Good morning,
Everyone.
Welcome to the Wake Up Call.
This is Judy Cohen,
And this is Wake Up Call 286.
And the title of today's Wake Up Call is The Joy of Letting Someone Else Lead.
And we'll see if that was even the right title.
So last week,
We started pointing back at joy,
Which is the third of the four Brahma viharas,
Sometimes those are called the heavenly abodes,
The four states of mind and heart that can really support us at any time,
And especially in really challenging times,
And the first two are love or kindness or love and kindness.
And compassion.
And we spent a few months last summer and fall looking at those.
And then the third is actually sympathetic joy.
And then the fourth is equanimity.
And I'm going to start talking about sympathetic joy next week,
But the last few weeks I've just been talking about joy,
The joy that we have in our own lives,
How we can recognize it,
How we can cultivate it,
And that's different from sympathetic joy,
Which is taking joy in the joy of others,
But let's stay with the joy in our own lives today,
And then we'll look at sympathetic joy.
Next week.
And I've been feeling a lot of joy as I've been reading and listening about what President Biden is doing.
I love you've been saying President Biden.
And you know,
Between climate change as an essential role related to even national defense,
To stating that anti-racism has to be woven into the fabric of government.
My whole,
My whole heart,
My whole body has really been full of joy and tried to understand on a little more granular level,
Some of the joy is because these policies are in alignment with my own values and the values that I believe underpin a just and healthy society.
And some of the joy is because I'm not terrified every day that our country is pointing in the opposite direction from that.
And some of the joy is in feeling like I don't have to carry the,
The weight of the world on my own shoulders by myself.
And I think that that's kind of a trap that we can fall into.
When I look at the four perils of the law that I'm always talking about,
The ways that we're,
We're trying to take on more and more work,
And we're trained to always be scanning the horizon for what could go wrong,
What could blow up,
What could go south,
And to be perfect all the time and to live surrounded by conflict,
I really feel how that translates for me,
At least,
Into a sense of holding up the world.
But as I explore this even further,
What I began to notice is that it's,
It's also underneath that,
It's about how much fear I have.
No fear of getting things wrong,
Fear of getting things less than perfect,
Fear for the country,
For the world,
For the earth.
Fear that racism will persist,
Will continue to permeate,
That my own biases will always be lurking under the surface.
No,
That we'll never have a perfect country.
No,
That we'll never have true equity or inclusion.
And then getting even more granular,
What I get to is control.
And it feels like there's a part of lawyering and teaching that's about control,
Gaining control,
Feeling like we should be in control,
Being expected to be in control,
Being expected to retain control,
Being in control of the classroom,
The syllabus,
What students learn.
You know,
Not just the responsibility to do good work,
But,
And to be a powerful advocate and to,
And to,
To roll up our sleeves and contribute and help change the world for the better,
But to be in control of those things somehow to make sure things don't fall apart.
And mindfulness offers a reminder that actually things are not in our control.
Things are operating in some lawful ways,
The sort of classical way of saying it from a mindfulness perspective.
And we often can't see that.
And to me,
It's sometimes,
In a lot of the time,
Feels unlawful,
But things are playing out the only way they can play out,
Which is as they are playing out.
In other words,
This present moment,
It just is what it is.
And now we have a new president in the US.
Who's taken the reins and right away begun to point us in what feels like the right direction and I feel some relief.
And maybe the world feels some relief too.
It feels like this teaching that we aren't in control or that it's not about control,
Maybe,
Is,
Is coming alive.
And oops,
Strange slide everybody.
But anyway,
And what I mean is that there's a journey that we can take where there's a joy in letting someone else lead when they're leading in a wise,
Compassionate direction.
Which can also happen when it's your firm or your organization that has that kind of leadership or your school has that kind of leadership.
Or when you're a part of that,
When you're providing that kind of leadership or there's collaborative leadership that feels wise and compassionate.
Because then,
At least in my experience,
It's possible to let go of feeling like we have to be in control,
Like we're expected to be in control.
Because wise,
Compassionate leadership is leadership that it's possible to accept by letting go of control,
That tightness,
That weight on the shoulders.
