Elevating the Human Experience

Conclusion

The end is the beginning.

—T.S. Eliot

There is always more to learn about how to love ourselves by seeing our worthiness. There will always be more people who come into our lives whom we can love, reflecting back their worth seeing their worthiness as they struggle to see their own. There will always be communities in need of elevating and systems in need of redesigning, all with love. The end really can only ever be the beginning. It is our shared life's work to make progress on all three paths at our own pace. And there is no way to love but through the obstacles.

In the weeks after my work colleague died suddenly, I found that I did not have space to feel either pain or love. Not feeling my feelings was a way of coping. I found myself incredibly busy, tending to the feelings of others around me impacted by his death. One of my friends and mentors, Vincent Firth, called me to check in. I told him that I was so busy leading the practice, trying so very hard to be the kind of leader that this tragic moment required, that I did not have time to feel. He asked me if I was sleeping. “The great ones always sleep,” Vincent said to me. Then he said that in his experience mentoring people, particularly those in the last half of their career, that people did not often find that it was the work itself that suddenly became too challenging or overwhelming. But what became too overwhelming was the accumulated and unacknowledged pain in their lives that had not been processed ...