Getting Away With It

I tend to live at a break-neck pace. I find I am at my happiest when I am scheduled (arguably...over-scheduled). My mom likes to say "You burn the candle at both ends." And if a candle had three or four ends, I would burn it from there too. But it suites me and I am happy with all the wonderful things I get to do. Somewhere along the way, I have absorbed an ethic that says one should always be occupied. Something akin to idle hands doing the devil's work. If I am not doing something, I think I must be doing something wrong.

At Mount Sinai, where I am a chaplain intern, I have a list of patients to visit. I make my way from room to room, floor to floor trying to visit. Some days, everyone is out of the room and I leave many business cards and notes saying, "sorry I missed you." Some days, I get to see one person and the conversation is so long that I do not get to even poke my head in on anyone else. Some days, I might see someone who affects me so profoundly that I simply need a break, need a time out before attempting to visit another patient. Then, I am most adrift, looking for paperwork to file, an errand to run, a coffee to drink.

Somewhere else along the way, I came to value achieving (arguable, over-achieving). I could drink in life, lap it up, but if I am not chugging it down, something feels amiss. At work, I am afraid someone will find out that I do not see everyone. I feel like I am somehow slacking off, shirking responsibility...If every moment I am not on-task, then I must be OFF-task.

But this is not the nature of chaplaincy. And truthfully, I can see how the nature of chaplaincy is forcing me to be...slower, more focused and maybe even more reasonable. At work, I have to learn quality not quantity. I have to find a way to make peace with less actually truly being more. Walking out in the middle of patient x's painful story
in order to go make sure I have time to visit and check off that I saw patient y, is not only obviously asinine, it would be damaging to abandon someone in a moment of vulnerability like that.

Slowly I am learning that slowing down is not failing, slowing down actually means the potential for deeper, more meaningful and (not even worth arguing) better.

And yes, I am submitting this to my supervisor who will now know for sure-most days I do not actually get it all done. And truly, that is a true success.