Let Your Life Speak
by Parker J. Palmer
Chapter II
"Now I Become Myself"
Copyright ©2000 by Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers
San Francisco, CA

But even this way of reframing my work could not alter the
fact that there was a fundamental misfit between the rough-
and-tumble of organizing and my own overly sensitive nature.
After five years of conflict and competition, I burned out. I was
too thin-skinned to make a good community organizer -- my
vocational reach had exceeded my grasp. I had been driven
more by the "oughts" of the urban crisis than by a sense of true
self. Lacking insight into my own limits and potentials, I had
allowed ego and ethics to lead me into a situation that my soul
could not abide.

I was disappointed in myself for not being tough enough
to take the flak, disappointed and ashamed. But as pilgrims
must discover if they are to complete their quest, we are led to
truth by our weaknesses as well as our strengths. I needed to
leave community organizing for a reason I might never have
acknowledged had I not been thin-skinned and burned-out: as
an organizer, I was trying to take people to a place where I had
never been myself -- a place called community. If I wanted to
do community-related work with integrity, I needed a deeper
immersion in community than I had experienced to that point.

I am white, middle-class, and male -- not exactly a leading
candidate for a communal life. People like me are raised to
live autonomously, not interdependently. I had been trained
to compete and win, and I had developed a taste for the prizes.
But something in me yearned to experience communion, not
competition, and that something might never have made itself
known had burnout not forced me to seek another way.

LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK

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