Apr 18 2008

Filling up the tank

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

My first disclaimer is that this is not going to be an essay about gas prices. I’ll leave that for someone else.

What I want to talk about is how, in the midst of one outrage after another after another (those are all just from the front page here yesterday and today) we keep our sanity. Lets not fool ourselves, after awhile, staying awake and paying attention takes its toll. If it didn’t, more people would join us. There are times I can’t really blame my friends who don’t want to “mess with their beautiful minds” because its frankly exhausting keeping up with it all.

For some reason, I reached a bit of a breaking point this week in watching the ABC debate. I think it was more of a last straw than just the sheer inanity of that event. But after all the “fuck you’s” at the tv screen, I felt pretty exhausted. I need to fill up the tank.  

One of the things I’ve learned in my professional life is that people who work day in and day out with families who are defeated and hopeless will come to feel defeated and hopeless themselves after awhile. My job as a leader of an organization doing that kind of work is to help staff keep going by providing the resources, support, education and environment they need to stay energized and hopeful in their work. So I’ve done alot of thinking over the years about how you fill up your tank.

Most of the time when people talk about this, they refer to what I would call “the basics”… you need to eat well, get enough sleep, exercise and make time for things that you enjoy. All those things are necessary I think, but not sufficient.

Let me quote a bit of a poem by David Whyte that I think gets to the core of this:

When your eyes are tired

the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone

no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark

where the night has eyes to recognize its own.

There you can be sure you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb tonight.  

The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.

The world was meant to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness

and the sweet confinement of your aloneness

to learn

anything or anyone that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

I think that, first of all, we can’t be afraid of the darkness. When we are there, it is a thing to be embraced – a womb as Whyte says – where we can find ourselves. And when we find ourselves, we know where we belong and can jettison all those things that are a distraction.  Another quote from Whyte has been a source of incredible wisdom for me over the last year or so:

the antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness

Ever notice that when you are doing what you really love and feel passionate about, you have almost boundless amounts of energy?

The coming of the dark can be our signal that its time to think about our hearts…and what they are they are telling us to do. I’m going to spend some time listening to mine and getting my tank filled up for the next round.  

85 comments

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  1. I fill up my tank, is by talking to smart compassionate people.  So I thought I’d write this and see what all you wonderful folks here at DD have to say.

    • Alma on April 18, 2008 at 20:08
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    As time goes by it seems to get harder and harder to remember all of the items, and especially details from all of the outrages.  

    Just this morning I got an email that reminded me of my first outrage with Bush after he took his oath of office.  The first bill he signed, it took away condoms from people in poor countries, if they wanted to still get our help.

    I fill up my tank with pictures of animals, and fantasy books.

    Protests, letters, and witnessing are still the only thing I know to do.

  3. who work at the children’s hospital..and the teachers and staff at the school my daughter goes to, which is all special-ed with severe cases…so, yeah, very emotionally stressful…

    i try to treat them at not-holiday times…random cookies or a card…and good-smelling soaps or hand lotions…little things (there are so many of them)…

    here…watch this:  (i dare you to try to stress while you do 😉

    • Edger on April 18, 2008 at 20:53
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    It’s why I joke often. It’s regenerative.

    I’m funny that way. Ahem. Other people often call it weird, and look at me funny, or back away carefully without taking their eyes off me till they figure they’re far enough to run safely.

    (did I just say that? scratch’s head in puzzlement…)

  5. (1) The occasional victory every now and then is a big source of fuel.  getting something “right,” making something “work,” especially in the face of many “failures,” can be a huge boost.

    (2) Most of the time, I can’t put my finger on the chicken vs. the egg.  Do I turn my mood around, and then start to make things happen?  Or does my mood improve after getting results.  Sometimes, I can say for sure it’s the former.  And when that happens, it’s usually because of #3.

    (3) It can be hard to shake oneself out of the commitments of work, etc., that are producing negative feedback when things aren’t going well.  Step completely out and do something totally unrelated.  It’s amazing how much inertia I seem to have keeping me from that path.  But picking up a guitar or a camera and doing something that’s far far away from professional concerns is a big energy boost.

    (4) Hope is a key.  Having hope makes trying things worth while.  Acquiring hope, well, that’s hard.  Accomplishing something often helps.  If I can do that, then maybe I can do this other thing that seems so hard.  That’s the positive feedback I seem to need.  Find something I can actually do and enjoy.  That gives me a good feeling about myself, some confidence.  A little bit of confidence can be a ray of hope.  Hope can lead to trying.  And Yoda wasn’t necessarily right about trying.

