If you’re reading this, I know you, and I know it’s true that you’re a good person who’s working at becoming an even better person.
I can even tell you what you probably do for a living: You’re a teacher, a nurse, a therapist, a minister, a social worker. Somebody in one of the helping professions.
Even if you’re not in work officially labeled as a helping profession, you’re helping people doing whatever it is you do, both paid and unpaid:
Educating yourself so you can make a better life for yourself and your family.
Writing, publishing, editing, tutoring, to inform and enlighten people.
Working in a church.
Volunteering planting trees.
Protecting our country by serving in its military.
Growing food to feed the rest of us.
Chairing an academic department to support students and the faculty who teach them.
Helping write legislation to protect children.
Defending capital cases.
Oh, yes, and teaching Vacation Bible School. (I support combat pay for all those who teach vacation Bible school.)
I know you.
You’re helping people navigate social support systems, or to get medical care.
You’re helping people who’ve been mistreated by their employers, and helping decent employers defend themselves against specious claims of mistreatment.
You’re helping fellow students in your math classes understand math.
You’re coaching your kids’, or somebody else’s kids’, soccer team, or basketball team, or robotics team.
You’re raising your kids.
You volunteer at a homeless shelter, or a ReStore.
You spend your spring break repairing homes for people flooded out in Baton Rouge.
You play your music so that the rest of us can delight in it. (Extra points if you play your music at an assisted living center, or in the lobby of a local hospital).
You direct a choir.
You sing in a choir.
You foster babies.
You teach writing classes to people in prison.
You make birthday cakes for people at your senior citizens’ center.
You share your chocolate-covered espresso beans with your office cronies.
You bring her favorite Starbuck’s order to the administrative assistant who guided you through a labyrinth of paperwork.
You fill people’s prescriptions quickly and accurately. You answer their questions about their scrips carefully and make sure they understand the answers.
You keep your lawn in reasonable care, out of respect for the neighbors’ property values.
You check the accuracy of posts before you share them on Facebook.
When you bring home flowers for your significant other, absent a birthday, anniversary, or Valentine’s Day, that person does not automatically conclude that you’ve crashed the car or had an affair.
(By the way, doing any of these items does count, even if you get paid for doing it, or even if you enjoy doing it, or even if you don’t do it every single day. I know you.)
I know you guys. These posts are for you.
If you’re wondering whether that includes you, yes, it does.
If you’re thinking, “This probably does not mean me: I don’t give enough,” then this blog is for you.
Why?
These are strange times, strange and stressful. Things have taken an unexpected turn, and we’ve been freaked out. We’re worried about protecting each other, about helping people who have been dealt crappier cards by the big Systems we live in, about making sure everyone is treated fairly, and all that.
Whether or not we’ve already met, we belong to the same tribe.
It will take all of us to salvage and to improve the situation.
We will need all of our strength.
We need to take care of ourselves, to support and nurture ourselves, so we can be strong. So we can be as effective as possible.
To the extent that I keep myself physically fit, I can get more people out of a burning building.
To the extent that I can keep myself calm, I can share that calm with folks around me who might need it.
I want you to feel better, because then I’ll feel better. You affect everybody you come in contact with, and many more people you’re not aware of. Moods are contagious.
The people around you are learning from you, whether or not any of us is aware of it. 24/7/365, you’re teaching by example. The way you want the people around you to treat themselves, you must treat yourself that way.
Nobody can know what you need, or can find out what you need, better than you yourself can.
These are the biggest reasons I want you to be kind to yourself.
Think UP! 