First, we had talking.Given half a chance, we human beings can be very good at talking and listening to one another. It's a capacity we've built by doing it for hundreds of thousands of years.If we settle and quieten ourselves, if we tone down our inner chatter and impulsivity, we can speak powerfully with one another in ways that foster deep understanding and the exploration of wide-open possibility. And we can take action together, directly and effectively, by making and responding to each others' promises and commitments.But our technology, to which we are so addicted, does not always help us with this.We invented the telephone, a revolution in connectivity, opening up wide new possibilities to talk and listen with those not physically present with us.This, at least, is synchronous. We must speak to a person who is actually there, when they are there. We have to be in conversation. We have no choice but to witness to their reactions to what we're saying, and they to ours. Though stripped of the bodily presence of another, a conversation by phone brings us in contact with them.But then we invented voicemail (first, the answer machine), allowing us to speak when the other person is absent.And we invented email and text messaging, forums and Facebook and social media of many kinds, which enabled us to exchange messages more quickly and fluidly than recorded voices would allow.And we found that we loved them.These are asynchronous technologies. They afford us the possibility of speaking and listening without the other's simultaneous presence. And we like this because leaving messages feels much less risky, much less exposing, much safer than the delicate work of speaking with another live human being with emotions and reactions, thoughts and judgements, cares and commitments.We get to speak without having to be vulnerable.And, because we like this feeling of safety more than we will admit, today we drown under a deluge of messages. We spend our time interacting with ghosts - distant others who are not there to feel or hear what we have to say. We do not even have to speak. And, most importantly, we are spared feeling or experiencing others' reactions to us.We say this drowning is 'just how it is', but fail to see that we're making a choice. A choice to stay secure behind our machines. A choice to accept a flood of disembodied words at the expense of the shakiness and power of speaking directly to other people.We've made the world this way, and it's killing us.But we can do something about it because, first, we had talking.And we still have it, if we would choose to turn towards one another.Because given half a chance, we human beings can be very good at talking, and listening. It's a capacity we've built already by doing it, very well, for hundreds of thousands of years.
Photo Credit: Nathan T. Baker via Compfight cc
Perhaps you’re living a life where happiness, fulfilment or meaning is dependent upon reaching some future goal:You’ll be happy when you retireYou’ll rest only when you’ve made (you choose how much) moneyYou’ll be fulfilled when people at last recognise and appreciate youMeanwhile, you’ll put up with living a life at odds with yourself, or a life in which you don’t take care of what’s right here – your body, your loved ones, your talents, your capacity to contribute, and all the people who can support you.What will your life be, do you think, if you never get to your dreamed-of destination? If the goal is never fulfilled in the way you’re imagining it? If you’re thwarted in your intentions by breakdowns and failure along the way? If illness, or death, intervenes? Or if you get there and find out it wasn’t, at all, how you imagined it to be?Have lofty, ambitious goals, yes. Set out for something, yes. Bring energy, commitment, hope and optimism to it, yes. Make a contribution. Make a splash.But please don’t do it for the far-off result alone, or have your life rely on things turning out in order for you to be fully in it.Too many people have constructed their lives this way and found out, too late, that their deferring life in favour of an unknown future turned them away from the deeper rewards – and bigger contribution – made possible through actually living.
Facilitating a workshop I've designed for a group of colleagues - people I know well and love - I find myself saying "In a moment I'll tell you the groups that have been decided". One of the participants points out to me that the groups weren't just 'decided' as if by some abstract, dispassionate hand. They were decided by me.I have to catch myself. I'm surprised to find myself making this move."It has been decided..." and "The groups that have been decided..." are so easy to say. But the move to leave out 'I' is a move to hide, or to duck away from responsibility.And, though it may seem like a subtle point to make, each time you leave out 'I' and other people play along, you diminish the opportunity for others to respond, to dissent, to say no to you. You, ever so subtly, move not only to diminish your own responsibility for what happens, but others' capacity to step in to the conversation.Leaving out 'I' looks like an act of humility or self-diminishment, when really it's a move to cement your power, and to ever so quietly have things go your way.
What do you imagine brings forth our most generous creativity, commitment and attentiveness? Would you say fear, or care?And, yet, we seem determined to construct our companies, and our schools, around making people afraid.It may not look this way. We cover it up with a veneer of respectability, process, and 'best practice'. But, still, we try to bring about so much of what needs to happen by generating fear - about the future, about prospects, about promotion, about opportunity.Perhaps we do this because we have not yet become skilful enough at working with, or being present to, our own fear. Because we're had by our fear, we imagine we'll bring about something that lasts by stirring it in others.But while fear can be a powerful force for immediate action, it quickly leaves us resourceless, frozen, diminished and disconnected both from others and from the source of our own creativity and aliveness.Could we instead take the bold move of cultivating and welcoming the care that is equally inherent in being human?
You probably have no idea of the actual scale of your presence in the world.Under-sizing:
You know me. I'm not the kind of person who:
Myths we live by...... it happens to them, but it could never happen to me... there's really no cost to my overworking... and what I do won't really affect my body (I'm invincible)... it (doing what deadens me, sacrificing my integrity, twisting myself out of shape) is only for now... I don't need any help... other people get old, not me... none of this is, really, happening... there's something wrong with me... there are people who live without pain, grief or suffering (just not me)... if I wait long enough (am good enough, liked enough, smart enough), someone or something will save me... I'll be happy when (I get the car, the lottery win, partnership, I retire)... everyone's looking at meDo you live by any of these?And have you ever stopped to wonder about the cost?
I was reminded this week of a beautiful quote from Anaïs Nin about what it takes for people to develop:
I am finding out how often I experience protective anticipatory moods.There's a part of me that makes sure I feel disappointment, long before the events about which I might feel disappointed have taken place. I can feel anticipatory disappointment - a kind of flatness and emptiness - before spending time with people I care about, before a special experience which I've been looking forward to, before teaching, before travelling. I've been feeling a special kind of anticipatory disappointment in the run up to the elections on Thursday here in the UK.And there's a part of me that can make sure I feel anticipatory shame. Before speaking in public, before sharing my deepest inner experience with others, before asking for something that I want or desire, before making a stand for something that matters to me.The more I care about something - the more significant it is to me - the more often I'll feel one of these. And the more often they'll have me tune out or hold myself back.It has been revelatory to spot this process at work - to disentangle how I'm feeling from how the world is. Because while these anticipatory moods are related to the world, they're not so much of the world. They are, more accurately said, an attempt by protective inner parts of me to shield me from the more potentially public kind of disappointment or shame that comes from engagement with the world or with others.Let us do the shaming or disappointment first, these parts say, to spare you a much worse kind of shame or emptiness.As is so often the case, simply seeing these parts for what they are (and honouring their ultimately unhelpful attempts to protect me) has them relax, giving me a much better chance of bringing myself fully and courageously to the world.
We just need more communication round here...... as if communication were a thing, not a living activity... as if communication were something that you wait for... as if communication is an object that can be given to you by others... as if communication were not something you participate inWe partly treat communication as if it were a thing because we're in thrall to the idea of work as machine more than work as a living process. But we do it also because we know that really communicating with one another exposes us to risk - the risk that comes from connection with others, the risk that comes from revealing ourselves, the risk that comes from people disagreeing or saying 'no' to our ideas and hopes, the risk of disappointment, the risk of not feeling things are moving quickly enough, the risk of feeling ashamed.Yes, invent processes, restructure meetings, install technology, reorganise your organisation. All of them can help. But don't for a minute imagine that any of that will resolve your wish for better communication unless you're also prepared to take the simple but radical step of listening and talking more, and learning to do so more and more skilfully.