Growing up Roman Catholic, I retained so much of my built-in guilt the church heaped upon us woe-begotten Christians, and when I think about how I never go to the UU church, I can't help but feel twangs of that same guilt. They assure me that there is no guilt within the sanctuary, and I smile blankly in thanks.
Alleviating that guilt commands that I do something in recompense. Not because I want to purify the cold, rotting feeling that guilt creates, but because, after almost every service, I am already compelled by the sermon to leap into social action. If I can somehow be part of the support system that keeps the UU banner waving, I will feel better about the years of neglect I unwittingly caused my new haven, and my Christian heart will stop quivering with anxiety.
Is it really guilt, though? I've noticed something about myself that never ceases to amaze me. So much so, in fact, that I'm surprised I haven't written about it yet.
I am a people-pleaser.
My peers (and by peers, lately I mean the SUNY Potsdam faculty and administration) repeat ad nauseum that I'm a leader, born and bred, and that my vigor comes from a good, sturdy ability to see a need and fill it. While that's all well and good, I would like to add more to that definition, with my own spin on the topic of "leadership" and how it applies to my life.
I am a people-pleaser.
I don't actually know if I'm ever really leading. I know that a certain amount of things must be done within the paper to get it out every week, so that's simple math. We all have the appropriate limbs and know-how to make the computers do what we'd like them to, so it's less so leadership and moreso appropriate guidance. As far as production is concerned, anyway.
The other stuff... the pens I bought through the paper, the constant praising emails, the office hours, the bright smiles when I see a writer or an editor in passing, the excessive, private emails of concern when I notice that someone isn't having a good day... that I cry when things aren't going well for an editor and that it hurts when an editor, whose skills I've cultivated, cuts me down are just par for the course.
I'm not really a leader any more than you. When I go to the UU church and feel that call to action, it's because I'm filled with a sense of dutiful caring that forces me to react lest I be one of the uncaring few.
I care, more than I should, but so did the boy in the sermon I just read that inspired this posting:
A boy was walking along the shoreline of an ocean after high tide, picking up and throwing beached fauna back into the water. A man who was observing this was puzzled and asked the boy how it mattered-- millions of them are washed ashore every day in various parts of the world. The boy picked up another fish, and throw...ing it back into the ocean, he said, "It mattered to that fish."
-Taken from my Facebook status.
I hope that we're all able to be like that boy someday. I don't think I would call him a leader, either, but I'd certainly call him a friend. A brother. A care-giver, a doctor. Maybe a philanthropist, or a social worker. When he grows up, of course, but then...
... how many of us still need to grow up? Not in the pejorative, "you need to grow up! nyah!" kind of grow up, but the kind of growing up that only true introspection can achieve.
Just think of how many fish that boy could have saved if the man helped, for instance.
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