The horizon that is visible is not the whole sky

When we take the automatic path (see this post, and this), we try to resolve our difficulties by doing more of what we're already in the habit of doing already.

We try to deal with our overwhelm by getting busier. We think that if we can just go a bit faster we'll soon get on top of things.

We can't see that it's not a question of faster but more often a question of priority, of deciding what's important and saying no to everything else.

We try to deal with other people's apparent lack of commitment by speaking more loudly, being more insistent, yelling. We think that if we're just more forceful then people will do what we want.

But we can't see that involving others is not usually a question of force but a question of enrolment - that we'd be better turning our attention to inviting a genuine relationship that supports commitment in arising.

We try to deal with our anxiety by turning away from it, numbing ourselves, only to find out that anxiety forced underground is just as painful and, in many ways, causes us much more difficulty.

We can't see that feelings are there to be felt. That our anxiety can educate us, have us reach out for support, teach us about what's most genuinely important for us.

In each of these cases, and in many more, we'd do well to remember Martin Buber when he tells us

"The horizon visible from one's station is not the whole sky"

Or, in other words, the resolution to many of our difficulties is not to continue on automatic but to turn towards what we're not currently paying attention to.It's to find out that what we've taken to be the 'horizon' - the way the world is, the way we are, and what we have to do - is only a part of the picture. That the resolution to our difficulties, or at least the lessening of them, is often in finding out that the world of possible relationships, explanations and actions is way bigger than we'd imagined.This, then, is the path of responsiveness, and the path of development. And it's worth working on with everything we can bring to it.

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A lifetime's work

Automatic:

ClicheSaying the same thing to the same person in the same wayAll the ways we use jargon or business-speakPredictable reactions to what you're feeling (lashing out, withdrawing, self-criticising)Tuning out from what's really happeningMost of our habitsAlways knowing, always being sureExcluding certain emotionsKeeping conversation within predictable, narrow boundsSaying "I am this way"

Responsive:

Asking "What's needed now, here?"Tuning in to the wholeness of the situation - with mind, emotions, bodily sensationRelaxing your need to know what to doLetting go of feeling safe, so that what's needed can ariseAllowing yourself to be surprised - at yourself, at othersFeeling it allGiving up defending, clinging on, controlling what's happeningDoing what's called for, rather than what 'one does'

We easily become masterful at automatic. And although responsive is our human heritage, for most of us mastering it takes ongoing practice because so much of what we've learned - at school, in work, in our families - gets in the way.We could do well to remember that responsive - much needed in our lives - is a lifetime's work.

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Automatic or alive

Two paths available to all of us, that are an inherent part of being human.(1) The automatic path

Our bodies and minds have an exquisite ability to learn something new and then reproduce it without our having to pay much attention to it. It's what we rely on to get us around in the world. Navigating doors, cooking utensils, cars, speaking, phones, cities, social niceties, and paying for things would all be practically impossible were it not for this capacity. Without our automaticity we would have to learn and relearn how to interact with just about everything in the worlds we have invented.  Indeed, without our capacity to automatically respond to the vast and rich background of culture and tools in which we live, culture itself and tools themselves would be impossible.

(2) The responsive path

We also have an exquisite ability to make sense of and respond to the particular needs of the current moment. In any given situation we can find ourselves doing or saying something we've never done or said before. Sometimes our creative response can be surprising, sometimes clumsy, and sometimes we find ourselves able to respond with beautiful appropriateness to what's happening. From this comes our capacity to invent, to respond with empathy and compassion to others, and to change the course of a conversation or meeting or conflict mid-flow. Without this capacity we'd hardly be human at all. We'd be machines.

But here's a problem. We so often call on or demand the automatic path when what's called for is the responsive path:

We fall into habits shaped by the strong feelings that arise in our emotions and bodies.

We tell ourselves 'I don't like that' (and so don't do it).

We say 'I am this way' (meaning I won't countenance being any other way).

We insist other people stay the same as we know them, and put pressure on them to remain predictable in all kinds of overt and subtle ways.

We institutionalise or systematise basic, alive human interactions in our organisations, insisting on frameworks and codes and processes and procedures so that we won't get surprised.

We repeat ourselves again and again - saying the same things, the same jokes, the same ideas, the same cliches.

We think rules, tools, tips and techniques will save us.

We form fixed judgements of ourselves and others which we can fall back upon when we're in difficulty.

We turn away from anything that causes us anxiety or confusion. We prefer to know rather than not know. We're hesitant to step beyond the bounds of what's familiar, and comfortable.

We would often rather settle into the predicability and sense of safety that our automaticity allows. Sometimes we even call this professional or businesslike.And all the while what's most often called for in our dealings with others, in our businesses, in our work and in our organisations is the responsive path - our capacity to respond appropriately to the particular situation and its wider context; to be unpredictable, creative, exciting, unsettling, sensitive, nuanced and, above all, alive.

