Work and Play

"No go back to sleep!  Just wake up and play!!" - says my two year old at 5:45am this morning (a few minutes before promptly falling back asleep).

Meanwhile there I am, awake since about 5am - dreading getting up to my massive to do list.

How wonderful that would be, to wake up on a Monday morning, overjoyed that I get to play.

I recently spoke at Yale, where I warned students about quotes like: "Follow your passion and you'll never work another day of your life."  Because that sets up the expectation that everything is all rainbows and unicorns.

Instead, a deeper north star is following your purpose.  Because purpose gets you through the hardship as well as sails you through the joy.

But I'm realizing that the connection my brain somehow made was that if something is important enough, there will be hardship, there should be hardship.  Play is all good and all, but if something is important enough, it should be work too.  Play also, sure.  But also work.  Always work.

And I suppose that's why I've been procrastinating on this post so much.  The topic here was "supposed" to be maternal mortality.  Heavy, right?

And meanwhile, all I want in my life right now is spaciousness, lightness and joy.

You see the dilemma.  

But what if??

What if I can go back to the maternal health space and this time, bring light and love and joy to my work? - not just bring it, but lead with it?

Not in a rose-colored glasses, naïve kind-of way.... but rather in a: "I've tried the other way and it very nearly broke me, so there has to be another way"- kind-of way.

I've dissected my time in India so many times that if it were a book, it would be ear-marked and highlighted, with tons of comments written into the sides of the page.

But looking at it in this morning's light: my first year there was play.  The rest was work.  

That first year was a gap (an inspiring, life-changing-in-all-the-important-ways gap) to what was then my "real" job - the job I had deferred back in NY.  But then it became my "job".

That first year, I followed my passion.  It took me to communities and women's homes... where I saw ripped magazines with Bollywood actors hanging on their walls - but no baby photos.  More play: what happens if we give each mom who delivers at our hospital a photo of their newborn baby? (hint: word spreads like wildfire).  And perhaps one of the most fun days of all: throwing a huge Mother's Day celebration and inviting all of my friends to help -- we had stations for kids to play, fun photo booths for families... Just thinking about it brings a smile to my face.

And then once I decided to stay, I got "serious".  This was now my job, after all.  And now I had a fancy title.  I stayed in my office much more, analyzing spreadsheets and developing powerpoints and marketing strategies to grow and help us scale.  Everything felt harder.  Because it was harder.  So in turn, I needed to be serious.

And hence the false dichotomy.  That importance means serious.  And serious precludes play.

So here's my challenge to myself: how do I work on something that I'm so passionate about that it brings me to tears, in a way that I don't bear the weight of the world on my shoulders?

And just like that, a voice rises from deep within me.  

"You bring your light."