I know a woman who continues to touch people’s lives despite being gone.

Beijing air quality; smog as thick as the fog in a Sherlock Holmes’ story, crystal clear in the space of a day. I am sure there is a metaphor in here about how the smog of our personal histories affect our ability to see the world as it is….., but I have no idea what that would be.

Etta
The day I left for China, Etta (my second dog diagnosed with cancer, the one laying down in this picture) was not looking well and then deteriorated rapidly. She went from fine to not fine to suffering in less than 48 hours, and was increasingly suffering. The vet confirmed rapid spread of the cancer. My friends Keith & Kay and my amazing daughter Haley made the tough and loving decision to put Etta down. She died quietly in her own backyard on a beautiful Fall day surrounded by 3 people who cared about her, while I was 10,000 miles away.

So much sorrow, so far from home, feeling so alone at a meeting where no one would understand my loss. And I was aware of how lucky I am. Lucky to have people in my life who can care, and make the hard decisions, about things that matter so much to me. Lucky that I have people to share my sadness with via text, email and Facebook from the other side of the planet, people who care about that sadness even though some of them don’t understand it. Lucky to have connections to people even as I struggle to try to strengthen and find meaningful grounding in those connections.
Pursuing random acts of kindness for the last couple months is a key piece of how I was able to recognize how lucky I am and also allow this grief to be what it is. Oh, Christ, Damn Hippie rising…..but still true.

There were wonderful people at this meeting in Beijing, several of whom I know fairly well, a couple of whom might even be considered friends or at least close colleagues. All of them extremely bright, caring people, passionate about the value of their work and it’s genuine potential to help people. These are compassionate, hard working professionals doing public health work that matters. And none of these good people were people who would have been able to understand my deep sense of loss at the death of “just a dog.” We could spend a chunk of time exploring a variety of reasons for this, but I think most of this exploration would lead us to the same place. The people at this meeting and I did not share the same world view regarding the value of pets as part of a family and the emotional response to a pet dying.

Some of these folks undoubtedly would have had empathy for my grief in a general human-I-know-hurting kind of way, but there would not have been a real connection, a genuine understanding and shared human experience. It does not say anything bad or good about them or me. That gap just is. Given that it is becoming increasingly clear that, amongst other things, a year of RAK is about finding ways to connect with other humans, this gap matters. Then how do we bridge it? As much as I have strong and meaningful connections to my pets, I didn’t think trying to drag these fellow humans out of their world and into mine was going to be particularly helpful. In fact that seemed ridiculous and like a great way to confuse my Asian colleagues (even more than I suspect I already do every time they interact with me). Instead I made a conscious decision that I would bridge this gap by crossing into their world as best I could. I tried to listen.

There are a number of students and junior professionals at this type of meeting. Although they are bright with many good ideas and enthusiasm, the structure of this kind of meeting does not generally allow their voices to be heard. Still, like of all of us, they want to be heard and I am often approached (remember I am a “nice” & approachable kind of guy) during breaks to answer a question or discuss an idea. Being that I am “nice” & approachable, I am consistently friendly and engaging, but in all honesty I am not necessarily giving this person my full attention. With all the context above, at this meeting I tried to listen as fully as I could. I tired to be as fully present as I could. I tried to give each of these bright, enthusiastic humans all of my attention when they approached me. I had many good discussions but the main thing I heard underneath the words was, “Please listen to me. Please see me. Please let me know that what I have to say is valuable, that I am valuable.” All of which I tried to do by being “there” when we interacted.

This was the RAK I repeatedly tried to do across these days. This was how I tried to bridge the gap between their strange foreign weird world and my strange foreign weird world. I think it mattered.