When the conversation you are having dies, what do you do?Conversations die when you tune out of them, when you stop tracking your truthfulness about your experience, when you fall back on tired routines that mean little but keep you feeling safe, when you say what you think is expected rather than what's real, when you slip into jargon and abstract concepts, when you tell lies - even small ones - about yourself, and about others.When the conversation dies, what do you do?Many of us, I think, keep going as if nothing had happened.Occasionally, this is bound to happen.But repeated again and again, over hours, days, months, years - our diminished, fossilised conversations in turn diminish us and our relationships.Much of the corporate world seems to have made an art out of the dead conversation. Families, people who were once lovers, and whole organisations slip quietly into deadness without even noticing. Bringing the conversation back to life seems too risky, too vulnerable.The consequence?Feeling safe.And becoming ghosts.
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Nine common stories about what's not allowed to you:
Could it be that it's time for you to give up looking good so you can be real instead?I'm not saying this lightly.Two summers ago, I found myself rendered momentarily speechless, mid-conversation, as a dear friend and I walked together for lunch. A few minutes later, flat on my back on the pavement, heart pounding, short of breath, mind racing.I knew for certain only after a few days - but had an inkling as it happened - that an undiagnosed blood clot that had been forming in my leg for some time had at that moment broken loose from its moorings.Terror, love, longing, hope, confusion.I called home while we waited for the paramedics to arrive."I'm fine," I said. "There's nothing to be worried about".Not, "I'm scared.". Not, "Please help me". Not, "I don't know if I'm going to be ok"."I'm fine".It was a hot June afternoon, blue skies, but there must have been clouds as I remember watching a seagull wheel high overhead against a background of grey-white."I'm fine".Just when I most needed help and connection I played my most familiar, habitual 'looking good' hand - making sure others around me had nothing to be worried about. A hand I've played repeatedly since I was a child.Even in the most obviously life-threatening situation I had yet experienced: "I'm fine". Too afraid to be seen for real, to be seen as something other than my carefully nurtured image of myself.It was there, on the pavement, that I started to understand in a new way the cost of holding myself back from those I 
An unchangeable feature of life is that, at every moment, you find yourself inescapably in some situation or other - perhaps one that you did not choose.And however magnificent or terrible it is, you are, conclusively, just here, at this moment in the life that you are living.No manner of denial (and all the suffering that comes with it) can change that your life continues from this moment, this particular configuration, and not from another.And so acceptance of life - as opposed to fighting life - is not 'putting up with things' but responding fully from where you are. Not pretending to yourself or to others that you are somewhere else.Every situation, however glorious, however unwelcome, has its own possibilities. And you have precisely this hand to play in whatever way you can.Many paths lead from this place.Will you go to sleep to yourself, or step in to this, the one and only life you have?
After writing yesterday's post on 
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.
Here's a self-perpetuating cycle that may be familiar to you:
Standing at the sink, washing the dishes, an old coaching client comes to mind. I don't know why. We used to sit talking in his office or in the front room of his home, and as I remember the contours of that experience I'm quickly off into other worlds, memories, and then ideas about what needs doing now.How strange and unruly thought is.Later, putting away some items in a kitchen cupboard, I am inexplicably thinking of characters from a 
There are millions of books that you'll never read.Millions of films you'll never see.Places you'll never go to.People you'll never meet.Experiences you'll never have.Do you chase after what's unattainable with resentment and frustration, raging against life's limits? Or open in gratitude at life's richness?I am starting to discover George Steiner's work for the first time. Here he is with a beautiful account of his move from fear to wonder on this very question, involving a fascinating story of the discovery and reburial of thousands of terracotta Chinese warriors.[youtube=http://youtu.be/Q1z3sMGYjNk]