Jul 23, 2011 | Life Reflections, Thinking Better
Revisiting the burning out phenomenon, especially burning out in ministry.
If I could distill the answer to “how to live a meaningful life?” to something simple, based on my short life thus far, I think it would be the imperative of doing and being well. The two components have to always be present simultaneously, because losing one of them will result in the feeling of meaninglessness. They’re imperative in the sense that it’s the simple, unavoidable need of the soul.
There’s a deep need in every soul both to do and to be, and out of these two we glean a sense of meaning and fulfillment in life. It seems to me that burning out often is caused by the absence of either one of the two components; a person gets saturated with only one component and atrophies. The saturation points from doing and being too much look different though. (Yes, I do think that one can get saturated in “being.”) And again, I think I have been to both ends of this spectrum as well.
The Need to Do
What makes the last day of finals, graduation days, and deadlines so exciting? One word – accomplishment. Deadlines may be associated with much negative sentiments, but they are only scary when you’re looking forward to them. Once you’ve passed them, they are actually quite sweet, especially if you know that you’ve done well.
Accomplishments are exhilarating. There’s worth and value in working, expending tireless efforts towards a goal, and obtaining what you had set out to do. Nothing boosts the morale like getting something done.
The danger lies in going too far on this “doing” track that you derive self value and worth solely from what you do. I feel like living in America, this is often the case. One of the first questions people ask is, “What do you do?” We measure people’s worth by how productive they are and how hard-working they are. While this does reflect a certain aspect of people’s character, it’s not the end of the story.
Perhaps because I come from the Eastern part of the world, I used to find it strange when people answer the question “How was your day?” with “It was productive.” It took me a few years to get used to that, because somehow in my mind, productivity was not a measure of how good a day is. If someone had asked me that question in Indonesia (and I don’t know whether this is still true today or not) and if I had answered “It was productive”, the person would look at me and say, “So? Is that good or bad?” A busy and productive day is not necessarily a good day, since a vacation day when I don’t have to work would be better! Few people work for work itself; people work for vacation. Now things have changed quite a bit – I’ve grown to put value in productivity, and whether that’s good or bad is debatable.
Too much work and not enough “being” will cause bitterness, because you’ll feel that others only want you for what they can get out of you. If you work in any secular setting especially, this feels like your reality. The world doesn’t care about your soul, only your productivity. You get rewarded for your productivity. In most cases, you’re not entirely indispensable and you’re not irreplaceable either. It’s sad, I know (don’t get depressed just yet though).
It is impossible to get the highest level of fulfillment from this machinery model. Bitterness, or a love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with work, is what I consider the saturation point in “doing.”
The Need to Be
If you’re at that first saturation point, it means that you need some time to rest, spend some time in quietness, and just …be. I don’t mean being in a vacuum, but being with God, the One who knows the purpose of your life and the true value of your personhood. Keep the Sabbath. It is a powerful cure to counter the grip of the world on your life, it will restore and replenish the drying well of the soul. No one should work nonstop at the expense of his soul.
Yet, the need to be is even deeper than this. We don’t need to rest because we’re tired; we need to rest because it’s part of thread in the fabric of humanity. The history of humankind begins with resting and being with God; man’s first day was the Sabbath day. They rested not because they were tired; it was purely to be with God, to experience wonder and to be awed by the glorious Creator. We need rest, a rest in God, because that’s just how we’re made to be.
I feel this need in a very real way. Even though I love what I do, especially in the context of ministry, I need to know that I’m appreciated as a human being, appreciated for who I am. It means that even if I bombed and completely failed in my work, it’s not like I’ve lost all reason to exist and someone can just exterminate me. This is why the Sabbath is glorious. God wants to spend time with me; He appreciates me for who I am.
In the book, Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion by the ever so insightful Abraham Joshua Heschel, he writes:
Animals are content when their needs are satisfied; man insists not only on being satisfied but also on being able to satisfy, on being a need not only on having needs. Personal needs come and go, but one anxiety remains: Am I needed? There is no man who has not been moved by that anxiety.
That need to be needed is true not only in the realms of work, i.e., one is needed to fulfill a job, but also in the realms of being, i.e., one is needed just for his presence.
Yet, there is a saturation point for this too. “Being” too much = nothing gets done. It may be a cop-out for laziness, and while it may feel great at first, it will get boring after a while and you’ll feel useless. That feeling of uselessness is one of the most demoralizing things ever.
