Soul-ful Integration: perhaps most importantly, I want to know that you actually “like yourself”—including those parts that are hard to like. At some level, I suspect that we can only begin to truly ‘Like” another person when we begin to “like ourselves.” It might all go back to an insight that Erich Fromm (1956) offered many years ago. He suggested that we can only truly love another person when we have come to love ourselves.
I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.
Maybe it is as simple as this: the essence of Trust resides in love of self and other on behalf of something greater than both of us (I/Thou).
A Trusting Relationship: The Invitation Accepted
I have been fortunate (blessed) to find this kind of trusting relationship with many people in my life. However, I want to focus specifically on one of these relationships. It is with the forementioned Gary Quehl, my long-term friend and colleague. Gary and I not only wrote the book about deep caring and generativity, he and I also wrote a book about civic engagement based on a project we conducted in Northern California. Furthermore, Gary was senior editor of a series of best-selling handbooks that I wrote about professional development and consulting in higher education. These books were written while I served as chief consultant to a major higher education association in Washington D.C. that Gary led.
There was something very special about working with Gary over several decades. He was success-oriented rather than being failure-avoidant. A success-orientation was rare and failure-avoidance was common among leaders of the D.C. higher ed community who tended to be housed in buildings around Dupont Circle in Washington. For Gary Quehl, it was important that we were successful in meeting the goals of at least one project—even if this meant failing to meet the goals of another project. We could strike out several times as long as we hit an occasional home run! And home runs were aplenty in working with Gary in his leadership of one higher education association: major grants, significant national conferences, and long-term educational reform programs. I even wrote several widely cited books that conveyed the insights gained from these higher education projects. All of this meant that I could Trust Gary as a source of spirit-ful and soul-ful inspiration. In addition, I could Trust his spirit-ful and soul-ful intentions. I could take a risk because I know that Gary would catch me when I fell.
Gary’s success-oriented leadership carried over to his position as head of another Dupont Circle organization. It was the largest higher education association in the United States. I was once again serving as a major consultant to Gary. We had some hits, but also some strike-outs. Gary was confronted by some very stubborn resistance at Dupont Circle—for he dared to suggest that the position of certain administrators in American colleges and universities be elevated. Gary left Washington D.C. after several years. He and I both went through a soul-ful journey of disappointment and frustration. We were both weary and bruised to the bone. Yet, our relationship remained intact and even deepened as we continued to collaborate and celebrate as dear friends.
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