Clarence and the Superhero Factor

"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?" - Clarence the Angel - It's a Wonderful Life

I'll be the first to admit that the last few weeks have been downright awful, depressing, physically, emotionally and spiritually draining.  The kind that make you question why you're here - a genuine George Bailey moment.   For those that don't know the movie, It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is the kind of guy that sacrifices himself to do the right thing, to follow in his father's footsteps at the expense of his own dreams of being an engineer overseas.  When a financial crisis befalls the business he has given up so much for - he is ready to give up in a big way - as in take his own life.  Now, I wasn't quite there but I was really depressed to the point of wondering what God's plan for me truly is.  
 

I have worked in non-profits for most of my adult life.   I've helped abused and abandoned children, women in developing countries get education and healthcare, worked on international AIDS prevention, brought open heart services to the local hospital, helped to market edgy theatre to the Atlanta and helped adults with developmental disabilities.   It's been a wide range of experiences and to all walks of life.   Accomplishing those things should make me feel fucking awesome - like a real superhero.  But lately, I've been so burned out that the idea of helping people seems to be a big drain.  I give way more than I get back - and that realization has shaken me to my core.   I try to look at the spiritual gifts: the smiles on the faces of the children who used to get the presents from the toy drives I spearheaded; the reports of women in Kenya being able to get a cart to start their own businesses thanks to a micro loan I helped facilitate; the associates at the local hospital who were able to show their talents at the staff talent show in a venue that made them feel like a star.   Those moments are valuable and impossible for a paycheck to capture.  But then, when you work 70 to 90 hour weeks on a project, pull miracle upon miracle out of your pocket and the committee people that you're working with don't have the decency to say thank you because it didn't turn out as perfectly as they would have liked - it hurts.   Maybe if you weren't so burned out you could roll with the punches, but sometimes you just feel like hanging up your cape or like George Bailey on Christmas Eve - wondering if the world be better off if you had never been born at all because all the good you do doesn't seem to amount to much.  
 

There is actually a term for it - it's called Superhero Burnout which is tailor made for people who work at non-profits.  It can be hard to have to deal with having little time or resources, lack of money, and constant stressors over the economy.   We have to do so much with so little and it can take it's toll.  The book, The Superhero Handbook by Glenn Campbell (the author not the singer) explains why being Superman can be so exhausting.  "Every superpower, no matter how impressive, has its load limit, and if you exceed it, one way or another your powers will be rendered useless. It is like piling too many apples on a cart.  Each apple seems small and easy to carry, but if you keep adding more, eventually the cart has to collapse. You don’t know exactly when it will happen, but as long as you keep adding apples you know it will happen, and when it does, your cart won’t carry anything anymore.  That is the fundamental problem of super-heroism. You want to do as much good for the world as you can.  You want to improve your society, but you must not compromise your precious core powers that allow you to do anything at all."   

Most superheroes have their own weaknesses or Kryptonite.   My weakness it's setting boundaries and self-doubt.  When my efforts are barely acknowledged, I feel slighted and hurt.  I doubt my skills and try to do more to make up for it.  It's the sort of thing that the Lois Lanes of the world prey upon.   Why should Lois be more careful when she's involved with a dangerous story?  She knows that Superman will always bail her out.   If there was no superhero, she'd be more be more responsible.   Why should the folks in Bedford Falls worry when the big bank closes?  They have George Bailey giving away his honeymoon money to save their asses until the bank opens in a week.  So falls the great problem with being a superhero - there is just so much of you to go around and the people who put themselves in peril know that.  They know that you won't let them fail, they know that you'll do anything you can to help them.  They'll take the help and will at first be grateful but after awhile they will take it for granted.   But as a superhero, your drug is feeling like you can change the world and the world will be grateful.  You work to relive that first buzz of appreciation but as they ask for more and more, you get more and more drained - then you begin to resent the people of Metropolis and Gotham.   "For God's sake, get a grip and do something to help yourself for a change - stop coming to me for all the answers," you want to shout.  
 

So as I look back at the last few weeks - the crazy hours and time not spent with my family it strikes me that my pursuit of being good and kind might be causing my apple cart to collapse.  Why do I feel so unworthy if I want to do something for myself?   If things happen that are out of my control yet still effect my family - how am I to blame?  How come I can't save everyone who needs my help?  The reality is no superhero, no matter how noble - can.   It's impossible.  You have to focus on the people that you have helped - in whose life you had made a difference and frankly screw anyone who doesn't have the capacity or decency to show some type of appreciation for the sacrifices you've endured to help them because they'll never get it - it's just not in their wheelhouse.  They will still ask you for more and more until you can't give anymore - you're physically, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt.  This is why you need to set limits.  Sadly, once those people see that - rather than offering support, they'll move onto the next superhero in the Hall of Justice that they can latch onto.  