So…
When we work together, especially in ministry, I think we need to ensure the well-being and the well-doing of each other. It means that we cannot excuse laziness, because it is in a person’s best interest to actually accomplish things in his life. We need to motivate each other to do and find fulfillment in the tasks that pertain to ministry, but appreciate the personhood of each individual at the same time. How’s that to be done? Something to think about…
Apr 8, 2011 | Thinking Better
I’d like to continue the line of thought that I started in my previous post on Versatile Design. The question that I want to explore here is, now that we’ve extracted some lessons from the design of nature, how do we apply them in real life?
At the end of the last post I touched on how I personally take those lessons in my field of engineering. But I also think that the concept of design does not only apply to technology, architecture, or engineering. Instead, the kind of approach that follows nature’s pattern can be applied in non-technical or even social contexts as well. In my world, this non-technical arena translates to ministry.
In campus ministry and the youth movement in general, we deal with design concepts all the time. We create programs, projects, initiatives, and resources for the primary “heaven-appointed purpose of giving the gospel to the world in this generation” (Education, p. 262). It thus makes intuitive sense that we ought to strive for the highest order of efficiencies to turn this noblest aim into reality.
Which Wall?
Ten years ago when it all began and the wall was down, builders were called into the work. Novel ideas and innovation sparked in these individuals’ minds, and the beginnings of the chemical reactions that would eventually turn into a fireworks of youth ministries were extraordinarily exciting.
Ten years into the movement, some walls are already built. Does that mean, however, that innovation stop? Heaven forbid. There are many things that are yet to be done and builders must continue to rise up. But what is important to note is that these builders cannot think that they’re working on an entirely destroyed wall anymore – that thinking is ten years behind. When current builders scope the land, what they should see is a wall that is partially built [I’m talking about the youth movement wall] precisely because the movement has moved. They must see how their work can fit into the larger context.
Don’t get me wrong, there are things that still need to be built from scratch, things that are simply not done yet. But what we have now is a field that is calling not just for builders, but also repairers and fortifiers. Starting something up may seem more glamorous, but there are many less glamorous parts that are equally important. The innovations need to take place not only in the building sector, but also in the fortification and repairing sectors. Yes, that means working on something that someone had built before, and making them multiple times better. We can’t all be pioneers in title, though we must have the spirit.
Ministry Ecology
The kind of versatile thinking that I’m trying to explore goes something like this. If I see a need that I am particularly called to address, instead of just asking the question “what can I do?”, I can ask a variant of that question, which is “how can I do this using the available structures?” This way, the originality of the idea doesn’t necessarily translate into a completely radical project that no one has ever thought before and creating everything from scratch, however romantic that would be, but it comes from the novel ways of connecting sectors of ministry and combining resources that many others have been working on. The glory of this kind of approach is that one may find that he/she doesn’t have to do much invention, just coordination, but exponential results ensue. Call this laziness; I call this efficiency.
When one zooms out to see a larger picture of how different sectors interact, what often emerges is the creativity to make any one sector more versatile. Light bulb moments come when, hey, one ministry can actually connect to many others without drastically increasing their activity. It’s all about opportunity costs here – the cost of not doing more. We see this all the time in business and different sectors of society. Just because different entities are not talking to each other, even when they’re working on very similar things, they lose much. Additionally, more resources are wasted because each one is in their own world[1]. In ministry, resources and waste translate to time, energy, and the spirituality of the individuals.
When I have a goal, a mission, an objective for a project, and I set my mind on doing it, it is incumbent upon me to find out what has been done that can help me towards this goal before, i.e., do my research. Indeed this must be one of the first things that I do. That’s what Nehemiah did, isn’t it? That’s what people do in business or research. You think you have a brilliant idea, but when you research the field it turns out that people have done it before. Do you get discouraged? No. You think more and see how you can advance the field by doing something that hasn’t been done, i.e., come up with a more brilliant idea.
Synergy is what I’m getting at. It really is a simple idea, and not novel at all. But it’s been bothering me a lot lately because I would be walking through an exhibit hall of ministries, and I would come across multiple booths doing almost the exact same thing. In my mind, I was like, “Umm… have you guys talked to those guys across the hall?” At the very least, they should split the work or something.
Now What?
