His question in response to my exploration of how those things we’ve tossed into our shadow have a deep power that, when accessed with compassion and skill, can drive our creativity. He cried quietly when I noted that his struggle must be so painful.
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It would be easy to paint my realization around work as sacred duty as something sprung from some genius within. It was not. It sprang from exhaustion, from being lost myself, from having nowhere else to turn with my own suffering.
The pain of hating our own creation is a consequence of our investing too much of our sense of being into the company, the product, the creation. When we hang our sense of self on the whisper of an idea; when we unwittingly insist that our love, safety, and belonging depend on what we do and, most important, how others feel about our feelings, our actions, and our work; then we leave little space for anything other than bitter, existential suffering.
Power in the hands of one afraid or unwilling to look in the mirror perpetuates an often silent, always seething violence in the workplace. Worse still, when a leader leads from his or her shadow, the dismembering havoc is perpetuated down the line until the company, the tribe, the community simply assumes this is how life must be.
What makes all of life complicated, and not just hard, is this unwillingness to do the work that’s ours to do; our unwillingness to live the examined life.
Writing,’ notes the poet Terry Tempest Williams, ‘requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones.