YES, WE ARE NEEDED
By: Luis Eugenio Castañeda Gallardo
Tags: Helping Others, Coaching, Mentoring

Juan de Dios Peza, (Mexico City 1852–1910) a Mexican poet and writer, who wrote “To laugh while crying”, a beautiful poem that my mother used to share with me in my youth. It describes a bit of the life of David Garrik (Hereford England 1717–1779) an English actor very famous for his quite hilarious performances.

Garrik was indeed an outstanding comedian, very well known for his ability to entertain his audience, make them laugh and happy.

The poem describes a famous doctor who once received a new patient, suffering deep melancholy. The patient complaints were about a terrible illness that drove him into deep sadness.

The doctor, trying to help, proposed him several remedies, including traveling, reading, a woman who could love him, riches and several more options to alleviate his sadness; finally, he prescribed the man seeing Garrik, the outstanding and famous comedian.

The patient response was beyond surprise, asking the doctor with great doubt about seeing Garrik to alleviate his sufferings. Finally, the man said to the doctor, “I am Garrik, change my prescription”

This poem brought to my mind how easy is for us assume that we are ok and forget that we also need help. We are human and thus, vulnerable. We believe we are in constant change and development, creating and reinventing us permanently. Thus, we are neede and therefore we need help in our constant transformation. Surely, we can self-apply several wonderful neuro-semantic tools and practices but never compared to having a real coach.

I recommend to my clients to build a “support network”. That means a group of individuals whom you relate more in-depth in order to make things happen with their help and support in a give and take basis. This could be read as a group of friends whom you relate to, in order to help and be helped to all reach their goals and face their working challenges with ease. So, what’s my point to you now? Build a support coaching, mentoring and learning network to be there for others and to ask for help when you need it.

When starting Coaching Mastery, one condition to take the training is “being coachable”. My question to myself and to you is who is your coach at this moment?

· Do you see him/her in a regular basis?

· Are you following up your development plan?

· Do you know what you want and don’t want ant this time in your life?

· Do you have clear goals well set for this year?

· What is it you want to work on? Is it a behavior? An ability or competency? A result?

We can better coach others acknowledging that we are vulnerable and neede and at the same time we will be happier as we give and commit ourselves to others. One certainty I find: we need someone else to support, accompany, follow, listen, mentor and coach us through our lives and professional career. Living the experience as coachee puts us in the right place to coach others. Do we coach as if we were totally sane and dominate life? Are we coaching from our humanness?

Poems have the power to activate meta-connections just as metaphors. Read, see, listen, feel and contemplate Juan de Dios Peza and Garrik’s search for help. What connections and references come to you? Think and reflect what would be the right questions that apply to you. What names come to your mind regarding building that support network?

Below, Juan de Dios Peza’s poem. Enjoy!

“To Laugh While Crying”

By Juan de Dios Peza, Mex (1852–1910)

Watching Garrik — an actor from England -

the people would say applauding:

“You are the funniest one on earth

and the happiest one…”

And the comedian would laugh.

Victims of melancholy, the highest lords,

during their darkest and heaviest nights

would go see the king of actors

and change their melancholy into roars of laughter.

Once, before a famous doctor,

came a man with eyes so somber:

“I suffer — he said -, an illness so horrible

as this paleness of my face”

“Nothing holds any enchantment or attractiveness;

I don’t care about my name or my fate

I die living an eternal melancholy

and my only hope is that of death”.

- Travel and distract yourself

- I’ve traveled so much!

- Search for readings

- I’ve read so much!

- Have a woman love you

- But I am loved

- Get a title

- I was born a noble

- Might you be poor?

- I have richnesses

- Do you like compliments?

- I hear so many!

- What do you have as a family?

- My sadness

- Do you go to the cemeteries?

- Often, very often.

- Of your current life, do you have witnesses?

- Yes, but I don’t let them impose their burdens;

I call the dead my friends;

I call the living my executioners.

- It leaves me — added the doctor — perplexed

your illness and I must not scare you;

Take today this advice as a prescription

only watching Garrik you can be cured.

-Garrik?

-Yes, Garrik… The most indolent

and austere society anxiously seeks him;

everyone who sees him, dies of laughter;

he has an amazing artistic grace.

- And me? Will he make me laugh?

-Ah, yes, I swear it;

he and no one but him; but… what disturbs you?

-So — said the patient — I won’t be cured;

I am Garrik! Change my prescription.

How many are there who, tired of life,

ill with pain, dead with tedium,

make others laugh as the suicidal actor,

without finding a remedy for their illness!

Ay! How often we laugh when we cry!

Nobody trusts the merriment of laughter,

because in those beings devoured by pain,

the soul groans when the face laughs!

If faith dies, if calm flees,

if our feet only step on thistles,

the tempest of the soul hurls to the face,

a sad lighting: a smile.

The carnival of the world is such a trickster,

that life is but a short masquerade;

here we learn to laugh with tears

and also, to cry with laughter.