In a couple of places in Creating Room to Read, the founder/author emphasizes the need for urgent action.
“Every day we lose is a day we can’t get back” (p. 7).
It’s a feeling I share, a compulsion, really, that has prompted more than one person to tell me that I have a ‘savior complex’.
And it can be a very good thing, this urgency, if it pushes us to evaluate every organizational decision in light of the questions:
How can we reach more people, in more places, with more needs, more quickly? (p. 201)
How can we fill the vacuum around this issue before someone else–with a different agenda and different impacts on those we serve–does?
How can we do what needs to be done, as cheaply and quickly and well as is humanly possible, since the world really needed it metaphorically ‘yesterday’?
This almost-manic urgency applies, of course, to so many of the social problems on which we are working, not just to global literacy. Really, I would argue that everything worth fixing in today’s broken world is worth fixing now, and there’s always more work to be done than we can possibly clear off our desks before the end of the day.
So.
How can we justify taking a break, even when we need one, when the need is already outpacing our abilities?
How can we care for ourselves, without using ‘self-care’ as an excuse to retreat from the desperately urgent work that needs us?
How can we prevent falling for the savior thing, when the truth is that the people we serve and assist aren’t waiting for us to swoop in and rescue anyone.
How can we approach that elusive ‘balance’ that seems to be so important for preventing burnout and sustaining our commitment–and our effectiveness–when every day that we take off is a day that we’re not getting closer to the world as it should be?
How do you answer these questions, in your own field, and in your own practice? How do you calibrate the pace of your life, given the urgency with which problems press? How do you surround yourself with a team, to prevent the temptation of thinking that we are one-person shows? How do you harness the passion and energy that comes with urgency, without slipping into the ‘busier-than-thou’ martyrdom that turns people off? How do you reflect strengths and possibility while convincing people that they need to be part of our cause–today?
How?
Classroom to Capitol 
Close knowledge makes a difference
There was another part from The Ghost Map that made me think about social work, and about you all, which means that it ends up here.
So, yes, just a little more cholera.
See, the doctor who ended up tracing the spread of the disease, and documenting the outbreak in a way that gave needed credibility to germ theory and ultimately brought down the idea of ‘miasma’ (smell=disease), was from the neighborhood.
He lived near Broad Street, where the pump contaminated with cholera was located, and that intimate knowledge was essential to helping him untangle the truth.
At the time, remember, most people thought that, since smell brought disease, dirty houses (read: poor people) would have the most illness, because they would smell bad. There were many low-income households in and around the area infected with cholera, and, so, most of the ‘outside experts’ were quick to conclude that it was their poverty, and the smells associated with it, that were quite literally killing them.
But John Snow knew better.
He knew of wealthier households living next to poorer ones, where both fell ill. He knew of very poor households that nonetheless maintained immaculately clean homes. He knew that most of the stereotypes were flawed. He knew that people were dying–real people, with grieving families–because he knew many of those afflicted.
This knowledge meant that he couldn’t fall back on the prevailing wisdom or the platitudes about poverty and disease. He could see facts more clearly, and his inquiry had an urgency stemming from his investment in the community and its suffering people.
And that, I believe, has lessons for social work advocates, too.
I believe that we can work effectively across communities, and that skills and relationships and real empathy are just as important as ‘matching’ membership on specific criteria.
But I also believe that it might be easier to miss things, nuances that really matter, if we see a community more as monolithic, which we’re more likely to do if we’re not embedded in it. I believe that too much distance can render us less effective, less committed, and, ultimately, less likely to succeed.
That’s one of the reasons that social workers make great organizers, and great advocates–we’re on the ground and we know how these issues work and we tend to notice details. We know and care about our work, and that matters for how we engage with it.
In history and still today, being close to the truth makes it more likely we find it.
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Posted in Analysis and Commentary
Tagged policy change, research, social work