Tough Day at Work

Generally speaking, I love my job. I really do. It is a great thing to be involved in helping people improve their lives, end harmful patterns, and grow into their best (or at least better) selves. It can be immensely gratifying.

And then there are days like today, which are just tough. I am working with a girl right now who has had a rough life, and who has made a lot of mistakes. She is a fantastic girl, but she keeps repeating destructive patterns that are not moving her life towards anything but even more pain.

When I have clients like that, for whom change is so desperately needed, but for whom change also seems so impossibly distant, it is a challenge not only for my mind but also for my heart.

I try to keep my therapeutic distance, and I am succesful msot of the time, but even then I ache for my clients who hurt like she does. It is so hard for me to remain a therapist and avoid the temptation to become a friend. My job is to help her gain insight and create new patterns to replace the old ones, not to commiserate with her and give her a shoulder to cry on.

Therapy is often a game of patience and restraint, and NOT following the urge to give comfort and solace. I have to remember what my role is, and what it is NOT. On days like today, that distinction is hard to recognize and even harder to adhere to. I think I succeeded, but it was hard on me. It is tough to be a professional helper, and to not feel like you are helping as much as you might. It is hard to see a girl who is struggling so much with her own (largely) self created sorrows, and not jump in and try to save her. My job is to help her learn to save herself, not prevent her from learning by taking away her challenges. But precisely that difference is a very, very difficult line to walk.

And then I have to buck up and be upbeat for my next client, and I have 10 minutes in which to make the turn.

Of Dreams and Vindication

I was going to write this post earlier today, but that would have been too premature even for me. Now, though, CNN has officially projected that our next president will be Barack Hussein Obama, and I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on that idea.

For the first time in my life, I can actually say that I believe in the age-old adage that anyone can be anything in America. I have heard it ever since I was a boy, but I have always seen too much evidence that there are far too many things in our country that far too many people simply could not realistically aspire to. I wanted to believe it, but could not. Yet now I sit here, knowing that the next president of the United States will be a black man. Even more surprising, I am not surprised. It feels right, and feels natural.

I am very proud to be an American right now. Not because Barack Obama is president, but because Barack Obama had a chance to become president in the first place. 40 years ago, when he was a young boy, there was no chance for him to ever aspire so high. 200 years ago, he would have legally been considered only 3/5 of a person. He was born into a world where people of his skin color were systematically and brutally repressed. In the year he was born, the idea of a black president would have been so ridiculous as to be laughable. The idea of a black mayor or governor was cause for outrage and protest. And then came a difficult, sometimes violent process of change. A million men and women marched on Washington. Rosa kept her seat. Martin had a dream.

But the dream was deferred. For a long time it seemed as though the dream would wither on the vine. A new glass ceiling seemed to slide into place, and it seemed to me that the fantastic and gifted Americans of color would be allowed only so much success, only a select few glimpses of their true potential. The 60s and 70 rolled by, and progress towards racial equality only progressed in fits and starts. The year I was born, America was overwhelmingly racist. If you would have asked me when I graduated high school if I thought I would ever live to see a black president, I would have told you that I would hope so, but didn't think it would ever happen.

And yet today it did happen. I have no idea what kind of president Barack Obama will be. Maybe a terrible one, maybe the best since Lincoln. Time will tell. What I am grateful for and proud of is that a black man has risen to the highest office of the most powerful nation in the world. I am also proud that the American people, both black and white, are starting to fulfill the dream that Dr. King spoke of. His dream was not a dream for black people, but a dream for an America where men are judged 'not for the color of their skin, but for the content of their character.'

This election was, I think, proof that we are finally making real progress towards that dream. God bless America. God blessed America.