Personal
Personal reflections, comments about things I've been doing, etc.
Discovering and Responding to a Calling
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/09/2009 - 11:02I’m on a mailing list about Group Psychotherapy. Most of the people on the list are group psychotherapists, but there are a few outliers like myself on the list. One person, whom I assume to be a fellow outlier recently wrote a message talking about losing his job and viewing this as a golden opportunity to discover and respond to his calling.
Perhaps I’m not the best person to respond to his email. I’m not sure that I’ve ever really found my calling, or responded all that well to it. On the other hand, perhaps a calling isn’t something you discover, and stick in your backpack or check off on a list as you travel through life. Got married, had kids, discovered calling …
Instead, perhaps a calling is something like a an ultimate goal, a Holy Grail, something we should be spending our time seeking and what matters is what happens along the way. If that is what a calling is really like, then perhaps I have a few words to say.
First, I must acknowledge that some vocations do look at much more specific callings. When I was young, I struggled with whether I should become a priest or a monk. These vocations look for a very specific calling. Does the applicant have a very strong sense of being called by God? I never had a clear enough sense of calling to pursue those vocations.
One story I remember from my college years was of a professor that took a group of students on a pilgrimage from Paris to Santiago. Afterwards, they went around to describe their experiences at alumni association meetings. At one meeting, an old alumni got up, shock his finger at one of the kids and said, “You know what the problem is with you, you don’t have any goals.”
The young student, who had been deeply affected by the trip smiled, and calmly responded, “But I do have a goal, to live each moment more lovingly and more fully than the previous.”
It seems as if this is a great process oriented calling. It is open to everyone. Even the meanest unloving person can aspire to live each moment more lovingly and more fully than the previous. It still might not be all that loving, but it is a step in the right direction.
I’ve always held onto that story, yet it doesn’t always seem to be all that helpful. What should I be doing if I want to live more fully and more lovingly? Here, I’m going to hop to a different discipline. Recently, I wrote about blogging ethics, where I pointed to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.
In their section about seeking truth and reporting it, they say that professional journalists should “give voice to the voiceless”. This seems to be a particularly practical approach to living more lovingly. Helping anyone find their voice is incredibly powerful. That is what good journalists do, they help people tell their stories. It is what good teachers do and what good therapists do. I’d even go so far as to say it is what good politicians and advocates do as well.
Yet in all the discussions about finding a calling, an underlying concern is finding a way of supporting oneself. A popular saying is, “follow your dreams and the money will follow”.
Been there, done that, and let me comment on the danger of that. If less money comes in as a result of following ones dreams, perhaps not enough to maintain a currently standard of living, or not quickly enough to avoid some financial difficulties, it is easy to get mired in some sort of feelings of inadequacy. Is there something wrong with my dream? Am I not good enough?
Having been through some very tough times, let me suggest that perhaps some of that is out of confusion about what we really need. Do we need one particular material comfort or another?
I hope most of my readers have followed and at least somewhat agreed with what I’ve had to say so far. However, here, I’m going to talk about one ‘need’ that has been very hard for me to surrender, and perhaps will be even harder for others to let go of, the need to be self-reliant.
I grew up in New England reading Emerson and Thoreau. Self-reliance was always held up as one of the greatest virtues. It wasn’t until much later in life, after various setbacks that I started to learn about the virtue of allowing others to minister to us; within the Christian story, to allow the Lord to wash our feet.
In a couple months, I will turn 50. I’m not sure I’m any closer to discovering my calling than I was when I headed off to college over thirty years ago. But hopefully, just hopefully, I have lived my life fully and lovingly. Hopefully, I have helped someone along the way find their voice. Perhaps, even this blog post will help people on their journey of finding and living their calling.
Blogging Ethics
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 05/05/2009 - 21:42Recently, I’ve had a nice little increase of traffic on my blog. With this, I’ve also had an increase in comments about what I write about. Much of it has been friendly suggestions, but some of it crosses a line. With that, I want to spend a little time reflecting on some of my decision process about what I write about and what I don’t write about.
Whether you are blogging professionally, or just for fun, whether you are talking just about things going on in your personal circles, or if you are writing about town events, politics, technology or developments in marketing, I believe that the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics provides a very good framework to think about what to write.
They have four key points: Seek Truth and Report It, Minimize Harm, Act Independently, and Be Accountable.
Whatever you feel drawn to write about, a good starting point is to seek truth and then blog about it. If it is interesting to you, it is probably interesting to someone else online. With that, you need to minimize harm that reporting the truth can generate. The SPJ guidelines talk a lot about distinguishing between people not often in the spotlight: children, private citizens, those affected by grief, and so on, from those with a thicker skin like public figures.