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A sea of stars

I was reminded yesterday that, on the eve of the destruction wrought on the Jewish communities of Europe in the first part of the last century, my great-grandfather and his brother sat down to talk. They could see how desperate their situation was likely to become, and they had no idea how they could secure the future of their families against the gathering storm. And so they made a bargain, and a gamble with fate. They would toss a coin, they agreed. Whoever called correctly would take their family to England. The other would stay in mainland Europe.Between them, they hoped, some part of the family would manage to survive.As a result of this decision, my great-grandfather's family came across a sea of stars to England. His brother, his brother's family, and all their children passed through Poland and Paris and eventually to the death-camps at Auschwitz, where as far as we can tell all of them perished.On the throw of a coin the chain of life that came down to me and now on to my own children was secured. Who knows how many generations, how many lives, how much that has since and yet will be brought to the world, rested on that fateful moment?Remembering all of this is a huge call back into gratitude and wonder in my darkest, most self-obsessed, most resigned, resentful, and most narcissistic moments. It cuts through confusion and despair, awakening me again to what life is calling for, to my unique responsibility to act and take care of life - my own and others and everyone's.And it strikes me that the moment at the heart of this story is one of countless billions of chance moments and near misses, stretching back and back over time, that make it possible to be here.That any one of those moments could have called an end to the great chain of which I am the inheritor.And that this is true for all of us, whether or not we have stories in our families of desperate decisions made in terrifying times.And that if perhaps we made efforts to remember this, somehow, in our daily lives, we'd go to sleep less often to the unfathomable privilege and enormous responsibility of simply, gloriously being alive, in this place and at this time.

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This moment

Every moment - each second, each breath - is both an end and a beginning.At each moment what is done is done. The present dies into the past, never to return.And at each moment something new is born. The future, born into the present. A moment, like every moment, in which anything could happen.Perhaps you wait until a new year, an anniversary, or a birthday before you recognise this, before you wake up to the endless cycle of death and birth, ending and beginning in your life.Or perhaps you catch a glimpse, sometimes, that every moment is such a moment, filled with the possibility of choice and responsibility, of waking up to life or of going to sleep to yourself again.What kind of moment will you make this moment? One of turning back into your life, or one of turning away?And what will you do, what regular practices or habits or reminders could you take up, that will wake you up to the endless aliveness of your one and only life?

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Difficult times

We seem to live in uniquely difficult times.We face multiple, simultaneous, almost intractable difficulties. The widening inequality of our societies. Economic uncertainty, and the undoing of many of the assumptions upon which we have built our economy. The effect we're having on our climate. Billions living in slums. The rise of violent religious and political fundamentalism. An uncertain energy future. Rapid population growth.It's understandable in such times that we should feel afraid. That in the face of all of this difficulty we should get caught up in protecting ourselves, before anyone else. That we sooth ourselves and numb ourselves with glowing screens, with our busyness. That we distract ourselves from the buzzing, whirling sensations in our bodies and emotions that try to show us that something is wrong. That we amass whatever we can for ourselves as we try to cling on. That we wait until we feel better before we step forward and make the contribution we're here to make.But as we do this, as we pretend we're fine while all the while feeling very afraid, we forget that the world has always been this way. Human life has always been perilous. We have always been faced by crises and by threats to our very existence. We have, most probably, always told ourselves that our own times are particularly troubled ones.Seeing this opens up two new paths.The first is that we stop adding to our very real difficulties with our stories about the uniqueness of our troubles. Those stories make us mute, frozen, self-obsessed. When we know that we human beings have, for millennia, found ways of responding creatively and with great resourcefulness to what life brought us, we can begin to trust our own faculties more. We can begin to turn towards one another and the world again, and ask ourselves what's needed, and what we can do.The second is that we remember that it's right in the middle of difficulty, when we are most uncertain, that our most noble and life-giving qualities can emerge. When there's trouble and we find ourselves turning towards our neighbours, towards people we hardly know, towards community, and towards the society in which we live, we remember that compassion, care for others and being in relationship are powerfully life-giving and meaningful activities.Which way we turn - towards defensive self-centredness or towards relationship and compassion - is not just a matter of choice but a matter of ongoing practice. In other words, we live lives in which through our actions we cultivate one path or another.Let's not wait until we feel safe and settled before we start to cultivate the second path, one that can bring great meaning - and great healing - to ourselves and those around us.

