Moods.A distraction? An interruption to our dispassionate, rational, critical faculties? Out of place in work? At home? Best ignored? Even better suppressed?No.A mood is a place from which we relate to the world.Moods are disclosive: they actively show the world to us, bringing forward some aspects so that they can be seen, and having others recede into the background.And it’s important that we pay attention to them because there is no dispassionate, uninvolved place from which to relate to the world. There is no ‘mood-free’ way to be which would show us everything all in one go, at least in everyday life.
A mood of love: the object of your love (a person, an idea, a project) fills the world you experience. You find yourself turning towards it or them again and again in your thoughts and activities. For a while, the world revolves around this, and you get to see that which is inspiring, thrilling, life-giving about them.
A mood of frustration: when there’s something that matters to you that you can’t get to happen. Once again, that something figures centrally in the world for as long as you’re frustrated. Everything seems to point towards this something that matters, to contribute to your sense of being thwarted.
A mood of fear: brings forward that which is or seems threatening to us or to that which we care about, and has everything else fade away, so that we can take focussed action.
A mood of boredom: has everything fade into the background. Nothing seems important enough, stirring enough, exciting enough to move you.
A mood of resentment: has the person or situation you’re resentful about become central, and reveals to you the myriad ways you might take revenge, get your own back, or otherwise cause hurt.
A mood of gratitude: shines a light on the unlikeliness of your presence in the world, how little you had to do to end up surrounded by people, objects, possessions, possibilities. Illuminates the extraordinariness of the everyday.
Rather than being errors in perception, moods are always a way of attuning to aspects of the world that we might not otherwise pay attention to. Each mood functions to reveal the world in particular ways, showing us that which a different mood would conceal. And mostly this isn’t apparent, because for the most part moods are in the background, invisible. They’re like the air we breathe, omnipresent, necessary, and transparent.So being able to tell what mood you’re in is a huge opening. It will show you what possibilities you might be missing, or how it is that there seem no possibilities at all. It will tell you much about what you really care about, because moods always arise from our cares, values and commitments. It will show you how what seems central right now, and what incidental, is only one way to look at things.As you learn to cultivate different moods from the ones you’re most used to – for example gratitude where there was resentment – you’ll have revealed to you much that you never really saw before. You may discover that the world and other people are never simply this way or that, and perhaps even open up the possibility that they’re something else completely from how you’re used to relating to them. And this is a necessary step for any of us who want to bring ourselves fully to the world and to open up rich new avenues for relationship, possibility, and action.
Conversations frequently left out of the discourse of professional life:
That familiar feeling again. She said “You’ve let me down” and something dropped in your belly, your posture collapsed just a little, and the world seemed to lose its solidity. You know how this goes. You’ll deal with the deflation by apologising and the energy for all your projects and plans will slip away until long after you get home.Or you’re five minutes late for the meeting. Pulse racing. Tightness in your chest. You’re holding your breath, mind whirling, all the excuses and ways you’ll save face working out as you dash down the hall. You arrive hot, out of breath, mutter an excuse that blames the trains or the email system or someone else for holding you up, and then stay disengaged from the conversation, wrapped up in your shame and self-judgement.Or maybe he sent you an email telling you he wouldn’t be seeing you as you’d arranged. Fury and resentment knot your stomach. Your jaws clench, your shoulders tighten. “It’s always this way,” you tell yourself, “he’s so self-centred”. And already your fingers are tapping out a reply: cold, distancing, laced with judgements and sarcasm.Those feelings that are so familiar, that ‘feel like you’, are where your freedom can begin. Because every emotion conjours up a world, in which certain people loom close and others become far away, in which some actions become obvious – necessary even – and others seem impossible. And from the world that’s revealed to you by your moods you act: the combination of the familiar feeling and well-rehearsed action giving you a sense of who you are. In a way, over time, your way of responding indeed becomes who you take yourself to be.You can see that this is the case by observing yourself for a while. What kind of possibilities become available to you in love, hate, resentment, joy, boredom, anger, frustration, sincerity, cynicism, fear, panic, anxiety, gratitude? And what familiar actions do you tend to take? What results do they bring?The first steps towards your freedom are taken when you find out that there is no right ‘thing to do’ to respond to what you’re feeling. What seems so self-evident might just be the result of years of practice that’s conditioned you to react in a particular way. Don’t confuse its familiarity with appropriateness.Next time you find yourself propelled into action like this see what happens if you make a change – and just a small one – in your response.What happens if you do the opposite of that which your body seems to compel you to do? You may just find that new possibilities begin to open for you and those around you… that the world starts to open up in ways you’d never imagined.
