Integrity Is Contagious

Last Tuesday I came home from work and had a weird impulse to see what movies were playing that night. I rarely or never go to movies in the middle of the week, but nonetheless, there I was, searching online, when I came across a movie entitled “Finding Normal”. And then I understood my impulse (though it was still weird!), because “Finding Normal” turned out to be about some people I knew -- some really amazing people that I used to work with.

Right around the time I was most burned out on public health acupuncture, my employer, Central City Concern, decided to try to do something about the abysmal success rate for recovering heroin addicts ( I think at the time something like 5% made it through treatment ) by creating the Mentor Program. CCC hired three people who were themselves in recovery from heroin addiction to shepherd the very newly clean through the dangerous days, weeks and months immediately following detox. Seven or eight years later, the Mentor Program has a 70% success rate, and that’s what “Finding Normal” is about.

The Mentors, especially one of them, made a lasting impression on me, and deserve credit for contributing to the character of WCA and of CAN. I met David Fitzgerald before he was a Mentor, when he was a UA technician, meaning that his job was to watch guys pee into cups. This was at a time that I was feeling pretty negative about my job. David was a reality check for me on a lot of different levels.

I think some people have so much integrity that it seeps out of them and permeates the air around them. If you’re lucky enough to be in the same room with them, you breathe it in, you can’t help it. They don’t need to say a word. I think this is a big part of why the Mentor Program works -- all three of the Mentors are like that. Working with David, I learned all kinds of stuff that I couldn’t put into words until much later. Here, watch him do it:

http://www.brianlindstromfilms.com/trailer.html

Wow, huh?

Here is another article about David:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg65jsqb_15fjqz8p

In the first talks I gave about WCA, I talked about David, about how watching him put his entire self into serving his community made me realize that I wanted and needed to do the same thing. Not being a recovering addict myself, I wasn’t doing that at CCC, I couldn’t. David’s wholehearted commitment, his bone-deep empathy for his clients, his total willingness to use all of who he was in the service of other people -- that was some of the best teaching I ever got in how to be a healer. Acupuncture school didn’t come anywhere close -- in part because I didn’t get the sense in acupuncture school that it was really okay ( to borrow David’s words) to give a fuck about suffering.

David being who he was, and using that to be in service, helped me figure out that I needed to be who I really was in order to be happy in my practice. I needed to bring my whole life to my work, not just collect a paycheck. I don’t know how I would have learned that, let alone really BELIEVED it, unless I had someone to watch who was doing it.

I wanted to post about this because I was so excited to have an example on film of what was so important and motivating to me, but also because it connects to the themes of several previous posts. David makes, I think, $20,000 a year doing what he does. He does not need therapy to feel okay about his choices. I don’t care about being Acupuncturist of the Year -- but what I’d feel really good about? Being like David.

On Tuesday I rushed to the theater and caught the last half of “Finding Normal”. I’m hoping it comes out soon on DVD, because I could watch David, Randy and Jill -- being what the world needs humans to be -- over, and over, and over.