A Pilgrim’s Plea
Please don’t ask us to “reinvent” ourselves
for a changing world of work.
For we only wish to unfold,
to continue the miracle of being born.
To greet each day as the world does,
Fresh, new and ripe for living.
We long to lean towards the sun like flowers –
eager to blossom,
To move wild like waves under a silver moon-
drawn on the tide of our native longing.
We wish to belong to the world, yes.
But first and foremost, we wish to belong to ourselves.
For you cannot downsize, right size or minimize the human soul –
That place in each of us that is our true home
is totally immune to the corporate takeover,
to mergers and acquisitions,
because it’s not for sale.
Please don’t ask us to be so smitten with technology
that as we enter more deeply into the world of the virtual,
we surrender what has always come natural.
Let us not be hypnotized by the 21st century mantra “To accept change as the only constant in our lives”.
Can we not, instead, restore our faith in those things that never change?
Like the genius in the seed
to become a flower, a tree or a human being.
The faithful turning of the earth,
Or the lovely way that gravity
continues to hold us to her.
Can we not restore our faith
in the persistent beckoning of the human heart
To give and receive,
To love and be loved,
To fail with as much grace as we succeed?
As we become more firmly rooted in ourselves
may we cease to demand that the world navigate our work lives with promises of more programs,
more positions and more promotions.
May we have the maturity to see that
those in the oval office,
those in the board room,
those on the trading floor
are not prophets…
they, too, are pilgrims,
their every step remaining as much a mystery as our own.
For each of us must travel the uncharted seas of our lives, alone, yet, blessedly, together, side by side.
Trusting that inner compass of hope and courage and imagination.
Never forgetting that when you bring heart to the journey, you make it holy.
When you bring heart to the journey,
you will not lose sight of the brilliant stars in the immense night sky.
This the pilgrim’s plea at the onset of the 21st century.
To bring all that we are and all that we have
To the joy and the sorrow
The wonder and the terror
The known and the unknown
of daily living.
But, please, don’t ask us to reinvent ourselves
for yet another change in the world of work,
For we only wish to unfold,
to continue the miracle of having been born.
©Denise Bissonnette, 2000
BridgeWorks 