I had a situation arise at work recently. Through several peoples’ misunderstandings and confusion, an error occurred. An error which could affect someone else. The error was discovered and now we are in the process of unravelling it, correcting it, reporting it, and waiting for the fall out. There may well be no harm at the end of the line but I don’t think we know that right now. I keep praying that there will be no harm to this patient.
I was one of the confused along the way. What if, as a result of my confusion, this person is harmed? “What kind of ahimsa is that?” is something I’ve been asking myself all morning. How do I fix this for the harmed person? I’ve been beating myself up and questioning my place at work and generally spiraling all day. Of course one fear is that I will be blamed solely for the mistake. But then there were two others involved so it is not just me. We all share in the responsibility right? Why do I keep thinking it’s all on me?
I need to forgive myself and my part in the mistake. I do my best at work and am conscientious. I take the work seriously and take pride in my work. Yet why am I expecting myself to be perfect? Expecting that “I should have known”. Why am I now thinking “Well next time, I’m not going to trust the other two in another situation”?
In Judith Lasater’s Living Your Yoga, there is a chapter on Self-Judgement. In reading this chapter, I realize that I’ve been judging myself rather harshly today. I need to be more compassionate to myself and remember we have all – myself included – been under an awful lot of pressure at work. All of us – myself included – have way too busy. Why should I expect to not be affected even if others are? I am as human as anyone else. I don’t consciously think of myself as better than them so why am I judging myself way more than I am judging them?
In yoga, we practice. We keep trying. At work, it seems we are held to impossible expectations. Mistakes are made because we are human. We are judged harshly by the system with paper-work and reports on what we did wrong. But in essence, we are still practicing humans with other things going on in our lives, in our hearts, and in our minds. They say mistakes are “opportunities to learn” but I’m not sure I believe that and feel judged anyway. All this harsh judgment on the job spills over into our selves. We hold ourselves to impossible standards all the time. And end up judging ourselves way too harshly far too often.
When I initially thought about Ahimsa and how I had actually contributed to harming this patient, I was initially looking for a way to redeem myself with this person. Someone I don’t know, haven’t met, and will never talk to. However, it looks like the practice that I need is with self-compassion. I am doing my best. I am committed to my job when I am there. I am not a robot though. I am not programmed to never make a mistake, or go to never go down the wrong thought process. The system may be broken, but the people building the system are also human.
So as I head to work tonight – even with the heavy heart of knowing someone may have been harmed – I have to let go of the self-harming thoughts. It is not going to help anyway. And how can I be compassionate with my teammates if I am not compassionate with myself?
I am choosing to let go of self-judgement today. Hopefully, practicing self-compassion will ripple out into Ahimsa for all of us involved. I really pray it does.
microyogi 