Wide-Awakeness Manifesting from Workplace Conversations in a COVID-19 Context
Erica Cheng, Master of Education, University of Toronto
Do you sometimes lie in bed trying to sleep, having horrid flashbacks about embarrassing moments as a teenager? I do. A recurring flashback took place in a restaurant with my extended family. I was roughly 19–20 years old at the time. A family relative was talking to me about the world and politics. The teenage me found these conversations challenging because I was not as wide awake as I should be. One of the components of wide-awakeness is to engage intentionally with the world and be aware of issues happening in the world (Greene, 1977).
When he looked at me and asked, “Do you not know anything?” I was horrified and cried in the restaurant bathroom. Reflecting on this moment years later, I realize that his reaction was quite harsh: can anyone be completely wide awake at all times? I doubt it. The crucial part of wide-awakeness is the desire to listen to people who may be vastly different from you. Any moment can turn into a learning opportunity, should the individual be willing to allow it to be such. Education cannot be limited to formal educational institutions. Informal and organic conversations with clients or colleagues in the workplace are also learning opportunities. I have been fortunate to have these conversations in my workplace.
I have the privilege and opportunity to work with members of the public managing projects. As a woman of colour who grew up in a community of lower socioeconomic status, my identities and experiences have helped shape my particular worldview. My clients regularly share the challenges they face while I look for solutions. Working with various clients, I have discovered that some have similar experiences and mindsets as myself, while some can be vastly different. Some challenges shared with me are ones I can understand personally, while others I cannot. I choose to listen instead of talk regarding the issues that I have not personally experienced.
While acknowledging that everyone is confronting their struggles during these troubling times, the pandemic has disproportionately impacted certain groups of individuals. In particular, visible minorities and lower-income earners, many of whom are essential workers. I see the direct impact of the pandemic in my community every day and empathize with fellow community members. I also recognize my current privileges that helped cushion the impact of the pandemic on my family. However, the experiences of fellow community members only reflect a fraction of the struggles faced in the world. Therefore, I am grateful for every conversation I have with my clients because they often serve two goals: one relating to my work and my personal growth as they help me attempt to fill knowledge gaps that I have regarding the world.
To view education as merely taking place within formal educational institutions or as just a piece of paper that you obtain after completing a certain number of courses is an act of disservice itself towards the objectives of education. Once entering the workforce, it is natural to have less energy at the end of the workday for learning in contrast to being a full-time student. Taking the time to read the news is an act and desire of wanting to be more awake. It is impossible to know everything. The notion of sharing your knowledge and experience with others and vice versa is a reciprocal process allowing all parties involved to be wider awake and more aware of their blind spots. These conversations in the workplace are equally meaningful as ones taking place in classrooms. These conversations are bite-sized learning opportunities helping me become more awake than before while also facilitating smoother, effective working relationships.
While I appreciate these conversations with clients, I am aware that not all colleagues take the same approach as I do. They chose to limit interaction with clients because they see every interaction preventing them from completing their work. Their choice might stem from ignorance, apathy, or emotional fatigue exacerbated by the pandemic. Unfortunately, this also increases the risks of unhappy clients and escalation of files. These small conversations help fight against depersonalization, automatization, and bland routinization of work. These are concerns that Soren Kierkegaard had since he felt that people needed to be awakened to their freedom to satisfy the human spirit (as cited in Greene, 1977). Ultimately, it is up to the individual to decide whether they want the opportunity to be a learning moment or let it pass.
Interactions with others can be impactful while working from home since the pandemic has heightened feelings of isolation and loneliness. At the same time, we need to recognize that to be wide awake requires energy. In a pandemic, not everyone has the space to be wide awake. It is a choice to be wide awake. It is perfectly okay to choose yourself and be less wide-awake to deal with more urgent priorities when needed.
Greene (1977) addresses the responsibility of being wide awake as individuals in a changing and problematic world. However, wide-awakeness needs to be understood as a lifelong process to avoid burnout. Depending on the circumstances during different periods of life, you would have varying amounts of time and energy to devote to being wide-awake. Absorbing too much information in a short period can be mentally draining. To be wide-awake should not require an individual to be always on top of every issue happening in the world, but at the very least, have the openness to learn either in bite-size pieces of information or in-depth. Sometimes, being less wide awake in a struggling moment is necessary to be more awake later. In the ongoing pandemic, I only have the energy to view interactions with my colleagues and clients as opportunities to be more wide-awake. Some of my colleagues have even less energy to do so, which is perfectly fine. We must show ourselves a little kindness now to allow us to be more wide awake in the future when we have the time and energy under better circumstances.
References
Greene, M. (1977). Toward wide-awakeness: An argument for the arts and humanities in education. Teachers College Record, 79(1), 119–125. https://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentId=1152
