responsibilities in a variety of roles. They have a compelling vision of what they would like to create or accomplish as leaders in their families, careers, or businesses and are committed to turning their vision into reality. To make that happen, they develop the Leadership Agilities that will enable them to empower and direct themselves, design and guide meaningful work, and inspire others.

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