I have long loved the hopefulness of the Jewish tradition - the way it roots itself in the realness and responsibility of this moment, understanding that the life we are living is the only one we can be sure of, that it's vanishingly short, that there is much yet to do be done, and that each of us has the possibility of contributing.And I appreciate very much how this hopefulness is informed by realism about what's possible.'It is not your duty to complete the work [of improving the world]...', writes Rabbi Tarfon, a 2nd century sage, '...but neither are you free to desist from it'.There it is. What needs doing in the world is so much bigger than any one of us can muster - a realisation that could so easily be a source of despair. But in Tarfon's hands it's a call to possibility and responsibility. We have to begin, even though we may not quite understand what we are beginning, even though the results of our labours may only benefit those who come long after us, who we will never know. And when we find ourselves in the darkness, when nothing seems possible, when we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of things and floored by our smallness - one step.And then one step.And then one step.But at the same time, we can lay a trap for ourselves with hope, which the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus understands well. Hope, particularly in the form of desire, he says, can be a source of great suffering. It can leave us permanently dissatisfied with the life we're living, even when we have reason to be grateful.'Do not spoil what you have', he says, 'by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.'What you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.We know how that goes. We imagine a new car will make us happy, only to find a few days into owning it that we have our eye on a newer model. We imagine that power, or position, or a house, or a new relationship, or a change of government, or more money in our pocket will be the answer, only to find ourselves with the same emptiness and longing transposed to a new situation.We so easily find our lives consumed by an endless and insatiable comparison between what is and what we imagine could be.Epicurus' own solution to this difficulty was a kind of radical simplicity and acceptance. He was an advocate of the virtues of living a life of obscurity - not trying to change too much, nor having dreams that are too big, so that we can appreciate and be genuinely grateful for what is already in front of us.It seems to me that to be human is to inhabit the tension between Epicurus and Tarfon - learning to cherish the gifts we have, and at the same time hoping for and working towards something much better both for ourselves and for those around us. And it is, as far as I can tell from my own life, a genuine tension for many of us - pulled as we are between our deepest, most heartfelt unmet longings and our wish to feel happy or at least fulfilled right where we are.It can be a confusing and painful place to be, particularly when we get caught up in the anguish of knowing we can't have the world be just the way we want it. Or when our hope and acceptance are extinguished and smothered by resentment, fear, and despair at our inability to control things.Perhaps the work of a human life is to learn to inhabit the tension between is and could be or, more fully, to be a bridge that unites both poles. Here maybe we can learn the craft of living in the world as it is, knowing we don't have to save it, and at the same time being the ones who commit ourselves to the one next, hopeful, step.
On practice
All the world's great religious traditions know the value of practices, the daily acts of repetition and dedication that can so profoundly shape who we become. In our day to day lives we've mostly forgotten this - leaning towards tools or goals instead. Both have value, but without practice we miss something very important. The idea of practice is, at its heart, very simple. They're rehearsals of a quality or way of being in the world that we wish to cultivate. Done regularly and with purposeful intent, they gradually shape and reshape our relationship to ourselves and to the world.In this way practices are so very different to techniques or tools - which are intended to bring about some immediate shift or change in the world. And they're different again to goals - ways in which we've got committed to bringing about a particular state of affairs that we wish for. The wonderful possibility in good practices is that we take them up primarily for their own sake, not to change things in a hurry, nor to compare ourselves with standards we might never reach. We taken them up because doing them has its own intrinsic value, and because we flower and flourish in unexpected ways by being people who are practicing.And the other wonderful possibility in practice is that we can take it day at a time. Practice now, today. Be scrupulously kind to ourselves when we miss it or forget tomorrow. And begin, again, the next day.We're all practicing already, whether we know it or not, in the daily routines by which we live our days. And so we can all ask ourselves whether the practices we're in the middle of now have us be in life in the way we wish for or value, or whether it's time, at last, to find a way to practice something new.
