Friends, it’s time to abandon your self-care regimen. This is especially true of those of you in helping professions but frankly it extends to everyone. The suffering you feel is largely self-imposed because you’ve caught yourself in a wish. I wish a man hadn’t burst into flame on my shift (apologies to Ryan), I wish that man didn’t hit that other man in the face three times three feet in front of me (that one is in my lane), I wish the world wasn’t hurtling inexorably toward climatic catastrophe and mass extinction.

You’re addicted to your wish about the way you think things should be because it creates meaning for you. The secret you keep from yourself is that if your wish ever came true the meaning you create would collapse. Your wish is crushing you and your feeble efforts at bandaging the wound are failing (by design).

Change is necessary, justice ought to be done but the question for you is, what can be done within the capacity of your own will? Probably very little! But with a firm handle on your will you have a chance to see what might be done inside your sphere of influence. If your sphere doesn’t extend very far, well you’re going to need a few friends aren’t you?

Doting after our precious self is getting us nowhere. Time to come to terms with our own poverty, get real about our very limited personal capacity, build power and coalitions more broadly, and face the world optimistically about what is set before us.