When I journal or write things that are only meant for me to write, I often use this term called ‘my work.’  I don’t mean my job, like the thing that makes me money. I don’t mean checking things off of my to-do list. I mean the ‘work’ that when I say it, sends tingles down my spine and makes my heart smile. It’s the work of joining with millions of other people, some of whom I know, some of whom I will never meet, to collectively heal our world.

The distinctive thing about ‘my work,’ and the thing that makes me feel so good when I say it, is that it really is work. It’s slow, and incremental, and not always glamorous or even visible. It’s copy and pasting data into a spreadsheet for hours late into the night, and knocking on doors in the blazing heat, and making dozens of phone calls inviting people to community meetings.  It’s spending  a week to prepare a two-hour anti-oppression workshop, and spending six weeks to organize a two- hour community energy forum, and spending seven months to plan an eight-week summer program, simply trusting that each will have an impact to justify all that time.

This ‘work’ is so powerful because it is a true expression of deep love for the world, and hope for the future. I was introduced to this concept at a summer camp where I worked two years ago, where the phrase “Work is love made visible” was often thrown around. However, it was not until Summer of Solutions that I fully understood what this means.  My work with Summer of Solutions helped me fully embody the idea that to work in developing the green economy is not just about getting things done, but also about continuously enacting our loving the world.

This concept is expressed beautifully by the poet Kahlil Gibran, who writes:

“Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.”

This other important thing about ‘my work’ is that it really is mine. As Gibran puts it, the work that we do was assigned to us when the Earth’s dream that we are fulfilling was born.  ‘My work’ is beyond my choice. It seems too integral to my being to be something I could ever get disillusioned about.

My goal as I leave Summer of Solutions and begin a year of launching a brand new program (New York City- it’s on!) is to carry my passion for ‘my work’ into all my interactions. My hope is that I can engage new people in this movement by fully demonstrating that this work makes me feel fulfilled and happy and grounded, not just when I win or succeed, but just because I’m doing ‘my work.’

Elana Bulman- Twin Cities Program Leader

Today, I helped facilitate a session for the Twin Cities program to review our personal goals from training week. One of the questions we asked participants to reflect upon was “How would it feel to fall short of meeting your goals this summer?” I remember that when I was asked this question on my first day of Summer of Solutions as participant last summer, my response was something like “I would feel hopeless…like I couldn’t breathe.” This year, the first thing that came to my head was “If I fail to meet my goals this summer, I will sure learn a lot about how I can improve.”

This transition from responding to challenges with despair to responding to challenges with curiosity, perseverance, and optimism is one of the key things I have gained from working with Summer of Solutions. I think this switch comes from the value I now place on learning as an end in itself. I find that the way I approach my work as a solutionary is generally more effective when I stop focusing on what I want the results of my work to be, and rather be attentive to how whatever I am doing is preparing me to take on even greater things. Through the long hours I spent this year doing sometimes tedious work of writing grants, making color-coded spreadsheets, and wading through difficult conversations, my mantra was consistently “This is how I learn.”

I’ve realized this school year that Summer of Solutions is significantly more educational for me than any schooling that money can buy. I often feel that my university does not take education seriously enough to prepare me to be the person I need to be to make the changes I want to make. On the other hand, Summer of Solutions is a space that I feel encourages each of us to identify what it is we need to learn and take responsibility for making it happen.

One of my favorite things about our program this year is that it is an incredible learning community. Throughout each week, we have sessions scheduled for learning about the green economy, urban farming, and anti-oppression for collective liberation. For each of these sessions, the group identifies what we want to learn about the topic and then searches through the collective knowledge of the SoS participants to find someone who can teach us what we want to know. If no one in the group knows about it, the chances are pretty high that one of us knows someone else who does. Or, someone will step up to first research the topic and then become a teacher for the rest of the group. Summer of Solutions does not make the trainers and facilitators out to be the experts, but rather people who are stepping up to learning through the process of teaching and leading.  

I think one of the most distinctive features of the SoS Twin Cities program is the culture of “I act not because I know what I am doing, but because only through acting do I have any hope of learning what to do and only through acting do I have any hope at all.” The amazing thing about this focus on learning is that does not conflict with achieving tangible results. Rather, it means that I care about this work too much to get in my own way by imagining that I know it all already.