So instead of leadership and control being twisted together like a twist tie,
You know,
We can begin to untie the twist tie.
And,
You know,
Sure,
I don't know about you,
But sometimes I'm doing those twist ties and it goes in the wrong direction and gets tighter.
But then realizing that and slowly untying these two qualities,
Leadership and control.
There's a classical mindfulness teaching called the five remembrances,
Which for me is a lot about letting go of control and still being,
Still staying very much responsible for doing good work,
For doing my best,
For working hard to change the world,
But letting go of control.
So the five remembrances are number one,
We grow old,
Nothing can stop that.
Number two,
We get sick,
Nothing can stop that.
Number three,
We die.
And that's a pretty sad one,
A difficult one for me at least to open to,
Especially with so much sorrow right now,
So much death surrounding us right now,
As one of my friends says,
So many souls,
So many souls.
So these first three remembrances,
We grow old,
We get sick,
We die,
These are about letting go.
And number four is also about letting go,
About realizing we're not in control.
Number four is that we get separated from everything and everyone we care about,
You know,
And we all know the truth of that.
I've been listening to The Warmth of Other Suns about the great migration of African-Americans from the south of the US by Iskall Wilkerson,
Who also just wrote the past,
Which I'm going to listen to next.
And she's reading it herself,
Which is gorgeous.
And in Warmth of Other Suns,
She talks about,
She follows actually the lives of half a dozen people during the span of the great migration.
So their lives in the south,
The way they leave the south,
How they get out of the south and how it is for them in the north.
And I'm at the end of the book,
So she's at the end of their lives.
And one of her characters is collecting funeral pamphlets because she's outlived everyone.
And she talks about all of the sisters and brothers and her sisters in laws and brothers in laws.
And they all were picking cotton as young sharecroppers.
And then the friends she made in the north,
This great arc of a life.
So number four,
We get separated from everything and everyone,
And we have to let them go.
And then number five,
I think,
Is how we do the work in the world as we let go,
How we live our lives,
How we lead.
And it's that we have a choice.
We can choose how we relate to the world.
And we have to choose how we relate to the world,
Because those choices matter,
Our actions matter,
Our words matter.
And so whether we're trying to hold onto things and control them and twist leadership and control together to try to hold on,
Or whether we let go,
Really matters.
Whether we let go and let our leadership emerge from wisdom and compassion really matters.
The joy of letting go into wisdom,
Into compassion matters.
And I think,
I hope we're seeing that happening in the U.
S.
Right now.
And I also think we can each do that ourselves.
You know,
We can relax our shoulders.
We can take a breath and let the weight fall off of them and allow not control and not fear,
But wisdom and compassion,
Our own innate wisdom and compassion to be our motivators,
Our inspiration,
The forces that propel us to do the good work we all do.
So,
Let's sit.
Let's sit.
And I guess for this sit,
Just beginning by checking in with the body and seeing how is your body right now?
Whether you're sitting down or standing or walking or lying down.
And we have some people on the phone,
So maybe you're driving,
I guess,
In addition to the four postures,
We should add that as a fifth posture,
Driving.
So,
Just feeling into the body and feeling how is your body feeling today?
And you can invite the attention to the sensations of the body or the breath,
The way the body is just breathing air flowing in and flowing out,
Are the sounds in the room or the sounds outside your window?
And you can feel the sound of the rain.
Re enlightened self-youtymmetry.
And seeing if there is a kind of a tenseness,
Kind of a tightness,
Or if there is more relaxation and whatever is present,
Is it possible for you,
Not as a kind of challenge,
But just is it available to let go a little bit into this moment,
Whatever is present.
And et cetera.
You you And if you do that,
As you do that,
To sense into the wisdom,
The compassion that's in your own heart,
Always,
Always knowing,
Remembering that it's possible to come back to this moment right here,
To let go into this moment right here,
Right now and to tap into that compassion,
That wisdom and you.
And peace.
You you you Thanks everyone for coming to the wake up call this morning.
Have a good Thursday,
Take good care,
Have a good weekend.
I'll see you all next week.
