Years ago I was a volunteer peer counsellor at a telephone crisis center. After about 24 hours of training in things like responsive-listening, cues for dangerous activity and community resources, we were turned loose on the client community. 

I came there with the impression that people called in once or twice, relieved their immediate issues by talking with one of us, perhaps got some referrals to community services and then were gone.  At the same time I wondered why there was such a huge turnover in volunteers that a class of 20 or so people was trained twice a year. Could there be that many people in crisis?

 I took the training because I am a unapologetic do-gooder, in my own cranky way.  I volunteer for things in the community, I pick up the odd piece of trash in the street and I refrain from yelling at people who let their cats loose to hunt birds or poop in my flower beds.

And many of the colunteers I met were the same way, although not nearly as cranky. They were normal people, perhaps with a slightly greater bent towards social justice and action than the average and they took time from their lives and jobs to spend a 4 hour shift once a week anwering phones to try and 'help.'

The actual people-in-charge were professionals, they managed everything administratively and their unstated, perhaps even unconscious, goal was to keep our numbers up, to show the community that this service was needed - and that the need was growing.

And there was the problem. A large proportion of the calls we received were from a relatively small but evolving community of people with very complex issues that weren't really crises but much more extensive. These people required perhaps a longer term involvement with a social services agency or some life changes that, in many cases, they just didn't want to make. The result was that this same group of people would call night-after-night, day-after-day talking for hours to volunteers about the same, complex, seemingly intractable problems.

And the volunteers suffered; instead of feelings of doing something, shift after shift, they came away just burnt up and feeling helpless from confronting these problems without the ability to do anything about them.  Thus the turnover as the volunteers were used up and just sort of tossed under the wheels of this organization's progress.

Eventually there was a sort of peaceful uprising. The volunteers asked why we were required to enable these callers in their persistence in being in crisis.  Why couldn't we require some evidence in progress as the price for letting them call repeatedly?

There was an interesting resolution. The administration refused to allow these changes that would help the volunteers persist so many of the volunteers left.  Then, in order to handle the incoming calls with many fewer volunteers, the administration actually put into place all the requirements that we had been asking for but not getting.

Public weakness draws sympathy like rotten fruit draws flies.

I am always suspicious when people write long and multiple blog entries how they themselves, their emotional state, their life or their career is completely in the dumper. I can sympathize the first time, 'Geez, life is tough. Yup, that was unfair. Hope you feel better.' After that, I want to say,'OK, you've heard that everyone cares, now its time to do something and only you can do it.'

I believe in the unburdening oneself of untold angst but once you've done it three, four or a dozen times, it becomes a style of living, a way of relating to others.  I have a relative that I really like.  She's funny, generous and, to the core, a really good person but a few years ago she had some surgery and grew habituated to the attention that she got for being sick or in pain.

Now she lives to be sicker, in more pain, have a tougher life than anyone else in the room.  If she can't be the center for this reason, she sulks and is almost monosyllabic until finally, something else will draw her out and she'll be the old person we started out loving. 

 What I want with anyone I talk to, write to or just be around is a natural balance of interchange.  Each one gets the attention and emotion that they really deserve; I don't want people running the be-sorry-for-me or i'm-better-at-this or life-is-tough-for-me game on me.

These children, in a small town in northern Laos, were just tickled to see this big, pink fella in short pants, taking their picture when it was clearly too cold to be outside without a wool hat (65 degrees F)