To any ministry organization, this means more research, more communication, and more creativity. No one should live in their own world; they should know what’s going on outside of their direct sphere of influence. To an institution that has more of a wider scope of view, this means facilitating inter-ministry coordination. Perhaps a directory of ministry should be built as a go-to place for research. The question is what can we do so that we don’t keep reinventing wheels (yes, plural), because “reinventing wheels” and “end-time movement” sound oxymoronic to me.
[1] For example, sector A has a waste stream X. Because it doesn’t talk to sector B, who turns out to be able to process stream X as inputs, sector A dumps X to the environment or pays money to dispose it somewhere. Sector B, on the other hand, pays a lot of money to get their inputs elsewhere. What could happen instead is that sector A could sell X to sector B and gain more money. Stream X from A most likely costs less than what sector B is paying right now because it’s a waste stream, thus lowering their costs and increasing their profit. The environment is less harmed too on top of that. Gahh, I’m seeing this more and more the longer I live, and most likely the reason is political. If you haven’t read about the Veta la Palma story I recommended in my previous post, I highly recommend to look into it – there are many lessons to learn from their experience.
Mar 29, 2011 | Thinking Better
When you observe the things of nature, certain principles of existence just emerge out of the system. I’ve been spending some time being wondered by nature and natural systems through various means – different reading materials, documentaries, other montage of pictures, photo journals, actually being outdoors, etc. – and it’s been very instructive. I highly recommend the activity.
One of the striking things that, to me, is ubiquitous in nature is the multiplicity of function of any single entity or living being. The natural system is so intricately and intelligently designed that any one aspect in the bio-network serves more than one purpose. The trees in the forest are not just carbon sinks and oxygen suppliers for the earth, they also serve as water retainer, participating in the natural water purification system, as bird sanctuaries, as food, as soil stabilizer – physically and chemically, among many others that I’m still not aware of.
When one portion is removed, the equilibrium is disrupted and you end up with an imbalanced system. So when a species is endangered because of human activity, for example, a whole ecological web is in actuality imperiled because others depend on that species as food source or supplier of other services (e.g., cleaning, leftovers, etc). The natural system is so elegantly integrated that often, we only learn the truth about seemingly unconnected things after we disrupt them. The good news is that nature is so robust that it can tolerate a certain degree of disruptions, both natural and human – I’ll reflect on nature’s robustness in another entry. Yet when it comes to humans, foolish extremes are not an impossibility.
This type of integrated, versatile design, stands in stark contrast with some human designs. A lot of the times, humans are so one-tracked minded that when we design things, the product only serves one goal. Usually that single track purpose is commercial (read: money). The problems with this kind of mindset are the following: one, it is highly inefficient/wasteful, since the opportunity costs to this mindset are products that could actually serve multiple purposes, and two, it is usually extremely disruptive since it pushes for this one (economic) goal at the expense of all other ‘unimportant’ factors.
A classic example is plastic. In nature, things work in cycles. When the cycle is complete, there will essentially be no or little waste. Only humans can design something that is once-through and disposable like plastic. It is basically a one-way conversion from resource to waste, with no large-scale mechanism in place to convert the waste back into a resource. Yes, there’s some recycling with plastic these days, but the portion of recycled plastic is very, very small compared to the waste. In fact, it’s not a true recycle anyway because plastic degrades, meaning that when you re-process plastic, what you end up is a lower level plastic; you don’t get the same plastic quality with the original materials (unlike glass). These wastes get shipped to some islands in third world countries somewhere, and these days many fishes and birds swallow plastic bits into their bellies. It turns out that plastic does break down, not in a way that biomaterials disintegrate, but into smaller pieces. These bits can be imperceptibly small (but still plastic), and when they enter the animals’ digestive system, they chemically react and release toxins that kill the animals.
Our lives now revolve around plastic – it’s hard to imagine life without it. But here’s the thing – our need for plastic is artificial. Life existed before plastic, but plastic changed the world. It turns out though, that the design, even with all the uses of plastic today, is not versatile enough. Apparently the inventor(s) who no doubt earned a lot of money, was not enough of a global thinker to think of non-human members of the earth, or of the earth itself.
But not all human designs are bad. Coincidentally there are those who come up with brilliant ideas to use resources sustainably, because they try to work with nature. I’m a big fan of the Veta la Palma story (read here) <– must read!
As an engineer in training, I want my design to be more like the nature story than the plastic story. There’s just simple brilliance with this versatility and integration that I wish we as human beings would imitate more, to be wide-minded and arrive at far more efficient and creative designs. I want to imitate the works of the ultimate Designer.
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