Journal of Sacred Work

…and you who behold the world with delight,
you let me be as I was meant to be-
that’s what it is about you, for me.
-From: This Holding On, This Letting Go by Karen Updike (Fireweed Press, 2006)*

    Just as my father, mother and older sister sought to mold me as a child (see photo) I did things to mold my children. Isn’t that the role of a parent?
   Perhaps not. Our efforts to mold others are often not the gift they seek from us. Instead, they seek to find their truest voice. We all hope to be who we were "meant to be."
   It is the same with our co-workers. I know that an occasional source of frustration in my relationships with others – as a husband, father, and leader, is my odd notion that I am supposed to get people to change. But do I want them to change me?…

   I’ve never met a person who didn’t want to improve. I’ve also never met a person that wanted someone else to improve them. We attend self-help courses not because we want the speakers to change us but because we are hoping they will help us find some of the keys to awakening greater strength in beauty within us.
   Why do some of us feel it is our job to change others? In care giving, my guess is that it comes from a distorted notion of the role of a leader. If I’m a housekeeping supervisor, I may think it’s my job to make a given employee mop the floor in a particular way. What if they follow my instructions but I don’t like the expression on their face? Is it now my job to try and make the person look happy? What if they smile and I don’t think their smile looks sincere enough?
   These questions all probe the folly of our self-centered idea that people should behave the way we think they should. The closer the person’s relationship to us, the more we may think they ought to bend to our will. Why is it so hard for us to accept those around us for who they are? Why can’t we follow the Golden Rule and let them be who they are just as we would want them to let us be – to love us for who we are, and not for how we behave.
   Sometimes, reflections like these can send us off on the wrong foot. Absent this warning, you may end up reading this and think, "Yes, why don’t other people affirm me for who I am," instead of recognizing that we practice this approach toward others and let go of our expectations that we will receive the same support in return. But, there I go trying to manage your behavior.
   Karen Updike’s poem is the best meditation about the gift we can give to others: our affirmation that we love them enough to let them be who they are. Here is her remarkable poem in its entirety – as a gift to you. It’s a particularly good poem to read out loud.

You Let Me Be

You let me be as I was meant to be,
not pruned to please a parent’s sense of right.
Is that what it is about you, for me,

this permission to let my senses flow free
without fear of abandonment some dark night?
You remind me of how I was meant to be

’til shades of the prison house damped memory
of sand dunes, and songs round campfires bright.
Is that what it is about you, for me,

a brush with my past, kindling unerringly
feelings others often repress from sight?
When you let me be as I was meant to be

I became more than I was, gracefully
able to love myself, cease my desperate flight.
So that’s what it is about you, for me!

Now pulsations of pain change to sympathy,
and you who behold the world with delight,
you let me be as I was meant to be-
that’s what it is about you, for me.

   When Karen writes "I became more than I was, gracefully/ able to love myself…" we awaken to the power of the gift we can give to those around us. It is our acceptance of others that gives birth to grace, not our efforts to correct and control. This is the paradox of love, and perhaps its finest gift.

Loving Care Practice: Think of the people in your life who have accepted you for who you are and those who do so in your life today. It may be a grandparent, a friend, a pastor, a fellow care giver. As today’s gift to someone you love, can you find ways to affirm that person rather than try to change them? To continue this practice, you may choose to include this thought process in your daily meditation.

With love,
-Erie Chapman

*Karen Updike’s book of poetry, This Holding On, This Letting Go, is available through Fireweed Press P.O. Box 482, Madison, Wisconsin 53701-0482