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Stories to live up to, to live in to, to let go to
As 2016 begins, two kinds of stories are on my mind.Stories I try to live up to. And stories that I might start allowing myself to live into.The live up to stories are the ones that keep going because they're how I'm known by others, or because they're a familiar way for me to know myself, or because they boost my self esteem. Some of them I created. Some of them were handed to me in the ongoing dance of relating to one another that is a given of human life.Among the live up to stories: being the thoughtful (or deep thinking) one, the mysterious one, the one who has more important things to do than pay close attention to time, the intelligent one, the diligent one, the sensitive one, the one who cares, the one who knows about things.It's not that these stories are false. But when I take them up because they're familiar, or because I think they're expected, they easily become something of an act - a way of acting like someone who is like the way I'm known to myself and others. They become a proxy, a cover story. They reflect and refract much that is true, but they're not me, myself. They're neither who nor what I am.Trying to live up to familiar stories is quite different to opening myself so that I can live into new stories - stories that might breathe life and possibility into the world.And this is quite different again from letting go of how I know myself so that unfamiliar stories - stories I can barely imagine - can begin their work of living themselves into me.
Seth Godin, Rojan Rajiv, William Defoe
An inspiration for my nearly three years of writing On Living and Working has been Seth Godin, who has been publishing daily for over a decade and who is such an invitation to bring our creative possibilities to the world. It was Seth's book, The Icarus Deception, which convinced me it was time to stop imagining myself as a writer, and instead start to write. I'm extraordinarily grateful to him for that.It's for this reason that I'm continually interested in the work of others who take the step to share their learning and experience with us in an ongoing way - those who are prepared to risk enough to be our teachers and our guides. Today I want to share two such people with you.One is Rojan Rajiv, currently an MBA student at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Rojan's Learning a Day blog is wide ranging and insightful, and I marvel at his optimism and his abundant curiosity about the world. Rojan's commitment to teach us what he's learning himself, and his clear, big-hearted writing, offer thought provoking, pragmatic, and often extremely useful insights. Another is William Defoe, whose work I've been following for many months now as he explores his struggles and ideas on identity, suffering, truth, sexuality, and the work of finding a home in the world when the public stories by which others know us differ profoundly from the private stories.What William is doing, it seems to me, is an act of real generosity - describing from the inside the experience of discovering, anew, how to live. I found this recent post, on his deepening understanding of the inseparability of his mind and body, both moving and courageous, particularly when read in the light of earlier posts that recount the story of his awakening understanding of himself as a gay Catholic man inside a long-term marriage. I know there are many people in the world who'd be greatly supported by knowing that they're not alone in the questions William is exploring.As well as the writers above I've also been following educator Parker Palmer and musician Amanda Palmer (as far as I know they're not related) who both have so much to say, in very different ways, about our tenuous, beautiful existence as human beings. There are of course many millions of other people doing the work of writing, exploring, and making themselves vulnerable and available - to all of our benefit - by teaching us through what and how they write. And as this year ends, I'm keenly aware of what a privilege it is to live in a time where it's possible to write and share ideas and experience so freely and so widely.
On the economic narrative, and its limits
Behind any life, and any society, are numerous background narratives that give us a sense of who we are, who other people are, and what’s possible for us. They tell us how we can live, what’s of value, and how to relate to one another. And they tell us what’s important to pay attention to, and what’s marginal.Sometimes the background narratives are visible and explicit in a family or community, such as the way in which biblical narratives give a sense of belonging and orientation to people who are part of some religious communities. But most often – even when there are visible and explicit narratives available – the narratives we actually live by are invisible, and we see them clearly only as an outsider entering a society for the first time, or when the narrative runs into trouble and starts producing unintended consequences.For the last century or so in the West, we’ve lived in a background narrative that’s directed our attention most strongly towards what’s measurable, particularly what’s financially measurable, and has discounted almost everything else. The bottom line, financial return on investment, this quarter’s results – all have been taken for what’s ‘real’.And at the same time, we’ve considered what’s not measurable largely ‘unreal’ – the quality of our inner lives, our relationships with others, supportive and close-knit communities, the care we give and receive, our capacity to nurture and appreciate beauty. We can’t pay much attention to these, we say, because in the ‘real world’ there are tough business decisions to make. There are profits to be made.I’m not arguing that profit is somehow unreal, while beauty and care are real. That would be an equally narrow way of looking at the world. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer how our narrowness – our failure to appreciate and include all dimensions of human life in our businesses, institutions, and in our public discourse – is wreaking havoc in our present and seriously limiting our capacity to respond to the complexity of the future we’re creating. The shocking rise of inequality in even the richest of the worlds societies, the shaking of our financial systems, our seeming inability to respond creatively to climate change – all ought to have ourselves asking whether what we take to be unquestionably true about how to live is, really, deeply questionable.We urgently need to expand our horizons – to start to take seriously that which we’ve marginalised in the relentless colonisation of all aspects of human life by the narrative of economics.
