She Turned Down Three Offers

Echo:

Emma had nine days to tell her supporters whether she'd run for city council, with three other offers still waiting behind that one.

She'd retired in June after nineteen years running the regional hospital. By August, her calendar was filling fast: two nonprofit boards wanted her, a consulting firm offered her a senior advisor role, and the city needed someone to help decide how to rebuild its east side clinics. Her grandchildren, four hours away, wanted her too.

For nineteen years, the hospital's needs had driven her choices. The budget cycle set her priorities while the board set her goals. Everyday crises set her calendar. Now the requests arrived with no frame around them, and she was doing the only thing she knew: gathering input.

"I've talked to about 20 people and listed the pros and cons for each," she told me. "It's just not clear what's best."

Her capacity had outlasted the structure that once directed it, and the judgment about where it belonged would now have to come from her.

"You've spent a career being the person everyone turns to," I said. "Right now everyone is bringing you things. Which of them is worthy of what you have?"

She started to answer, then stopped. “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘worthy.’"

So I asked her to set the notepad aside. What had she built that still mattered to her? What had been waiting patiently while the hospital came first? Where did her particular abilities make something possible that would otherwise stay stuck? And looking back from ten years on, which of these would feel most significant to her?

As she talked, her granddaughter kept coming up: she was struggling to read. So did the east side clinics, the families who waited three hours to be seen, a budget meeting in 2019 when the expansion plan died in committee. Her voice changed. It grew quicker and steadier. She began to hear herself then.

Good counsel widens what we can see. Then we need to walk back to our own center and trust what we find there.

Emma said yes to the council race and declined both boards and the consulting firm. She blocked one week each month for her granddaughter and told her campaign manager it was fixed. Some people were puzzled. A few were disappointed.

"I used to think I owed everyone my best reasons," she told me a month later. "Now I own what I have. And I'm the one who decides where it goes."

Capacity will always attract more requests than one life can hold. Choosing what deserves it is authorship, and that pen belongs to you.

And that’s the Gist of it.

This idea for this Echo first took root in the essay, "You Do Not Need Everyone to Understand You." For more insight, that essay is waiting for you here.

Thank you for reading.

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Marilyn Gist