Wild Triumph

Richard on Mt. Rainier

A few months ago I sent out a note to clients asking for their most amazing triumphs of the last year. 'Toot your own horn!' I said. One person sent something back. And that was my daughter. It got me to thinking -- are we used to sliding past our achievements in our urge to live ever in the future? Do we only see the past as the ways in which we tried and failed? Are we missing out on the gratitude and recognition of our most glorious gifts?

I purposely didn't specify or define 'achievements' because what we're most proud of may be very different from how others see us, or what the world says is successful. Our triumphs may not be about manifesting new cars or high-paying jobs (unless they are.) Success may be about being absolutely secure and loving whatever reality brings us. But if we can't see or acknowledge our triumphs, if we only we see what we haven't done, or can only acknowledge our flaws and half attempts, then aren't we skewing reality?

As I work with clients in planning their new year, we start each session with claiming the triumphs. It is the source of many tears and gasps -- how people are surprised by what they consider their victories!

What wild triumph are you rejoicing in? How can you add a moment each planning cycle (monthly, quarterly) to reflect upon your successes?

My own greatest triumph would have to be witnessing my two children graduate from college, and knowing that these last ten years especially I have been such a steady, creative presence in their lives. And as the photo above notes, surging back out into the world with my beloved being well enough to travel with again. We continue the exploration together.

Here's a few from my Wild Work clients. Add your own triumphs in the Comments section. Go ahead, get real with all your amazing accomplishments.

"In the past week, I moved to NYC, conquered the subway system, found two jobs, and continue to feed my curiosity through this wild and exciting new place."
--dylan nichole

"I have several treasured successes this last year:
1. the continued and healthy growth of my ministry
2. the launching of our youth program therein.
3. I finally began writing my book! (thanks to you, Sonya!)
4. My lover and I finally went on vacation alone for a week (after 17 years of being together)
5. This April I will have stuck to my fitness program for two years.
6. I had a breakthrough about my financial worth."
--Rev. Judith Laxer

"2007 was a breakthrough year for me. I moved across the country to a place that has always enchanted me, Santa Fe, and I am enthralled with a new body of my creative work. This has been one of the most interesting, joyful, passionate and intuition-honing experiences of my life. The process has given me the trust and confidence to go for some of my larger life goals."
--Melissa Weiss Steele

"My most treasured success of 2007 was organizing and presenting, in partnership with my husband, Gary Sill, the performance of three orchestral works by Sufi composer Hidayat Inayat Khan, in part as a celebration of his 90th year. In the audience were mainly his students and long time friends, most of whom had never heard his music performed live before. The Orchestra was drawn from Vancouver musicians who perform in the Vancouver Symphony, CBC, and Vancouver Opera orchestras. The three symphonic works were Poeme en Fa, Suite Symphonique, La Monotonia, and the Royal Legend. All three are drawn from incidents and historical events in the composer's life and ancestry and musically illustrate the themes of peace, spiritual and personal liberty, and freedom from opression which are the ideals he lives his life by. My husband, who is a wonderful pianist, and a brilliant violin virtuoso named Talia Marcus also performed several of the composers smaller works. The Orchestra was conducted by a brilliant young conductor from Munich, Andreas Pascal Heinzmann who will no doubt one day be known internationally. For everyone involved this was a transcendent evening."
--Carole Harmon

Wild Hope

Caucus, Seattle, WA Joshua Trujillo, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

It is the first time in my life I can remember feeling a part of a movement.

After the Obama Rally in Key Arena, I turn to my friend and say, "I felt my identity as 'I' slip away, and become part of the group, like I couldn't distinguish any longer where I ended."

"It was that way in the sixties all the time," my friend says.

And I believe her, things in that era seeming much less defended, less critical, less prone to irony. No matter what happens with Obama this movement has been created, it was 21,000 strong in Seattle yesterday, and it's not going away. Amongst the loudest cheers he received: to end the genocide in Darfur, and when he included straights and gays in his groups seeking equality in his government, and when he said George W Bush would no longer be on the ticket.

But it took years of GWB to get us to radicalize. To understand what we might lose when our constitution is altered.

The most punishing photos in Obama's slide show were the ones of Abu Grab. I drew my breath in when I saw it come up on the screen, partly because I was sitting next to my friend's twelve year old granddaughter, and partly because I hadn't yet been hopeful enough to imagine we could undo that damage. My friend cried, her grief coming to the surface. "We had to push some of this away, in order to go on," I say.

Desmond Tutu says forgiveness starts with an admission of the wrongdoing. Neither Bush or Cheney seem likely to stand for impeachment, and so who is going to admit this horrific wrong? Did it, indeed start with us? When we stayed in confusion on the facts instead of confronting? When our Thanksgiving dinners turned to silence when we couldn't understand how peace and war could share the same table?

It left me wondering: As Dr. Martin Luther King said, as Barack Obama quotes in his speeches, how can I "confront the fierce urgency of now?" And how have I been unwilling to confront it since the reign of fear mongering in this country?

In America, when we don't have the courage to do something, we say we don't have enough time. We're paying the mortgage, raising the kids, running errands, and mostly not taking care of the piece that holds us together. Maybe because it comes under the name of government, that unwieldly, complex, sometimes corrupt entity that can't hold us, can't describe who we are. But then, we have forgotten that they is us. When Darfur (or Mississippi) is starving, so are we. When those children are going without health care, those are my children too.

My wrongdoing is that I forget another's pain when I'm too busy taking care of the details of my own life. And I'm wise enough now to live as if we all matter, to make choices that lead in that direction.

The movement I saw wasn't a man called Barack Obama. He was standing up there, talking about a plan. But really, it was the sea of hands raised in the air of the mostly young people, there to stand for something else besides politics as usual. They showed up to start the undoing of terrorist politics, to close the torture chambers, to end poverty. The hope that it is possible and not just rhetoric was palpable yesterday. And no matter what candidate comes into office, these people had a taste of what that could feel like. And I predict that they, like myself, won't be going back to their safe, comfortable lives anytime soon. They're Generation Now.

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On February 9, they forecast that double the biggest ever Washington state caucus turnout happened, about 200,000 people showed up, to vote almost 3-1 for Obama. People were shocked at the lines of traffic, the overflowing polling places, the ballots that ran out and had to be used for scrap paper. It is happening!