MIND THE GAP: CULTIVATING CHANGE & CLOSING THE DISENGAGEMENT DIVIDE
After the beatdown marathon that was chapter four, I was suuuuper grateful that chapter five was a mere 15 pages long. In this chapter, Brené discusses how we have to:
pay attention to the space between where we’re actually standing and where we want to be… [which] requires both an embrace of our own vulnerability and cultivation of shame resistance…to pay attention to the space between where we’re standing and where we want to go.
Brené’s discussion of disengagement, which she says is “the issue underlying the majority of problems… in families, schools, communities, and organizations” is what really stood out to me in this chapter. So many of us are completely disconnected from those around us, with our eyes glued to our phones, because it’s much easier to observe a sterilized, prettified version of life from behind a screen than to truly engage and do the work of being vulnerable with those around us.
Sometimes we want desperately to connect on a deep, vulnerable level with others, but we don’t quite know how to get there. Brené breaks it down like this:
The gap starts here: we can’t give people what we don’t have. Who we are matters immeasurably more than what we know or who we want to be. The space between our practiced values (what we’re actually doing, thinking, and feeling) and our aspirational values (what we want to do, think, and feel) is the value gap, or what I call “the disengagement divide.” It’s where we lose our employees, our clients, our students, our teachers, our congregations, and even our own children…We have to pay attention to the space between where we’re actually standing and where we want to be.
I think the only way we can “mind the gap” and bridge the divide is to seek the Lord for healing of the hurt places in our hearts that cause us to disengage in the first place. I’m so thankful that we serve a God who “heals the brokenhearted and ·bandages their wounds.” Psalm 147:3
