A few lines from one of my favorite songs have been playing
over in my mind a lot lately. It’s a
part of a verse, and it goes like this:
“Castles and cathedrals crumble/ pyramids and pipelines tumble/ the failure keeps you humble/ and leads us closer to peace”
Sometimes at work, I inevitably feel like a failure. Sometimes it’s because I can’t remember how
to do something I know I’ve already been taught. Other times it’s because my Spanish skills
are lagging that day, or because I realize too late that I missed a
pre-screening question and already put the call through to my supervisor. And sometimes, I feel like a failure because
someone flat out tells me I am.
I deal with all sorts of clients (and potential clients) at
my service site. Some are moms, some are
dads, some are happy because they’ve been helped by our attorneys, some are sad
because they call on behalf of a loved one who is incarcerated, some are young,
some are elderly, some are angry at a spouse or a stranger or the world, some
are hard-working people facing unfair circumstances, some are ex-felons trying
to start life over, and some are mentally ill and have been abandoned by
friends and family and society. While
sometimes I am the person that gets to deliver the happy news that we can
accept someone’s case or that we can get someone the right services, it seems
like more often I am the bearer of bad news.
Sometimes when I have to direct a potential client to
another agency, the person is grateful for the referral. Other times, people are discouraged by being
passed along from person to person. And
sometimes, people are just plain angry.
Most of the time, I am able to not take it personally. People aren’t really mad at me, they are mad
at “the system.” They are mad at the
injustices they face, they are mad that everyone seems to be working against
them, and they are mad that they haven’t found help. I think that’s justified – sometimes I’m mad
too. I hear stories from potential
clients that get me so angry I feel my own stomach knotting and head aching,
and I’m not even personally involved. I
can empathize with their pain and I wish with all my heart that there was
something our organization could do. In
cases like that, I try to stay positive for the potential client. I do my best to make a good referral, and to
keep an optimistic tone, and to encourage potential clients not to give up
hope. Sometimes it helps the people, and
sometimes I just get an angry grunt or a hang-up in response. Either way, I try my best not to take it
personally. Admittedly, though,
sometimes I can’t help but take the responses to heart.
The time that a client told me I was a terrible person for
denying her help when she was both elderly and disabled – I took it
personally. I felt like I was failing
her. In truth, I was doing all I could –
there was no way we could get her the help she needed in the timeframe she had,
and I tried to refer her to another agency that could move more quickly, but
she was already too jaded by the system to listen to or believe me. Still, I felt like I had failed her because I
became just another disembodied voice over the phone offering her nothing but
more phone numbers to call, which would only use up more of her time - time
that she did not have.
That’s just one of several stories I could tell, but I think
it gets the point across. But this post
isn’t meant to be all negative. You see,
the song says that failure keeps us humble, and in fact leads us closer to
peace. I think that’s true. Moments where we feel a sense of failure –
James Martin would say that’s God bringing us down just a peg, keeping our ego
in check. Sometimes it’s easy to get
caught up in the successes – to feel good about the work you do and the people
you serve. Don’t get me wrong – that’s a
good thing. But when you go a long time
of feeling good, sometimes you get too prideful, too self-serving, you forget
the point of what you’re doing.
Sometimes we need those moments of failure to keep us humble, to remind
us of the bigger picture or to remind us that we are not the be-all and
end-all. And I think when we are humble,
we see the way to peace. When we
remember we are all human, all flawed, all inadequate, we can remember to be
forgiving of one another; and in forgiving one another, we are better equipped
to live in harmony. And living in
harmony, we come to know peace.
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