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Hard, and essential
Relationships that fall apart because we won't talk about what's happening in them.Business difficulties that intensify - at great personal and financial cost - because we're afraid to look directly at them and have a conversation with the other people involved.Learning, and teaching, undermined because we're more committed to avoiding feeling uncomfortable.Possibilities missed and progress denied because we insisted on speed at the expense of good conversation.Patients subjected to unpleasant and hopeless treatments because we're terrified of talking about dying.Connection with others missed because we're too afraid to be open with them.How hard it can be, and yet how essential it is, to find out that almost everything in the human world is solved by, brought about by, and made more alive by talking and listening.It's hard, because we all have layers of defence against encountering our own vulnerability - our capacity to be wounded by our openness to others, and to be touched by it. And it's essential because no process, procedure, technique or tool - no turning away from one another - can ever hope to make up for this most simple, most powerful, and most life giving of human acts.
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Longing
Longing, it seems to me, is one of the givens of a human life.What we long for changes – somewhere else to live, a walk in the mountains, fulfilling work, a friend, or a lover, family, peace, the return of someone or something we lost, a place where we can be home. But longing itself is a constant, born of our capacity to imagine and dream better futures for ourselves and those around us.It’s a mistake, then, to long for a life in which longing itself is absent. Better, instead, to live fully in the knowledge that longing and life are inseparable.And although longing, and its tender sadness, is inescapable, it can be softened by gratitude – for the life we’ve been given, for the people around us, for the air we breathe, for the opportunity to think and talk and question and strive, for the possibility of longing itself.
A calendar like a city
Today I'm in the midst of a new design project to address the inhale-exhale question. I am experimenting with the structure of my 2016 calendar so that it can be an affordance for both exhaling and inhaling.Instead of my more familiar habit of fitting things into my schedule as they arise, I'm pre-designing deep grooves to follow - tracks and paths and roads written into time that guide me towards certain kinds of activity, much as the streets of a city guide us from place to place. There will be days to work and days to learn, days to exert myself fully and days to rest. There will be cycles of weeks and months that are dedicated to bringing about both breathing in and breathing out.I intend to use the design as a scaffold - a way of determining what to say yes and no to which speaks to a bigger commitment than my more usual in-the-moment decision making can express.Sometimes we need something big enough to hold us in this way if we want our lives to be an expression of what we care about.And I simply have to do this. Without it, despite my best intentions, I easily find myself in the middle of periods of intensity, born of many projects reaching fruition simultaneously, that are simply beyond my physical capacity. I'm left ragged and depleted, unable to contribute in the way I wish.The idea that a calendar could - like the layout of a city - be structured intentionally to guide me into a more vibrant engagement with my work and my wider life came to me when I took part in the RSA's recent Street Wisdom project with this very question in mind. As I learned to look at London through new eyes, I came to see how the streets serve to bring us together or hold us apart, speed us up, slow us down, and guide us towards and away from destinations and experiences.I saw how different buildings can be when built with care and patience or when thrown together ad-hoc, responding to changing needs as they arise. I found out that different streets have different moods, different paces. And I saw clearly how space frees by limiting. The enabling constraints of geography make it impossible to build too many buildings in one spot without creating a mess - a constraint that is much harder to see when planning our time.And because of all of this I'm approaching my 2016 calendar as an experiment in the street architecture of time.I'm excited. I've never seen time this way before.I'll let you know what happens.
