Overflow

“Let go, and respond to the immediate needs around you. Don’t get caught in some false perception of yourself. There will always be another person more gifted than you. And don’t perceive your position as important, but be ready to serve at any moment. If you can let go of who you think you are, you will become free - ready to love others. If you learn to see your impermanence, you will be able to live for the moment and not miss opportunities to love by pushing things into the future.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

I just got done with one of those intensive team building workshops where they put a bunch of strangers together and mold them into a team. In such situations, I am usually the “idea guy”. It just works out that way. My particular type of team role is a relatively small percentage of the population, so on most teams I end up on, I am the creative one, the “out-of-the-box” thinker, the visionary. I “pitch” ideas and have to rely on others to “catch” them and decide what to do with them and how to implement them. In a world of pitchers and catchers, I’m usually a pitcher. That’s rather simplistic, but you get the idea, right? (Catch!)

But on this team, as luck would have it, there were four of my type out of seven. And one was easily much better than me at my own game. At first I was all, “Hey. I’m the idea guy!” to myself. But I am also flexible, so I put on a catcher’s mitt for a few days and mostly played catch.

I could have spent three days in competition with this guy, trying to preserve my ego. But as Grace would have it, for these three days at least, my ability to let go of my own self-perception left me free to serve and love where I was needed.

That said, it’s also nice to come back to my home field and take the mound once more.