I was thinking the other day about the most important things I've ever done as a professional fundraiser.   I did toy drives for abused kids in Miami for a charity that I used to work for.  I would drive myself to exhaustion to make sure each of the 600 kids in the different programs got at least a few presents for Christmas.   I would come back to work the week after the holidays and try to clear my desk from the December push still fighting post-holiday burnout.  I knew our kids got what they needed even if I never saw a thank-you note from them because it wasn't necessary - they just needed to know that there were people who wanted to help them.  The presents that came into "Santa Central" went out with little fanfare because that was not the point.  
  

One year, I had a social worker named Andrea call me and relay what a parent had told her.   One of the programs at this organization was to help families affected by HIV.   This mother and son both had been infected with AIDS.  The mother was in bad shape, with maybe a few months left to live.  Her son Octavius was five or six and had HIV but was not full blown AIDS just yet.  The social workers knew this would probably be their last Christmas together.  I wasn't aware how bad it was, I just treated Octavius' wish list like any other in "Santa Central" - it needed to be filled the best way I could.   Andrea told me that she had just gotten off the phone with Octavius' mother and while she was weak and her voice was raspy - she was able to say "Thank you, Thank you, Thank you," over and over again.    You could hear our tears on each end of the phone. That one simple act changed their lives and gave a dying woman a happy and ordinary moment to share with her son, free of hospitals and medicine.   She died that spring and Octavius a year later.   But for that one glorious moment, they were just a mother and son ripping into Christmas presents and smiling.    To this day, I think it's one of the most important "Superhero" things I've ever done. 

Another superhero moment was when I helped organize a talent show at the hospital where I used to work.   We invited associates and volunteers to audition for a chance to perform to win prizes.  We had many people audition including a man named John Sullivan who sang Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers which was the song that Max and I danced to at our wedding.   He was a guy in his 80's who had that old world charm and could sell the song even if his vocals were not the strongest.  We invited him to compete even though my boss thought it was a bad idea because his voice was not that great.  I explained that we needed the hospital volunteers to support the event and having John in the contest would bring them in.  My intuitional hit was that he would go all out during the actual show.  The night of the show finally came and while the younger contestants were acting like Diva's, John showed up in a tuxedo, ready to do his sound check and encouraging everyone who stepped on stage.  When his big moment came, he was as poised as Frank Sinatra and totally wowed the crowd which gave him a standing ovation.   He ended up winning the contest and you could see the pride on his face.   I made a video for him and also posted his performance on YouTube where his family who were not able to attend could share in his triumph. Click here to see the video. 
 

I found out later that Mr. Sullivan had gotten sick and passed away about six months after the video was taken.   But before he left this earth, he got to sing and entertain people.   The video on-line has been viewed over 1,300 times and his family left some very sweet comments after he died.  They will always be able to share in this moment which shows him doing what he loved best.   I helped give them that.  I'm not sure how many superheroes get to see that but thankfully I can.  I need to not lose sight of that. 
 

"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?" 
 

So for all those superheroes: doctors, nurses, first responders, teachers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers, case workers, social workers and legions of people who work in non-profits who don't make the money or have the recognition and fame like Kim Kardashian or Donald Trump.  I know it's easy wonder why we bother sometimes.  It's easy to give into the Mr. Potters, Lex Luthors, the Jokers and the Green Goblins because no matter how many times you save the world, the world will still always need saving.  Those supervillains will want to pick off the good and make us look bad.  But it's the people that you touch that you can't always see that need our help the most - theirs are the lives we can transform.   It's not that they are ungrateful, it's just that there might be so many degrees of separation that they might not know who to thank.   For what it's worth, the world needs us - whether it's in Metropolis, Gotham City, Bedford Falls, or Metro Atlanta.    Sure, it's exhausting and people can be incredibly insensitive.  Sometimes it just really, really sucks.   But if life has taught me anything, it's that people like Octavius and John Sullivan can randomly walk into your life and make you stronger.   So thank you Clarence for reminding all us ordinary superheroes that when we jump in to save someone like you - we are actually saving ourselves. 

Thanksgiving – The Other White Meat

It's October 31^st around 9:00 p.m. and the candy fueled decaying corpse of Halloween wasn’t even cold when the commercials for Christmas started.  The bright lights, festivities and the message was that the best time to get with your family is that magic day in December. There was no message about that holiday that falls on the fourth Thursday in November - the holiday that is traditionally reserved for reflection to give thanks for all we have and the blessings bestowed on us.  Thanksgiving is now officially a speed bump on the way to the more financially bloated Christmas holiday. 

