by Mitch Bogen
Special to the Tribune
On March 4, the Ikeda Center hosted its first Dialogue Nights of 2022. Called “Countering Burnout With the Power of Connection,” the gathering, which was held virtually, was the 20th since the inception of the series in 2017.
Welcoming the participants, Ikeda Center Program Manager Lillian I said the theme was inspired by dialogues with the center’s youth committee, who found that the connections they were making with one another helped them overcome the exhaustion they were feeling from two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Throughout the evening, participants discussed ways they were overcoming burnout. Many centered on the value of doing small things every day that bring calm and refresh their sense of being, even activities as simple as making tea or walking the dog. On the more ambitious end, one person advised finding a way to connect your soul to everything you do.
The participants also spoke of the power of the connections they were making in the course of their small-group discussions during the gathering. Someone observed how inspiring it was that each person in his group was in the process of realizing their dreams. Another poignantly observed that each person in his group shared a desire to reunite with their families.
In closing, Ikeda Center Executive Director Kevin Maher offered words from Daisaku Ikeda’s 2022 peace proposal that spoke to the spirit of the event: “The most crucial thing then is to forge bonds of solidarity from the realizations of connectedness that have come to us deeply and intensely during this unprecedented crisis and make these the basis for shared efforts to find a way out of the storm.”[1]
—Visit ikedacenter.org for in-depth coverage of the event.
References
- daisakuikeda.org/assets/files/peaceproposal-2022.pdf <accessed on March 17, 2022>. ↩︎
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