We misunderstand kindness by taking it to be soft, or a push-over. Genuine kindness arises from a heated engagement with the world and with life. It's borne of our efforts and our sadness, our gratitude, frustration and loss, our hard-won experience and our encounters with life's finitude.Kindness calls on us to:
Two different interpretations of your emotions:1. Emotions are just something that happens. They sweep in, and sweep out again. There to be felt, but not to be obsessed over, worried over, analysed. Emotions simply are.2. Emotions are of the deepest significance. They show you what you care about. They're the surest route to understanding what matters to you. Far from being an interruption to reason they are a form of intelligent, meaning-laden reasoning, and the heart of what it is to be human.So often we're blinded by the particular interpretation of emotions that we cling to.So perhaps if you find yourself obsessed with what you're feeling, you might try out living in interpretation 1 for a while.And if you treat your emotions as a nuisance, a distraction, and better left alone, how about a while treating interpretation 2 as if it's true?
Yesterday. 'Be more, Do more'. The tag-line for a personal training company written on the back of a van in front of me on the drive into town. The narrative theme of our times, the poetry of our shared culture, as revealed by the advertising and marketing that surrounds us.When we live in the narrative of 'more', every action, every conversation, every relationship becomes dedicated to an unending project for which we feel continuously responsible. More money, more stuff, more experiences, more trips, more friends, more relationships - yes. But also more capable, more powerful, more self-determining, more authentic, more persuasive, more reasonable, more peaceful, more compassionate, more successful, more loved, more happy, more fulfilled. When we orient towards ourselves this way we become the project, the objects of an unending self-improvement effort that requires our constant vigilance.And anything can be appropriated in service of the project of self-improvement. Excellence, which once meant living a life as an expression of virtue, comes to mean standing out from the mass. Learning - a means of getting the best test results. Art - a way to look (and think of ourselves as) cultured. Meditation and other spiritual practice - a way to have an untroubled life of peace and tranquility. Exercise - a way to get a body that others will be attracted to. Our own development - a way to gain unlimited power to do what we want, when we want it, and to have others support us and love us for it.When we live in this way, convinced that we're always due an upgrade, there is nowhere to rest. But, more importantly, we distort ourselves with a gross misunderstanding of what it is to be human, a misunderstanding in which we secretly imagine that it's possible to be a god. After all, who else but the mythical gods stand out, in all circumstances, from others? Who else has endless power, beauty, fulfilment? The capacity to summon abundance and tranquility upon a command, the ability to avoid suffering, accident and happenstance? Who but the gods have an existence in which there is no death, loss, disappointment, or illness? And who but the gods get just what they want, when they want it?When we live as if we're supposed to be gods, or entitled to be gods, we shouldn't be surprised at the harshness of our disappointment and self-criticism, our endless comparison with the lives of others, and the way we're hurled from grandiosity (I've made it, the all-powerful me) to deflation (I'm so small, and the world is so big, and there's no hope) and back again. And we shouldn't be surprised at what a fight we get into with our lives - lives that often surprise us, let us down, show us how little we know, throw us about, all without much regard for whether we're getting what we want.When we stop trying to improve ourselves (and often the people around us) all the time, we can start to appreciate in a new way the very natural and quite beautiful capacity of human beings to develop; to unfold like the buds of a rose. And we come to see, I am coming to think, that the path of our development is not trying to be gods, but finding out that we are ordinary.To be ordinary is to discover that we share the same heritage and future as all human beings, and all living things - a heritage and future that we cannot escape. To know ourselves as ordinary is to find out that we have bottomless capacity for compassion, kindness, wisdom, beauty and contribution as well as for selfishness, cruelty, denial and stupidity. To know ourselves as ordinary is to understand that we'll die, that there are consequences to our actions, that the earth's resources are limited, that we can't just have what we want because we say so. And to know ourselves as ordinary is to see that the vast world was here long before us and will be here long after us, and to find out that our contribution - if we're willing to make it - ripples out through the other ordinary lives that our life touches, both those who are around us now and those who are to come.To know ourselves as ordinary is to discover humility, finding out that we're not bigger than life but neither are we smaller than it; to take up our place in the weave of living things in which we find ourselves.When we know ourselves as ordinary we discover that we're all in this together and, because of this, we have some justification for hope: the understanding that our skills, capacities and deepest commitments can be an immense source of help even when we cannot control the outcome. We have a reason to love and care for others who are as messy, conflicted, confused and life-filled as ourselves. And we find ourselves able to step in on behalf of life, rather than lose ourselves in fairy stories of optimism (it will magically all get better whether or not I take part) or pessimism (in which we're all lost, whatever we do).