Exhale, Inhale
Exhale - put out into the world; create; teach; make; organise; ship; change things; get it done.Inhale - draw in from the world; learn; rest; wonder; study; gather; change yourself; replenish.What's your balance of inhale to exhale?Are you, like most of us, living a life where exhale is a given and inhale considered a luxury, self-indulgent?What comes from a life in which breathing out smothers breathing in?And what quality of exhale is even possible when we live this way?
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On being unstoppable
Today I want to share, in its entirety, a post from my colleague Jessica Minah, in which she writes beautifully about both the human condition and the kind of coaching to which we are both dedicated in our work.With my sincere thanks to Jess for her permission to reproduce her work here. You can see more about her and what she's up to in the world at Pronoia Coaching.
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Last week, I visited the webpage of a coaching school someone I know is considering. On the school’s homepage, a graduate of the program boasted that the school’s methodology had enabled her to teach her clients to be “unstoppable.” And that stopped me, right in my tracks.The nature of being human is that we are eminently stoppable. Our very biology gives us natural limits to how hard we can push. We need to breathe, to drink, eat, and sleep. We crave touch, the sun, fresh air, and communication. Our bodies are covered in a soft flesh–relatively defenseless with no claws or sharp teeth. We bleed and heal. Our reproductive cycle gives us utterly helpless young, demanding that we stop and take notice and care for these vulnerable creatures. And, of course, we die–the ultimate full stop. Death comes for us all with no regard for how hard we try to push it back. To be human is to be stoppable.And yet we seek to be unstoppable.Life should be able to stop us. If not for beauty, then for heartbreak. If not for the joy of seeing a tree’s stark branches waving against a gray winter sky, then for the horror of seeing people starving to death in our own rich cities or drowning to death on the shores of Europe. If not for the pleasure of a beloved piece of music, then for the despair of another mass shooting. If not for the happiness on the face of a dear friend or family member, then for the agony present when they suffer or when we let them down. Let life be present to us. Let it stop us.To be unstoppable is to be blind to what is happening all around us. To be unstoppable is to refuse to notice the effect that progress–at any cost–might have on our relationships, our bodies, and our spiritual life. To be unstoppable is to deny our own biology. To deny our hearts and the beautiful web of relationships that surround us.Sometimes the world demands a response. And sometimes the only response is to pause. To be stricken. To be soft. To take a moment to laugh, or to cry, or to hold someone’s hand. A moment of noticing how angry we are, or how sad, or how–this is the really hard one–how numb we’ve become. And cultivating the ability to be stopped takes deep work.It requires relational sensitivity to know when our families, colleagues, and friends need us to downshift and approach them in a new, more attentive way. It requires somatic wisdom to be able to sense our energy status and get a clear reading on what our bodies need. It takes emotional awareness to stay present in strong emotions while also noticing the emotional states of others. And, finally, the ability to stop often takes great bravery as it will likely be questioned by those who would not dare question the cultural value of being unstoppable.In my coaching practice, I do not seek to teach clients to be unstoppable because I believe it is deeply problematic, even dangerous. What happens when you teach your client to be unstoppable, and their family and friends need them to stop because they have been neglecting their relational responsibilities? What happens when you have an entire culture of unstoppable people, and the culture next door needs them to stop because they are encroaching on ancestral lands? What happens when you have an entire planet of unstoppable people, and the environment is begging them to stop because species are going extinct and the land is being polluted?Can you see where being unstoppable can lead? Do you see where it has already led?Instead, I believe that we must learn to listen to the call of the world, to our loved ones, and to our bodies–to stop. In the coaching relationship, mutual trust and mutual respect create a strong container wherein clients can examine their relied upon, habitual responses. Over time, they become better at recognizing the persistent ‘turning away’ that is pandemic in modern society and eventually they learn to cultivate a new response. This requires learning new skills and competencies: patience, compassion, resilience, discernment, and the ability to self-observe, to name a few. I’ve seen clients, over time, become more resilient and able to stand in deep witness to their own emotional experience; to be stopped by the world, and to be touched by it. They have the freedom to experience their own reactions without becoming overwhelmed. This, in turn, affords them the opportunity to make choices that were unavailable to them before.Today, let a small part of yourself be broken by this heartbreaking and fragile world. What might happen if you opened yourself up enough for this to occur? What meaning might leak into your life if you dared? Find out.Stop.