As I was driving around my Pittsburgh suburb over the holidays, I stumbled upon a non-syndicated Italian radio show. I feel like it was one of those serendipitous moments in time, when I heard exactly what I needed to hear when I needed to her it in Italian, the language that moves my heart, soul, and spirit the most. The radio host’s message was twofold: 1) Concluding 2016 with thoughtful conclusions, and 2) wishing for good fortune in 2017. I started profusely pondering over his words, paying particular attention to conclusion, and how they applied to my life as I moved forward into a new year, hopefully filled with good fortune.
Webster’s Dictionary defines conclusion as:
I decided that it was time for me to draw conclusions about 2016 in order to conclude a strenuous year. I concluded that this was a year where I realized my own emotional strength. I faced and overcame emotional barriers that I wasn’t strong enough to bear in the past. I realized that these difficulties made me really strong and independent. I felt the depth of my strength and self-worth. I was reminded yet again that I am in control of my thoughts, feelings, and actions. Only I have the ability and power to determine how I choose to think, act, or feel. I too was able to validate all these components as beautiful aspects of myself. I have nothing to redeem when I am staying true to me. I let go and moved on. As for accomplishments, this has been one of my greatest because I have now removed all the barriers to living a happy life. I know own that solely I am in control of me. I drew conclusions about my life in relation to social work. I concluded that I spend too much of my time social working. I encourage students and clients to practice self-care, but am hypocritical as I devote most of my waking hours to social work in one way or another. I mean even when I’m walking my dog, I am thinking about my research, social work education and/or practice. The only time I’m not social working is when I am preparing a yoga class, teaching a yoga class, or practicing yoga. The time I spent in my Pittsburgh yoga studios reminded me that even when I was working three social work jobs simultaneously in Pittsburgh, I still made yoga a daily priority to give myself a break. I was reminded on yoga mats in Pittsburgh that I also exist outside of social work. Conclusively, I decided I need more breaks from social work. I decided that I need to read for pleasure weekly, which I did all holiday break. I also need to write poetry (even terrible poems) daily, in addition to resuming a regular yoga practice outside of yoga instruction. I concluded that I need to incorporate my true nature, a free spirit, back into my life if I am to achieve inner peace. I started thinking, how does this apply to social work in general and I realized that conclusions promote healing. A lot of times in all of our lives, we are subjected to suffering. In addition to suffering, we also experience great joy. The wonderful part of being human, is that we get to write our own stories. We draw our own conclusions in the storied lives we live. One of the books I read over break was Ben Okri’s A Way of Being Free. I found this book as I was preparing to design my dissertation as narrative inquiry, bought it, but never read it until now. I instinctively knew immediately that my dissertation was to be narrative inquiry so that I could simply be a vehicle for my participants to share their stories. Dr. Jean Clandinin, now one of my favorite scholars, mentions this book in one of her writings. I honestly cannot tell you which one because I have read everything she wrote on narrative inquiry, including her Handbook of Narrative Inquiry. After all my preparation, completion of data collection and analysis, I realized that telling stories promotes healing and maybe that is why I intuitively chose narrative inquiry for my dissertation research. Like with the radio show, I felt like my reading of A Way of Being Free was serendipitous. Ben Okri writes, “If we refuse to face any of our awkward or deepest truths, then sooner or later we are going to have to become deaf and blind. And then we are going to have to eventually silence our dreams, and the dreams of others. In other words we die. We die in life.” (p. 42). Meaning that if we don’t face what we dislike about life, we actually die before we get to live. Breathing and living are two different realities and to live fully, we must embrace all elements of life. We need to draw conclusions about our experiences, good or bad, and tell our stories. We write these conclusions. We determine the genre of our life book. We write our endings, and throughout a lifespan we need to write multiple endings in order to relinquish the things that don’t serve us. As social workers, our focus should be on empowering people to draw their own conclusions about their lives. How these conclusions are written is up to the story-tellers, the human beings that we serve through research and practice. We must give them the opportunity to share their stories and establish spaces where these narratives empower people, communities, and society to have faith and work toward justice, equality, and happiness. I want to conclude by asking all of you all to draw conclusions about 2016. Or maybe to even expand that a bit further and conclude whatever ails you. As I sit here listening to the song, River Flows in You, I want to encourage all of you to live life like a flowing river by facing and moving past all the obstructions. Draw conclusions that bring you peace. Like the radio host that inspired this blog, I want to wish you all good fortune in 2017, the same way he inadvertently wished that on me.
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