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| ISSUE NO. 688 |
| I LIKE TO THINK OF GFJ . . . as a heart space. Things are tender around this place, by design. No matter where we are in the day to day running of things, when I think about the purpose of GFJ - why it exists at all, why it exists in the first place - I think about deep-seated wishes and values. We all have them, and although they are unique to each of us, there is something about such heart and gut-related feelings that tells us: I'm not the only one. In Gabor Maté's book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, he writes about the physical science of the gut, and how it relates to our thoughts and feelings: "The nervous system of the gut contains about one hundred million nerve cells – we have as many in the small intestine alone as there are in our entire spine! These nerves do more than coordinate the digestion and absorption of food and the elimination of waste – they also form part of our sensory apparatus. The gut responds to emotional stimuli by muscle contractions, blood flow changes, and the secretion of a multitude of biologically active substances. Such brain-gut integration is essential for survival...In turn, the gut is abundantly supplied with sensory nerves that carry information to the brain. Quite to the contrary of what was believed until recently, nerve fibres ascending from the intestines to the brain greatly outnumber ones descending from brain to gut." Our tag line is 'satisfying the hunger for meaningful work' and when we think about hunger in relation to food, we think about the stomach. But the kind of hunger we also mean each time we write that line, is a heart hunger. And the reality of how challenging it can be to live by your heart - especially while entrenched in systems that define success by metrics that exploit labor and / or the land. What's the best job you've ever had? It's a question I'm rarely asked, but I like to answer it: the best job I ever had was working as a campus tour guide at Cornell University. I worked outside most of the time. I walked (mostly backwards) and talked, and I told a story as I did so. I answered people's questions, and gave prospective students - a heart-hungry bunch if there ever was one - a window into one potential pathway of the future. The comradery amongst tour guides was high, and our commitment to helping people was equally so. From the call center to the traffic booths to the scheduled tours, our job was to answer your questions, or connect you to someone else who could. In essence, it was a service job. All of its elements combined to make it the best in my life, but I believe the service aspect was the most important - the thing that tied it all together, and made it a heart job more than a mind or money or body job (though of course it required all of those, too). When you ask someone what their best job was (and I encourage you to try it - it's a great interview question) people are going to have different definitions of what they mean by 'best'. The question reveals things about how we define what a 'good' job is, especially around things like pay rate, longevity (how long you held the job), feeling valued, and perceived prestige. Working as a tour guide didn't pay a lot, relative to other things I might have done. It also came with a built-in expiration date. And here's a funny thing about the prestige of that position: I applied out of necessity, seeking a way to justify spending the summer at school instead of going home, and I had no idea that it was a highly competitive process. I enjoyed the multiple rounds of interviews - they were designed to be fun, and they were - but if I had known anything about the competition for the job, I would never have applied. I'm a highly ambitious person, but not a highly competitive one. When we think about why we do something - what calls us, what part of our gut responds - and then how we measure success or failure, the two often work in tension. It's so very hard to be vulnerable and open-hearted, especially about our dreams, which manifest as things that will be judged by others as either a 'win' or a 'fail' based on those afore-mentioned, systems-imposed metrics. GFJ began with a heart call / question / desire, but we want our day to do work to be about redefining success and failure. Redefining what the 'best' job means. Changing the way we do our work, the way we work with others, and the way we operate in the world to reflect the type of world we want to live in - while still acknowledging the realities of the world in which we currently live. Yours in heart seeking, Tay + Dor |
tidbits...resources on anti-racism, environmentalism and food culture AKA stuff we're reading / listening to / watching / noticing / thinking about / captivated by this Tuesday . . . |
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