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Agency and Passivity: The Magic of Increasing Self-Awareness

Agency and Passivity: The Magic of Increasing Self-Awareness

Last updated on: May 27, 2016 at 5:00 am by Maggie Beaumont

Agency and Passivity: The Magic of Increasing Self-Awareness 2016-05-27T05:00:19+00:00 Maggie Beaumont

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Notes from CPE

CPE: Clinical Pastoral Education, the same practical chaplaincy training that is required of ministerial candidates in the UUA and many other traditions. This year I’m in a 12-month residency program in the grueling, exciting, challenging, fruitful, occasionally painful work of self-discovery as well as skill development.

I’m having a tough week. I’m having an enlightening week. I’m having a challenging week. This week’s classes have pushed my buttons.

All of those statements are true. I’m noticing that each one invokes different feelings in me as I read them, especially if I say them aloud. ‘Enlightening’ and even ‘challenging’ make me feel successful, hardworking, right where I’m supposed to be doing what I’m supposed to be doing. ‘Tough’ and ‘button-pushing,’ when I say them aloud, make me feel exhausted, helpless, and emotionally fragile, at the whim of external events.

Which would you choose, if you were me?

—–

The assignment looked simple:

select a few key ages from your personal history
give the ‘self’ of that age a nickname
describe the characteristics of the ‘you’ of that time
notice how those characteristics show up in your life today
discover how they impact your chaplaincy

It’s an exercise intended to discover and identify the sources of our particular styles of chaplaincy. Surely I would have no trouble with this; in a long and complicated life there were lots of interesting years to choose from – in fact, the first problem was narrowing the selection to a manageable number.

So I wrote about being inquisitive and fearless at two-and-a-half, the “Apple of my Daddy’s Eye,” so cute that all my grownups found my questions adorable, and so engaging that they were generally willing to answer in detail and at length. Which comes into my chaplaincy as both an eager curiosity that leads me to listen well, and a distressing sense of nosy entitlement that sometimes leads me to ask impertinent questions.

So far, so good.

Next was “Uprooted,” age 7, when my parents moved us 300 miles and I lost my best friend, then had to adjust to a big new school and all-new classmates. A certain shyness and discomfort in crowds has followed me from that time, leading me to do poorly in a hospital room full of family members I’ve never met before. On the other hand, from that same year I’ve learned to circulate through a more spread-out crowd, feeling successful and useful when I speak to one family member at a time, giving each one the kind of attention they seem to need in the moment.

Do you see the problem? I didn’t. I wrote about 19, 22, 26, 30, and 52 before I realized that, for part of my childhood and half of my adulthood, I wasn’t describing “characteristics of my then-self” I was narrating “things that happened to me.” Parents, husbands, bosses made decisions for me. Disasters befell me. Circumstances restricted me. In an early draft I even said I was ‘helpless’ when at 39 I had run through my savings without landing another job.

Depriving myself of agency in writing about it, just as I had somehow lacked agency at the time.

What do I mean by ‘lacking agency’? Giving away my power. Passively accepting someone else’s judgment or decision instead of honoring my own (or negotiating for compromise). Resenting the other person for not listening to me rather than speaking up unequivocally for myself (or seeking other people to talk to).

When I dug into this a little deeper, I found that some of the passivity seemed to result from either-or thinking. (You know, just like the parts of the previous paragraph that are NOT in parentheses).

“Either I stay single or I make the same kind of marriage my parents had.”

“Either parenthood is easy or it’s overwhelming” and “Either we’re both full-time parents or I have to do all the work alone.”

“Either I go back to school full time or I can’t go back at all.”

You get the idea. I wish I’d realized sooner that there was more to life than such rigid choices between two-and-only-two alternatives. But not only did I not realize at the time, I didn’t even notice when I was writing this retrospective assignment. I saw the passivity, but not the false duality of either-or. This new awareness only showed up when my classmates pointed it out — yesterday.

So today I’m trying to begin to learn to see the middle way, the third path, the both-and, the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too. I’m finding it challenging. I keep bouncing between ‘stepping in to speak where I’m not welcome’ and ‘standing outside and silent where my input is wanted’ – without, somehow, passing through ‘participating in conversations appropriately where my voice is welcome.’

I keep bouncing between ‘working unsustainably hard’ and ‘being lazy’ or ‘playing office’ – without managing to find a consistent, sustainably productive pace.

The Witch asks what I plan to do about this.

The first step is just noticing either-or thinking when it shows up; bringing my attention to sentences that come out of my mouth that include the assumption that it’s ‘one way or the other’ about anything. The second step is investing at least a little energy in discovering some middle ground between whatever the two alternatives appear to be. Maybe even finding more than a couple of in-between states or actions.

I’m not sure I see the third step yet, but clearly there is more than this.

The Witch looks over my shoulder. “Tell them what magic you are doing to pull this work forward.”

I tell her I’m afraid – what if everyone laughs?

“What alternatives are you playing with now? either ‘everyone laughs’ or ‘no one understands’ ? What other possibilities might exist?”

I notice that I’m afraid to say what I really think: that I’m not the only person who limits themselves by rigid either-or thinking, or by giving their power to others who don’t necessarily want to take it away. I notice that I’m especially afraid to assert that what I write here might be valuable to even one reader.

“Ah yes,” says the Witch, “that old notion that you have to be either self-effacingly overmodest or offensively egotistical. I recommend appropriate and fair self-evaluation as a possible third choice.”

I thank the Witch warmly. She nods her head and blows me a kiss. Just when I think she is leaving, she turns and asks, “What magic are you doing?”

I tell her. She tells me I must tell you, too.

Photo by Maggie Beaumont

On a tiny table in the living room I have set an altar. It has a crystal ball in clear/white, one in black, and one in pink. Crystals of other shapes are there in the middle, pink rather than either black or white. Some of the Beings who work with me are represented, too: Dolphin who guides me in the lower world, Bee who guides me to find nourishment, Dragonfly who guides me in the upper world, and Rabbit who guides me in creativity.

Just now the magic consists of greeting the altar night and morning, sitting near it to meditate, asking for guidance to the middle way, the colors in the whole space between black and white. More will be revealed, I am sure of it.

Blessed Be.

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