In recent months I have taken up reading printed newspapers instead of reading online. It's a decidedly low-tech, tactile experience. And what I have most come to appreciate is the boundedness of the activity, the constraints imposed by a form which is, simply, just what it is. There are no hyperlinks, no pop-ups, no advertising or stories chosen on the basis of my previous browsing habits. A single edition contains just what it contains, and no more.The effect on me of this particular, immutable, physical arrangement of words and ideas is often quite profound. I read with much greater attention, free of the urge to jump out and away any time a link catches my eye. I read about topics I don't read about online, because the paper does not hide from me perspectives and ideas that are different from my own. I am called to step into other worlds - worlds distinct from those shared with me by my Facebook friends and by the advertisers who are determined to sell to me what they already know that I like.Mostly, though, I am freed by the containment of the form to be up to just one thing, and I experience this as enormously satisfying.We have been sold powerfully on the freedom to choose whatever we want, whenever we want, and promised that realising this freedom is the pinnacle of human achievement and fulfilment. It's a promise that often feeds our restlessness and rootlessness. Reading the newspaper reminds me of a parallel possibility, that of choosing to purposefully limit our own choices, of the beauty and dignity of commitment.It is but a small example of a powerful principle by which we can live. Our willingness to bind ourselves by a promise, to give up a superficial freedom, uncovers a deeper, more significant freedom. It's when we're prepared to be up to one thing that we stop skimming across the surface of experience and find ourselves invited into a deepening engagement with the world.And if it's true of reading the newspaper, how much more true it becomes when we are willing to make life-defining commitments, those that bind us into a particular kind of care and attentiveness to the world, and have us set aside trying to do it all.
In this time when we're seeing again how readily language can be used to undermine truth, disorient us, and turn us away from one another, let's dedicate ourselves to recovering the sanctity and dignity of words.Let's remind ourselves that language matters, because it's from language that we build all of our shared human life.Let's remember that this is about each of us. Because the everyday practices in our families and organisations include ways of using language to distort, cover-up, depersonalise, avoid and confuse. And that this, step-by-step, unravels its life-giving power.Let's commit ourselves to using words in ways that preserve, and clarify, and deepen meaning and understanding. Let's remember that we'll often fall short, and will have to rededicate ourselves to the task, again and again.And let's keep reminding ourselves that the power of words to reveal, to illuminate, to uncover, and to share the precious fruits of knowledge between us is vital, rare, and easily undone.
The values you’ve declared for your organisation are not things that you can put on your wall, or lock away in a safe. You don’t have them. You can’t own them. And you most certainly can't 'embed' them in others, unless like rivets embedded in a wall you're planning on using force.You can’t even, in all truthfulness, say ‘these are our values’. Because values are, more accurately, works-in-progress, ongoing commitments to something that can never be completed.You don’t have fairness, dignity, compassion, justice, creativity, honesty or service. You bring them about, most importantly when they’re least in evidence, when they’re most challenged, when they’re most called most into question by the complexities and compromises of life. And in each moment of action they are already in the midst of disappearing again.When you relate to values as things they become things. The objects of lip-service. Inert, lifeless, hardly practiced.Remember instead that values are a state of affairs that you’re actively working to bring about. You can't embed them, but you can cultivate them. And that way they’ll have a chance of remaining alive in your hands.
My fantasy self is perfect. He doesn't cause any trouble. He can get things done in just the time they take, and no less. He never makes a mistake, and he's always does exactly what other people really need him to do. He's humble, self-effacing, kind. He can resolve the most intractable of disagreements simply and elegantly, with reasoned, calm speech and attentive listening. Never selfish, always wise, forever reasonable, he's always perfectly attuned to the needs of others. People want to be with him, to praise him (quietly) for his sacrifices. They want him to rescue them from their difficulties. And he's above all disdain and criticism. If people criticise him, they must, simply, be wrong. My fantasy self is easily hurt, but would never show it.My fantasy self isn't me. I'm far messier than that. Often disorganised, late, frequently confused. I leave my umbrella on the bus. I love, fiercely and deeply and in complicated ways. I fall deeply into my passions - books, people, music, poetry, ideas. I'm often filled with self-criticism and self-doubt. I can bring deep, profound wisdom when I'm still enough and present enough. I can be as stubborn as hell. Funny. Over-serious. I make terrible mistakes, and beautiful ones. I know how to teach. I can be exquisitely tender and gentle. I rage.And what suffering, what sorrow, for me and for others around me, when I confuse the two. When I pretend to be my fantasy self. When I live in ongoing comparison with his impossible standards. And when I defend him, fiercely, closing out the ones who love me because they have had the honesty and care to see me not as my fantasy, but as I am.