I have always loved Thanksgiving even if it does give me a dose of angst as I know that my days of getting everything done before December 25^th are starting to tick away.  It used to be the one day that you knew you had to slow down because the stores were all closed.  If you worked in retail, it gave you a day to rest before the onslaught of Black Friday  - a day when legions of shoppers try to take their local malls, Targets and Wal-Marts like soldiers storming Normandy in WWII.  Black Friday is not for the faint of heart – it takes steely nerves, a strategy and a take no prisoner’s attitude – on that day, you keep your head down and know that fear is good, fear will keep you alive.  It’s precisely why taking Thanksgiving to take stock of your life is so important – you never know when reaching for that drastically reduced big screen TV might be your last.  But seriously, it’s supposed to be a time to be with family – enjoying football and avoiding a political discussion with the uncle who thinks the last good president was Ronald Reagan.  You take the time to go around the table and talk about what you’re really grateful for, not leaving half way through dinner to get to Target hours before it opens at 5:00 p.m. Thanksgiving night to get the $1 DVD door busters.

I guess the bigger question in my mind is – “Have we lost the fine art of being thankful?”  It’s a steadily snarkier world out there where people like Simon Cowell are praised for their brutal honesty and running people down on Twitter and Facebook seems to be America’s favorite past time.  You create a family video on YouTube with the baby’s first steps only to have someone leave a comment that the baby sucks.  Really?  What is happening out there?  Is the need to be the most negative the one who wins?     

Reality shows are steadily showing us the heightened effects of the demise of the human condition that include meltdowns, accusations, selfishness and a total lack of cooperation because you need to stab the other person in the back to get ahead.  But the constant barrage of negativity can take its toll after a while and skew your perception of what you should be grateful for.  If you are not rich, famous and have camera crew documenting your every move in our society, then you have nothing.  If you are not keeping up with the Kardashians then you have little to talk with other people about who would rather discuss the empty twisted adventures of pseudo-celebrities rather then taking the time to be introspective about their own lives.  

There are tons of distractions to keep us from taking stock and realize that what we have is pretty good.  There are smart phones that keep us on track so that we can get the latest tweets and instant messages from Facebook. We can use Outlook to schedule ourselves into oblivion and not have a quiet moment to think because if you are not plugged in, then you are missing out. Those quiet moments are essential for us to connect with who we are, but silencing the mind and really discovering ourselves can be flat out scary.  How many people do you know who are constantly running from appointment to appointment (almost always late I might add) or rehearsal to rehearsal, regaling you with how many projects they are working on. They are always dashing off to the next thing - never really forming tight bonds because keeping things on the surface is much easier than a heavier emotional investment.  It’s easier to cancel at the last minute when you are not deeply bonded to something because you assure yourself that something else will always come along to distract you.   You post the schedule of your exhausting day on Facebook only to be one-upped by someone who is equally over scheduled, because the one who drops dead first while working on that important project wins.You spend so much time trying to assure yourself that things are going great because you’re going at the speed of hyper-space that you don’t have the time to see much of anything until you are so emotionally or physically exhausted, you are forced to stop and hopefully ask yourself why you are so busy.  Why can’t we be thankful for what we have rather than always looking for something more?

An article by Melinda Beck of the Wall Street Journal, reported that in a landmark study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2003, Dr. Robert Emmons and Dr. Michael McCullough showed that counting blessings can actually make people feel better.  A group of 100 undergrads were split into three groups.  Each group had to report on different things for 10 consecutive weeks: one group had to report five blessings each week, one group had to report five negative things each week and the last group just had to report five things that happened.   Needless to say, the group that counted their blessings were happier, exercised more and felt better about their lives than the other two groups.   As simple as it sounds, gratitude is actually a demanding, complex emotion that requires "self-reflection, the ability to admit that one is dependent upon the help of others, and the humility to realize one's own limitations," Dr. Emmons explained.  You’re simply not going to be able to do that if you are constantly rushing from one place to another without the time to reflect on what you really need.

One of my favorite all time movies is It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart.  It’s a great movie about the power of being grateful.  In the 1947 movie, George Bailey tries all his life to get out of Bedford Falls because he’s sure they he’ll be completely happy if he can just “shake off the dust of this town” and start anew somewhere else.   The entire movie addresses the yearning of this man to do big things in the world but every time it looks like he might get out, he’s thwarted by his father’s death, his brother’s marriage and his duty to the town he loves and hates.   He marries the love of his life  and has four kids in the home she’s always wanted to live in.   Things are going along pretty well until one Christmas Eve when his uncle misplaces $8,000 (which in today’s market would be closer to $100,000) and everything seems lost.  He’s given everything to this town and now he might go to jail for something he didn’t even do.  When he’s told by his nemesis Mr. Potter that he might be worth more dead than alive - George clutches his life insurance policy and tries to kill himself only to be saved by his guardian angel Clarence.  When he wonders what the world would be like if he was never born, Clarence grants his wish.  He ends up in an alternate reality and sees Bedford Falls empty of happiness and compassion.   All the people he ever cared about and helped fall into despair because he was not around to touch their lives.  He begs Clarence to send him back to his real world, even if it means he’ll go to jail because having the people he loves in his life is worth the risk.  In the end, his family and friends rally to his defense and he realizes that he didn’t need to leave his home, because the world he has created there is amazing and special.  It’s a movie that still resonates with people today – probably more so because it’s easy to feel overlooked and forgotten in our technological age.   

