Love

Love - genuine love for anything - is so often left out of the discourse of organisational life.Apparently it's not serious enough for business.Sometimes we'll allow ourselves passion - a word which is allowed, I think, because it sells us to others with its promise of energy and heat, commitment and making things happen. (We're so tied up with endlessly making things happen that we've forgotten everything else that conspires to make it possible).And we'll allow ourselves cynicism and skepticism, moods which distance us from one another and give us a feeling of superiority (a kind of pseudo-sophistication in which we believe we have greater insight than everyone else around us, who simply can't see what we can see).Frustration and resignation are also welcomed in many organisations, because serious work is apparently meant to be difficult all the time and both of these moods, reminding us of our difficulty, tell us that we must be doing it right.But love - genuine love? Deep, heartfelt love for something or someone that brings out our integrity, moves us, has us speak truth even when it's inconvenient, draws us out of ourselves, can touch people with something beyond manipulation or self-interest? How often do we allow that in ourselves or in others?We treat love with disdain.And we're much the poorer for it.

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She should know

"My manager (or partner, child, colleague, best friend, client, customer) should know what to do. She should. And because of this, I’m not going to ask. I’m not going to tell her what I need, what I want, or what I see. I’m going to stay quiet. Why should I say anything? Because she should just know."Where does this get you - even if it’s true?Can you think of any move more sure to rob you of your power, distance you, and deny you the very thing you want or need most - except, perhaps, your wish to remain frustrated, bitter, resentful and endlessly disappointed?

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Blessings for all of it

In the Jewish tradition, as in other religious and spiritual traditions, there is a blessing that can be said for pretty much anything. A blessing for waking up, and a blessing for going to sleep. A blessing for sunsets and for lightning. Blessings for food and for rainbows. Blessings for new clothes, for reaching special days, and for anniversaries. Blessings for the bathroom. Blessings for encountering others. Blessings, even, for bad news and for dying.The simplest way to understand blessings is as an act of thanks. But they’re also a practice in remembering what is so easily forgotten – that even the humdrum and mundane is neither humdrum nor mundane. And they’re a practice in noticing all those phenomena and entities which are often in the background for us but upon which all of life is standing. In this sense blessings require no belief in a deity but simply a commitment to marvel at life’s sheer beauty and complexity. They are a practice in staying awake. They are an invitation to live in a state of what Abraham Joshua Heschel called a state of ‘radical amazement’.The rabbinic tradition invites people to say at least a hundred blessings a day. What would become possible, I wonder, if just now and again we each started to look at what’s become most ordinary and most unremarkable in our lives, perhaps even that which we’ve come to resent, and turned to wonder at the blessing within?

I'm republishing this today for P, a source of exquisite blessing in the lives of many

The antidote to resentment

Resentment is a mood that has, at its heart, the judgment that you have been wronged and there's nothing you can do about it. It casts you in the role of the righteous injured party - the one who must get even in order to have any self-esteem, but is denied any route to do so - and the other person in the role of villain. It's no wonder then, where resentment leads - either to a cold, aloof distance or to silently but subversively trying to get even. And when resentment shows up in relationships that matter (can it ever meaningfully show up anywhere else?) it quickly has a powerfully corrosive effect by perpetually casting you as the victim to the other's persecution.The antidote? Learning how to make requests. Because requests bring us in close, back into relationship, into contact - even if the other person says no to what's being asked of them. Making requests of another accords the other person dignity, elevating them from mere object of your scorn into a full human being.And sincere requests accord you the dignity of once again being human too - being one who has the power to make your needs and wishes heard. So learning to ask when you're resentful, rather than distancing yourself, might be the most counter-intuitive and the most healing move you can make.

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The danger of silent expectations

It's so much more powerful to make clear requests of others than it is to hold silent expectations.

If you expect all of your team to speak up for themselves...but don't ask them to

or if you expect your friends to remember your birthday...but don't tell them how important it is to you

or if you expect your family to invite you round...but don't say that to them

or if you expect your partner to put the bins out...but don't mention it

or if you expect people to be punctual in meetings with you...but don't let them know

If you do any of these, if you say 'they should just know what I want', you're setting yourself up for disappointment, resentment, and resignation.Because silent expectations require other people to be mind readers. They set invisible standards that are almost certain to be missed because of their invisibility. And they cause confusion when others' good intentions (that just didn't happen to match your hidden expectations) fail to satisfy you.Perhaps this is what you intend. Maybe you have expectations rather than asking because it keeps proving that nobody cares as much as you do.It may feel clunky and awkward, but if you really care about things happening, and if you care about being in relationship in a way that maintains everyone's dignity, it's far more skilful to ask, directly for what you want to happen:

"Please, speak up in this meeting. I want to hear what you have to say""Please remember my birthday. It really matters to me""I'd love to see you more. Would you invite me round more often?""Please can you put the bins out?""It's important to me that we start on time. Please be there before 9."

