Day 34 (a day or two late)

Heart Ownership

What do pastors and flight attendants have in common? More than I would have guessed. Both walk down aisles of the people they serve; on occasion both are called up to help people with their 'baggage; both are expected to remain calm and helpful during emergencies; and both stand at the exit and say "goodbye" as people leave. However, none of these were the focus of an article that started me thinking about the similarities.

The article by Barbara Brown Taylor considered how both pastors and flight attendants both work in 'jobs' involving more 'emotional labor' than either physical or mental work, though not completely devoid of them.

Summarizing a book called The Managed Heart by Arlie Russell Hochschild, Taylor explained that:

Hochschild described "emotional labor," as work that requires the production of certain feelings in the worker, whose job entails the production of feelings in others. Focusing on flight attendants and bill collectors, among others, Hochschild interviewed scores of people whose livelihoods depend on the careful management of their feelings. Her particular interest is what happens to people's hearts when they agree to do emotional labor for pay...

The one instruction [flight attendants] receive over and over again is to smile--and beyond that, to smile as if they mean it. Customers can detect strained or forced smiles, their trainers tell them, and this may diminish their enjoyment of the flight...

This emotional labor must not show, however. If the flight attendant feels tired or irritable, this must be disguised. If a passenger turns hostile, the flight attendant is taught to reconceive that person as a fearful flyer or as a little child--anything that will help the attendant overlook the rude behavior and relate sympathetically to the passenger...

Hochschild found that most flight attendants cope by learning a form of "deep acting" that helps them produce the desired feelings in themselves. They learn other strategies for repressing negative feelings so that they do not erupt on the job. After a while, many say they have a hard time recovering their true feelings once their shifts are over. They begin to lose track of when they are acting and when they are not. Eventually they become aware that the hidden cost of managing their emotions for pay is the impoverishment of their emotional lives. They have sold their hearts, and do not know how to buy them back.

Flight attendants are not the only people who do this, of course. Hochschild estimates that one-third of American workers have jobs that demand some form of emotional labor. From the sales associate who is trained to make a good first impression to the physician who is coached on bedside manner, many of us learn how to manage our hearts in the workplace...

Taylor was struck by how similar this 'managing of the heart' is to what's expected of clergy. Few people would ever say they'd rather have their pastor hide their real feelings, but as she pointed out, people don't want an "edgy pastor anymore than they want a surly waiter."

While we may all be asked, expected or even willing to 'manage our hearts,' we should remember that they are indeed ours to manage or not. If we 'overmanage' them, if we teach them to lie so much that we do not recognize their truth, if we let them 'be dictated by other people or an impersonal culture,' then it will take a great deal of solitude to recognize and reclaim them.

In addition to the solitude that Parker suggests in today's reading, Barbara Brown Taylor offers this wisdom to her clergy colleagues (though I think it's appropriate for everyone):

One way to safeguard them, I believe, is to separate the gift of our feelings from our salaries. As a good friend once reminded me, people can pay us to proofread the bulletin, watch the budget, attend committee meetings and deal with denominational bureaucracy, but they cannot pay us to love them.

That, it turns out is something we can choose to do or not. Smiling or not, that's just not something most of us can manage to fake for long, regardless of our job description.

Whether you choose to share your answers on the blog or not, I wonder:
In what currencies do others use to pay you to 'manage your heart?'
In what ways, do you let others 'own your heart?'