What is life if not...

When I was in college and spent a summer in a homeless shelter and transitional home outside of Chicago, I learned about the term “voluntary displacement.”  This is a servant-leadership concept: “Through voluntary displacement, we counteract the tendency to become settled in a false comfort and forget the fundamentally unsettled position that we share with all people” (Nouwen, Compassion).  This concept felt very relevant in subsequent work and places: men’s prisons, teaching in low-income urban high schools, and even working in Abu Dhabi in a public high school for a mostly refugee and immigrant community.  Now, in Lisbon, I am neither voluntarily displaced nor unsettling any privileges I enjoy.  I am, however, raising two kids, neither of who were on my radar when I was making choices for myself and my life’s purpose alone.  Still, there are plenty of moments when I feel displaced, when I feel outside of myself, far from the Amanda who walked into the good, bad, and ugly with courage and optimism.  I am exploring next steps professionally and personally, but all of it is now filtered through questions of how I can remain the one my kids debrief their days with at school pick-up; how I ensure that weekends focus on family time and fun activities or outings; how I ensure I have the energy to stay by the bed holding my kids’ hands until they are nearly asleep at bedtime; how I keep making healthy, tasty meals for us to all enjoy as a family at dinnertime (and breakfast, too!).  These have become the greater challenges to professional fulfillment, never mind the noble effort to unsettle false comforts.  I want comfort—not for myself, but for my babies.  It’s hard to give up a sense of purpose that has for so many years been tied almost entirely to my professional choices.  This stage right now requires a re-visioning of my purpose in light of my displacement and parallel contentment.