There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you – Maya Angelou.

The work of the Institute for Basic Change is to assist people in compassion-based professions: education, medicine, corrections, social work etc. Doing something because you care is an enormous gift to the world, and you should be backed up in that effort. That includes training to do your work well; and training on keeping your life good, very good, as you overcome a variety of challenges. The untold stories Maya Angelou is talking about are your daily questions, struggles, triumphs. ALL of which impact the quality of your work. All of which are important.

César Chavez: Founder of the United Farm Workers' Union

Those stories should be told to, and heard by, the best people you know. Your work matters that much. Your potential to improve your life and the world around you is endless.  You have to struggle to reach that potential, but there is powerful assistance around to be had.  Imagine that you knew that your daughter would grow up to be a Sojourner Truth, or that your son would grow up to be a César Chavez. What resource would you deny them? You would do everything in your power to see that they received every possible inspiration, education, support, and spiritual-artistic-emotional resource–everything in your power.

We typically have a hard time thinking about our potential that way though, with that level of generosity and hope. And that makes perfect sense given the generations before us that were raised to work with their hands in farms and factories. All of our stories could not matter, absolutely could not. Survival was too difficult. The hours needed to get all the work done were too long. The people that survived best were able to grind through the most hours. Undone work was the big problem, and you had to keep those untold stories to yourself. The world then seemed like it could handle that grinding.

We are in an age now where we see that the earth cannot. Coping with rising world temperatures, exploding world populations, wars over resources, clashing cultures all require an entirely new level of sensitivity, education, inspiration and communication.

A street outside of the Al Sabah newspaper office in the Waziryia district of Baghdad, Iraq

The grinding approach to life brought modern humans through 200,000 years, grinding through natural resources, and through indigenous populations. U.S. tanks are grinding down the streets of Baghdad and Kabul right now.

Changing this big picture starts with our untold stories, right now, right on your street, in your kitchen, in our classrooms, hospital rooms, and social service agencies. When we build a society where our individual stories matter, where we are inspired and helped and trained to care and succeed in our personal stories, then we can build societies that don’t grind up our natural resources. We’ll be able to stop grinding up our young men in the U.S.’ 100 billion dollar prison industry. Their personal stories of the anger that led them to prison will be listened to and strong people will help.

Sustaining Yourself through ANYTHING: Another Storyteller, Treasures on your Fingertip


Alice Walker said this in a public conversation at the 92nd Street YMCA, with Wilma Mankiller and Gloria Steinem. Given the great richness of her work her statement is believable. What could the miraculous do for hard-pressed teachers, nurses, youth workers? Taking some quiet, slow breaths; taking a step back inside ourselves from stressful situations; can be priceless if we allow ourselves to experience that fully. The jabber in our heads can be as loud as in the craziest work situation, and we have the resources in ourselves to step away. If Alice Walker can come up with a luminous titles like “We are the ones we have been waiting for: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness” and “Anything We Love Can Be Saved”, she knows something. Some of earlier work, while celebrated, was actually too full of pain for me to read in my thirties. I could work in a homeless shelter and have conversations with the men there that were honest and very rewarding, but her stories were too hard to get through; not so today. Alice Walker has wrestled mightily with her despair and now has a long, deep view of this miraculous life we all share. Fortunately she shares that view with us widely through her work.

We can take a step back from any situation, breathe, and feel the basic goodness of living in a more or less healthy body. We can look around, even in grim places, and see a child playing, someone laughing, the moon peeking through the clouds, a beautiful tree. If no one is smiling or laughing we can walk up to somebody and get them started, any time we want. We can always choose not to let the drama in our heads and in our lives sweep us away. We can always find something better and beautiful if we take some time to look.

Treasures on your fingertip: We can step back from any situation with a breath, with a laugh with a friend or a look at the sky. Or we can step back into the most powerful music, literature, poetry, sermon or speech of our life with the touch of a button. With an I-pod, or your telephone with a bluetooth earpiece, the world’s most inspired and effective activists, leaders, poets, writers, singers, composers can be sweeping you away, at any time. Some discipline is required in choosing the most powerful resources for yourself.

Our society roars at us to choose numbness, shopping, high sugar and high fat treats, disconnection: Mmmmmm a couple of blu-ray blockbusters, a pizza, Coke, chips, ice cream, a pack of smokes, Absolut for dessert: an evening in paradise! The next day we feel slow, stupid, kind of sick. We get to work late. Our pants won’t button, and nothing sounds better than more grease, carbs and caffeine for our late breakfast, Mmmmmmm. Neuroscientists have found that street drugs, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, salt, saturated fat, refined starch and refined sugars cause cravings because they imbalance the body’s chemistry. If you cut back on ANY of these you have drug withdrawal symptoms because all of them function as drugs in your brain. You are visiting a site that deals with preventing burnout, and unless you have vast self-discipline, or outstanding support for making healthy choices, you have had a long dance with alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, salt, saturated fat, carbs and sugars. Sorry. I shudder, and grieve, to think of the huge number of nights where I handled work stress by sitting alone, shoving endless garbage down the pie hole and watching garbage on some kind of screen: not much of a reward for a hard working teacher or social worker.

One of the resources that breaks that suicidal cycle is 4000 calories of inspiration, via computer chip or internet. Fun, rewarding, beautiful group activities are incredible as well, but it’s the times that we are alone that can lead to self-destructive responses to stress. The most powerful positive spiritual, artistic, musical, literary, and poetic resources that you can get your hands and heart on, can be on your phone or I-pod, and in your ear at every spare moment. You have a life-changing soul to care for. You chose your profession so that you could do something important, something beautiful. The thoughts and success stories of the people doing the most beautiful work, and art, can be in our ear, lifting us up throughout our days, buffering us from the pressures that lead us towards self-destructive habits.