Then, there are the extremely important aspects of acting independently and being accountable. This can be especially challenging, since I wear many hats. Some of my blogging attempts to be journalistic, reporting what is going on in the world around me. Some of it comes from advocacy driven by my convictions. Some of it comes from my role as the spouse of a lobbyist. My wife is a senior organizer for Common Cause. Her job is to promote ways that elected leaders can best be held accountable to the public interest. Some of it comes from my role as an active member of the Democratic Party. Some of it comes from my philosophical commitment to ‘democracy’, independent of political orientation. Some of it comes from my interests in technology, including times when I get paid as a technologist. Some of it comes from a wide range of other interests.
So, where do you, my reader fit into all of this? If there are things you think I should write about, or shouldn’t write about, let me know. I will decide based on how I feel the topic relates to the four key points from the SPJ’s code of ethics.
If you send me an email, I consider that something that I can write about. As a general rule, I will ask people before I quote from their emails, and won’t quote them if they so request. However, in special cases, I will quote emails even without explicit permission. My understanding of privacy laws is that if you send it to me in an email, unless there is some prior written agreement in place describing the confidentiality, it is public, and not confidential.
Most importantly, if you try to pressure me about what I should or shouldn’t write, it will probably backfire. I can be pretty stubborn. I will quit organizations instead of letting people in an organization tell me what I can or cannot say on a blog. There is an old joke about how to get a journalists attention, tell them your comments are off the record. Something similar applies to me and blogging. If people try hard to get me not to write about something, it usually convinces me that the topic is all the more important to write about. Likewise, if people try really hard to get me to write about something, I’ll look much more closely at it before deciding to write about it.
How about you? If you’re a blogger, what considerations do you have about what you write about and what you don’t write about?
Random Stuff
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 05/05/2009 - 10:06Happy Cinco de Mayo. I always wondered why people were so interested in a fifth of mayonnaise.
From a Sojourner’s email last week: “Our global just-in-time economy means we are dependent on others. … A Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain bar has ingredients from nine countries in it.” – Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the Universy of Minnesota.
For a great blog post, check out Grandy’s blog post, Because I Left My Balls at the Cemetary, about making rubber band balls and leaving them at her father’s grave. My daughters may do the same thing one day.
A few years ago, they made a gift for me. It was an old box that wipes had come in. On one side, they painted “Dad’s Distractions”. On other sides, they painted, “Warning, procrastination may occur”, “Objects inside are meant to be mutilated”, and “not meant for children under 47”. Inside were bottle caps, spinning tops, random fuzzy decorations and anything else that I might fiddle with.
You see, when I was younger, one of my nicknames was “Fiddle Fingers”. I’ve always ended up with something in my hands to manipulate, and often mutilate. When I left one job, I was given plastic forks and paper clips to mutilate in a similar manner.
So, this Cinco de Mayo, I will celebrate how connected we really all are. How connected I am to the people of Mexico, to Grandy and her dad, to my children in their travels, and to each of you that stops and readings my blog.
Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, A New Justice?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/01/2009 - 09:23A new month starts, with a long list of blog posts to get written. Some will be quick posts, others are fairly complicated. Many are interrelated. I look at the list and try to figure out the appropriate order of blog posts and how much content goes in each blog post.
As I read the news this morning, I find that Supreme Court Justice Souter is retiring and I look at the list of possible replacements. How things have changed. What is most striking to me is that on the list of sixteen possible replacements that the AP published, I’ve met, at least in a cursory manner, three of them.
At the top of the list is Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. She was one of the judges that ruled on the Doninger case. I read her background before going to hear arguments in the Doninger Case at the Second Circuit. She has an impressive background, and she asked good questions during the hearing, but I disagree with her ruling, at least in that case. It did not seem as if the justices did their homework.
Another possible justice would be Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. I first met Gov. Patrick in 2005 while he was still a candidate. Like Justice Sotomayor, Gov. Patrick has an impressive background. I wrote about how his youth is linked to my youth and to my current interest in board of education issues in a post entitled, The ABC’s of Deval Patrick. I think Gov. Patrick would be a great Supreme Court justice.
Also on the list is Harold Hongju Koh. Dr. Koh is current dean of the Yale University Law School. I’ve been to many events sponsor by Yale University Law School, such as the Symposium on Reputation Economies in Cyberspace sponsored by the Information Society Project and the Law and Media Project, both at Yale. Dean Koh has given introductory comments at many of these events, so I’ve met him, but don’t particularly know him.
It looks like May will be another fun month to watch all that is going on.
Random Stuff
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 04/26/2009 - 20:36It is now eight in the evening. I’ve been on the run all day, and have not had a chance to write anything substantial. I started the day finding out that an interview about blogging I had done for LM-BLOG was up.
Then, off to a horse show. You can see pictures from that on my Flickr page. After a brief chance to catch breath at home, I went and picked up my middle daughter, Miranda, from the train station and went over to Woodbridge Democratic Headquarters.
Back home again, where I got some time to talk with Miranda for a little bit. She is off in college and I don’t get enough time to talk with her. She showed me some pictures of her trip to El Salvador.
In the early evening I took time to do Fiona’s radio show, which Miranda called into. Then, before we knew it, it was time to drive Miranda back to the train station.
I have a bunch of blog posts needing to be written, but it looks like it just won’t happen today.