At least then everyone knows what you wish for. And you give everyone the dignified possibility of saying no, or offering to do something different, both of which are denied when your request is hidden by a silent, invisible expectation.

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Fragile

We could do, once in a while, with remembering that all we've taken to be solid, and all we've used to shore ourselves up against the riskiness of life, is hardly as solid as it seems.

Our homes, so sturdy, can be swept away by earthquake or flood, war or uprising.

Our money, so secure, can disappear in financial turmoil or upheaval.

Our position in society, in an organisation, undone both by our actions and by the stories of others.

Our health, undone in an instant by a virus, a bacterium, a clot unmooring itself.

Perhaps if we do this, just once in a while, it will help us to see again as human all the millions and billions of others who have lost this kind of security themselves. Perhaps it will awaken us to compassion, knowing that each one of them is just another one of us.Perhaps if we do this, just once in a while, it will help us to cling less tightly, to be more accepting of life's twists and turns - that what is had can be lost, and what is lost can be gained, and that life is a never-ending process of change. And in doing this, perhaps we'll be able to be a little less self-obsessed, and turn a little more genuinely and in deeper connection and care to all those around us.Perhaps if we do this, just once in a while, we'll have our eyes awakened to the miracle of whatever it is that we do have, whatever it is that we find we can truly rely on, and we'll find a way of undoing our sense of entitlement and our sense of resentment at life's unfairness.Perhaps if we do this, just once in a while, we'll have a better chance of living with a sense of gratitude for what is, and the possibility of dedicating ourselves to the welfare of everyone rather than desperately clinging on with only ourselves in mind.

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Keeping it going

Dramas - the stories in which we're at the centre of things: ignored, hard-done-by, unfairly treated, not seen, unrecognised, imprisoned by the actions or insensitivity of others.

Of course sometimes our stories are not dramas in this sense at all, but genuine accounts of oppression or neglect, upon which action must be taken.

But it's illuminating to see how often our drama stories are in large part an invention.

And how we keep them going.

Because, even when wildly inaccurate, dramas have huge payoffs.

They tell us we're the centre of the world (doesn't it feel better that way?)

They make others responsible for our difficulties (gets us off the hook)

They stir up our anger, resentment, fury - even our hate (all of which feel so much better than confusion, uncertainty, boredom)

And because of all this they're usually wildly more attractive to us than any of the alternative truer stories, which would have us act, step up, step in, talk to people and take responsibility for our part in the difficulties in which we find ourselves.

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How to look at others

Can you allow yourself, for a while, to look for what you're grateful for about others?It's such an easy habit, perhaps supported quite powerfully by your own inner-critic, to keep on looking for all the ways in which people are disappointing, hurtful, irritating, obstructing, confusing and frustrating to you. You may not even quite realise that you're doing this - how your background mood has quietly become one of scepticism or cynicism or despair.So perhaps you could take up the practice of looking truthfully for a while in a different direction: at what you can be genuinely grateful for in each person, however small.Write it down. Make a list. A long, ever-growing list of what you come to see.The point of this is not to blind yourself to your difficulties or frustrations but to open your eyes to a wider kind of horizon than is available to you now; to bring about new kinds of possibilities, conversations and relationship with all the people who, right now, you can only see as obstacles to your intentions; and to find how out they might be supporting you and taking care of what matters to you in many more ways than you can currently see.

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Gratitude or Resentment?

Today

gratitude,

or

resentment?

Each leads to very different places,

and to very different relationships - with self, others, world.

Each creates a very different horizon.

Are you paying attention,

at all,

to which you're cultivating?

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All the same

Seen against the ever-present certainties of our lives - we will die, we will grow old, all that we build or create will eventually fall apart - differences between us drop away. We are all the same.It's so hard to live consciously with this in mind, to reach out across the space we imagine separates us and be open to one another. So hard to share our fear, our longing, our truest hopes. So hard to stay present long enough to look deeply into the eyes of others, to fall into them, allowing ourselves to know and be known.Why so difficult? Perhaps because of the shame we necessarily picked up along the way: sharpened every time we had to be told not to do this or that, to be this way or that way in order to fit in with our families or with our culture. Because of our self-doubt and our inner-criticism, which make it so hard to love ourselves fully (a pre-requisite for allowing ourselves to un-self-consciously love others). And because we are afraid.And so we hold back, always reserving some distance even from those who love us the most, because that way it feels as if we'll hold on to some measure of safety. Or we judge others, resent them or hate them, turning them into less than human-beings in our hearts, because it makes us feel better for a while.Even though we know that our deepest connection with one another is precisely that which can save us from the void.This is the great ethical work, so difficult to do and so necessary, which calls to us - learning the sensitivity to respond and be open to other people, who we take to be so different from us but with whom we share common ancestry, and common destiny.For we are intimately related.Family.

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