In the same Wall Street Journal article, Ms. Beck discusses “The George Bailey Effect” which asks the readers to subtract a positive person or event from their lives and think about how things would be different.  If you take that flight of imagination, it’s easy to see how your life would be different if you didn’t have that significant event or person, good or bad to help define who you are. For instance, I met my husband Max when I was 25, coming off a bad relationship with an actor and the last thing I wanted was to date another actor.   He was coming off a break-up with an actress so the both of us started off as friends who met doing a play called All Men are Whores (yes, that was the actual name of the play).  We’ve know each other for over 30 years and have been married for 27.  I will tell you that I would be a neurotic self centered person without Max in my life.  I would not have my two amazing girls.  I probably would have been married and divorced a few times to men who would not have treated me very well.   I’d probably either be very skinny or overweight from stress if I was in the entertainment business full time and having crying jags everyday. To put it simply, my life would have no balance - I would be a hot mess.  So when I look across the table and see his face, I’m thankful that he’s part of my life and thankful for the times that we’ve had together.  We have a long history and our life together has definitely seen the “for better or for worse”  sides. We’ve met those times with tenacity, love, laughter and plenty of “That’s What She Said” jokes. 

Eight year ago, my life was very different. I had just been laid off, one of our two cars had died and our sick kitty had also passed.  I could have given into the negative, but I started to volunteer for Hands on Atlanta.  I also helped sort thank-you letters to the soldiers serving overseas which helped put things in perspective because those serving in the dangerous parts of the world needed prayers and support way more than I did.  I was happy to do what I could to help them out.   During the low points in my six months of being unemployed, I made myself take walks at a local park and appreciate the beautiful trees and the sounds of the running brook. I was grateful that I was healthy and had a family that loved me even if I didn’t have a job.

This Thanksgiving, rather sitting around griping and commiserating about the election and threatening secession from the Union (really people – it didn’t really work out so well 160 years ago) or gloating because your guy won, why not talk about all the great things we have in this country – like the right to talk about seceding, the ways can help people affected by Hurricanes recover, the games you used to love to play as kids and how wonderful dinner was. I guarantee if you focus on the positive instead of the negative, everyone will leave the table feeling better and closer. 

Thanksgiving should be about more than just a huge meal to get you from Halloween to Christmas.  It should mean something.  It should mean a heartfelt thank you to those that you appreciate and do kind things for you.  Saying thanks for something specific can mean so much.  The other day, I went to Publix to pick up a few groceries and the cashier asked me if I wanted to donate a few boxes of food for their Food for Sharing program to help needy families in the area.  I said, “Sure, why not?” as she rang up an extra $4.50 to my bill, because that easily could have been my family a few years ago. She thanked me profusely since I was the first person who had taken her up on the offer.  Her supervisor walked up and started to help bag my order and was told that I had just donated to the program.  “That’s great – now we’re ahead of the other team – thank you so much and the family who will get the food thanks you too.”  They were both so happy over what would amount what I would spend on a grande salted caramel coffee from Starbucks – but this was a much better use of my money.  I left with a big smile on my face.  I had made those women’s day and they had made mine because they were sincerely thankful.

You could save yourself so much time and frustration if you just took the time to sit and ask yourself what you are grateful for and what you really need.  The lightening speed of your life can take a pause while you contemplate that.  What are you thankful for?  My guess is that it’s not the fifth project that you’ve just taken on in addition to your regular job.  I’m not going to take the holier than thou attitude because frankly I’m guilty of doing that to myself – I'm an insurance agent, I sell Mary Kay, I've finished a novel that I'm submitting to an agent, and if people ask me to help them do things for non-profits, I have a hard time saying no.  But I have gotten better – I try not to give so much away so that I’m too exhausted to be present for the people that I love and who really need me.   When I take the time to see all the great things I have in my life, I won’t be looking outside of that nucleus to feel complete.

So this year, start a new tradition - sit back and ask yourself what you have to be thankful for and let those near and dear to you know how much you love them.  The last few years have included some really tough times and the loss of my mother and sister-in-law but I got through it. I learned who really loved me, who my friends were and would stick by me no matter what. When you get right down to it, I have everything I need to be happy. Feeling grateful should always be the meat of Thanksgiving – it’s what’s for dinner.