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Seeing Systems

When you start to see that your organisational dramas (see this recent post) repeat themselves in organisation after organisation you can also start to see that your difficulties are often not so much personal as they are systemic.Another way to say this is that what you might think is the problem with Dave or Jill or Aggrey or Sue (or with yourself) is often being brought about by the wider system in which everyone is participating and not simply by the person themselves.We are not used to looking in this way.We blame Jill, who is in a senior position, for being aloof, distant, and unresponsive to our needs. But all the while Jill is experiencing her own position as overwhelming - caught between her personal accountability for the organisation and all the problems others keep on bringing her.We blame Aggrey, who is in a middle position, for being unable to respond to our reasonable requests for information or support or action. But in order to respond to you he needs the cooperation and response of others. All the while his experience is that of being pulled in opposite directions by the demands of his bosses and the demands of the people on his team.We blame Dave, who is a team member, for complaining that he is under-resourced, while missing that Dave is experiencing the vulnerability and uncertainty that comes from others deciding what work he will do, or even if he will have any work at all.Jill, Aggrey and Dave are experiencing the archetypal difficulties that come with being in a hierarchically 'top', 'middle' or  'bottom' position. And we judge them, mistakenly, with archetypal and personal judgements, which misunderstand their situation.We come to believe that for anything to happen they must change and that until they do we must wait and put up with it. While we wait for them to change, or demand that they change, we reserve the right to complain. We don't see the particular difficulty their positions bring, and we don't see that our very complaints are part of the problem.Our complaints assume the difficulties we experience at their hands are personal, and that the solutions to them are personal too (which is to say that Jill, Aggrey and Dave simply need to get their act together, buckle up, and do what we need of them). But much of what we're experiencing - and much of what Jill, Aggrey and Dave are experiencing -is systemic, which is to say it's being brought about by all of us. Until we see that, we're trapped in a cycle of judgement and blame which asks the impossible of our colleagues.The first step required to get out of this drama is compassion - which includes finding out what the world is really like for those whom we find troublesome.The second step is seeing that we keep these systemic difficulties going through the stories we tell about others, and that there are many alternatives to the stories that are most familiar to us.When we find and act upon stories that account for people's actions more accurately than our usual blame and judgement stories, many possibilities for connection, responsiveness and partnership open to us.For a wonderful, articulate and very practical exploration of all this, I can't recommend Barry Oshry's book Seeing Systems highly enough.

Where value comes from

Most of us are taught, from a very early age, that the true value of things is how they perform.

We quickly conclude this about ourselves too.

We equate ourselves with our exam results, comparing ourselves with others, with what we thought we should get, or with what other people told us we should get. And we experience the crushing disappointment of being a failure or the inflation of being a success based on this.

Or we take ourselves to be the number of friends we have (more popular = better kind of person).

Later on we think we’re our salary, or the size of our house, our reputation, or the performance grade given to us by a manager. Why else would we feel so inadequate or jealous when we see people with more money, recognition, status? And so self-satisfied when we come across people with less?

And as a result of this we not only see our own value as that of our performance, but other people’s too. It turns us all into objects.

All of this brings us many difficulties:

We live a life of constant inner and outer comparison, swinging from deflation to grandiosity and back again as we encounter other people.

We conclude that we are at fault. If only we were better, we’d have more of whatever it is that we’re measuring ourselves against.

We’re distanced from others by our fear and judgement and endless comparing.

We withhold our contribution because we’re so fixated on (1) doing what will turn out well and (2) doing what will give us the (self) esteem we crave. Whole categories of meaningful, contributory, connecting activity become unavailable to us. Listening deeply (which might show us what we fear about ourselves) and saying what’s true (which might make us unpopular) are both immediate casualties.

We fuel our busyness, mistakenly believing that all this will be resolved if we can simply do more.

We eat away at our own sense of meaning and possibility, and we constrain it in others.

There is an antidote to all this, desperately unpopular in the world that our performance anxiety brings about. And it is this:

People (every one, including you) are intrinsically of value. And not just a little value, either, but infinite value. Regardless of exam results, regardless of house, regardless of salary or status or reputation or style or coolness or performance grade or job title.

This is not a popular position to take in our cynical, world-weary, frightened, acquisitive times.

When we start to see others as of infinite value we we’re able to listen to them, support them and for the first time, trust them, so they can bring their own contribution.

And when we start to see ourselves this way we open astonishing possibilities for acting and contributing, free of the constraints and resentment that our constant self-assessment brings about.

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Not part of it

There's a myth in many places of work that emotions aren't part of it."We're professional," you might say, "no place for feelings here".And in saying that, you've bought wholly into an enormously unhelpful misunderstanding: mood as an essentially corrupting, messy, distracting element of human life - better left alone than faced, better ignored than talked about, better suppressed than felt.But moods didn't go away just because you're pretending they don't have a place, and they didn't stop shaping the world of possibility available to you just because you don't want to look at them.Somehow, we're going to have to start talking to each other, in even the most 'rational' of organisations, about personal and organisational mood, and about the way gratitude, resentment, anxiety, resignation, love, shame and cynicism shape what's possible for us and those around us.And that's going to entail widening our understanding of what human beings are, and what it is to engage in work together.

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Tearing apart

It's so easy to tear things apart...... to use critical thinking, objection, cynicism, resignation - or even a call for freedom - as a way of dismantling what others have built. It's easy to think that this way of thinking itself - dismissing, critiquing, undoing - is a mark of a sophisticated mind.And it takes a quite different faculty - perhaps best called love - to weave things together into coherence, to form enduring bonds that can support us.Superficially it can look like tearing apart - of ideas, concepts, commitments, relationships - is liberation. But while dismantling is often a satisfying activity at least while we're in the midst of it, and while it frees us for a while, it frequently just frees us into the ruins of what we once relied on.Often what we're most called to do is weave the kind of strong net that frees us up even as it constrains and holds fast.

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