    • RiaD on April 18, 2008 at 21:49
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    just today i was squoshing my toes in plowed dirt & a hawk flew over…keer-uuurr, keer-uuurr he cried…

    i looked up & watched him playing in the thermals and another hawk joined him…they played tag over my head for awhile…

    as my gaze lowered i saw the overgrown lady banksia rose which has clambered up the cherry tree beside the well…we meant to cut down the cherry 10+ yrs ago…right before the parents came home….. & gha! the rose is gorgeous…wee tiny blooms of yellow no bigger than my thumbnail~ just thousands of ’em….

    and nearby a dogwood cloaked in pristine white blooms, with narcissusi poking up beneath….& hopping around between them 3 indigo buntings, the first i’ve seen in years…and cardinals, house wrens & sparrows…

    the pink & white azaleas nearby…stripey caterpillers crawling around, looking for food…& their cousins the butterflies already metamorphed…sipping from the spilled bits near the dogs water dish….

    renewed i am…

  7. The coming of the dark can be our signal that its time to think about our hearts…and what they are telling us to do.

    Mine told me to write about hearts today too.

  8. by going fishing.  Dad always said time spent fishing didn’t come off your allotted life span.  If you could fish forever you’d live forever.  I think he was right.

    It’s not the catching, either.  It’s being out on the water in the boat, watching the wildlife, surrounded by trees.  That’s how I get my perspective back.

  9. that many of us refill our tanks two ways… humor and

    nature.  Surely there are plenty of other ways but DD

    provides an abundance of the main two when combined with

    a walk outside.  And how wise of buhdy to put up the venting

    diary the other day….

    • kj on April 19, 2008 at 01:58
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    has a nearly immediate effect on the state of my mind/body/soul.  

    watching the edge of water, river, lake, ocean… even a big puddle in the yard if that’s all there is!

    the smell of incense

    wind, i confess to an ongoing love affair with wind. rarely miss the opportunity to be outside during a windstorm, even if there’s rain involved.  ðŸ˜‰

    chopping vegetables

    a really good cuppa tea

  11. I’m finding that I need to explore this darkness a bit more. I just wish my heart would listen to buhdy and “yell louder!”

  12. and thought it belonged here. From The Teachings of Don Juan:

    Don Juan said:

    Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path;

    if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path,

    and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do.

    But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition.

    I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.

    Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks.

    My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere.

    There are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere. My benefactor’s question has meaning now. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it does not, it is of no use.

    Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart the other does not. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

    The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path.

    A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

    For me there is only the traveling on paths that have a heart, or on any path that may have heart. There I travel… and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length.

    And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly.

    • Robyn on April 19, 2008 at 19:33
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    …and it has never been completely filled since then.  But I’ve learned I can run on fumes, if necessary, to pull me along until I can regenerate, if only for a little while.

  14. If you’re pressed for time, Gould’s more taut, rushing 1955 recording will suffice.

    Here is a video taste of Gould’s 1981 valedictory musical statement, a few months before he died.

  15. Throughout time have taken to bed to fill up their tanks. Rest is the food of the soul – especially in times of difficulty – hence the term unrest.

    Advice to all my male friends – get as much sleep as you can.

  16. I’ve learned that I have to be careful about jumping in too deep and becoming overwhelmed with the injustice around me. It’s difficut to sometimes just turn off the news, ignore the latest chatter/outrage, but sometimes I have to tune it out. I’ve decided that while it is important to change the world, it’s not always healthy to spend 24×7 worrying about the state of humanity. There are so many outrageous things happening, so many injustices, so many reasons to sometimes feel like the small things we do have no consequence whatsoever.

    So, I jump in at times, and then I back away. Otherwise, I get outrage fatigue. The state of our nation, and the state of humanity on this earth, can be depressing. With the callous disregard for the law that our President and his cronies have, it can feel demeaning and pointless to take a stand. That doesn’t mean that I don’t do it – I just can’t do it every day of my life. If I don’t step away from the outrage and the 24 hour news cycle every now & then, it’s hard to get a fair perspective. I spend all my time analyzing each blade of grass instead of seeing the state of the entire forest. Without stepping away, I don’t have the perspective to see what progress we are making.

    I believe we have a brighter future ahead of us. I think our nation has swung so far away from “normal”, and the pendulum is swinging back.

    As for filling up my tank… one thing that does help is to realize how many millions of others have the same concerns I do. Blogs like this are a comfort and reminder that we are not alone.

    Another thing is to do what I love, to interact with others and inspire emotion in others. I’m lucky to have a terrific (though not highly-paid nor incredibly stable) career and lifestyle in which I get to do this. Like you said, I get the most energy out of doing what I truly am passionate about. My mood has improved dramatically this week, as my work is stimulating and inspiring. Also, the weather is finally beautiful in Motown – it feels like we have a new spring blossomming. Not only here, but in our world. The nation is finally awakening from our 9/11 slumber, and the sweet smell of change is in the air.

  17. Which leaves the mental and spiritual worlds. Speaking re-incarnation-ally, the material world is the least important, and in it’s absence more important, more fulfilling, and more enlightening experiences are encountered, which refill the tank. All life is one at this level, the divisions and differences disappear, and I am able to bring a unified perspective to the forefront again.

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