As we come to know quite how brief and how fragile our lives are, the less sense it makes to hold anything back.Will we miss this precious chance to bring ourselves; our lives; the fullness of our pounding hearts? Will we withhold from life what is ours to bring? Will we mute our aliveness by repetition, by staying safe, by what's expected, by going to sleep?We can be sure of this: each of us is a unique intersection, a horizon between what is and what can be that will never be repeated.But if only it were as easy as saying 'don't hold back'. If only there was not so much we must undo so that life can shine through. The habits of our bodies: halting; rigid; curling in; puffing up; tensing; defending us from whatever we've decided we must not feel. The emotions that catch us in their grip: anger; shame; fear. And our habits of mind: all the ways we pity ourselves, and all the ways we're sure that life's unfairness is only happening 'to me'.But undo we must, and undo we can, if we'll dedicate ourselves, if we'll find support, if we'll put in the effort, if we'll let ourselves feel our heartbreak, if we'll welcome what we've pushed away, if we'll be patient, if we'll allow ourselves to let go.And as we undo, as what we held so tightly slowly breaks apart and as life starts to flow through us, we find that it's true what they say: it really is the cracks that let the light in.
Decades
I started my 49th year of life this week. Around 160 years ago (less than four of my current life spans laid end-to-end) a full third of my contemporaries would already have reached the end of their lives, and less than half of us could have expected to live beyond our late 50s (see source [1] below).Today, at least in the UK, two-thirds of us will live into our late seventies and many into our eighties. What a blessing, if we'll choose to appreciate it while we can. And what possibilities, if we'll find a way to use our chances of vastly extended life in service of those around us and those yet to come.Readers of my work here will know of my interest in ongoing adult development, which takes place through marked increases in our capacity to make sense of the world, to inhabit longer time horizons (knowing ourselves as inheritors of a deep past and contributors towards a long future), to be less 'had' by impulsivity and narcissism, to understand the world of others, to exercise more autonomy, and to take action in systems and contexts which are bigger than our own immediate concerns [2].Such development is very natural, if the opportunities come our way and if we're courageous enough and have enough support to take them. But it is quite different from the rote-learning, keeping up appearances, and getting ahead that so many of us are taught at school and in our workplaces. It typically requires facing into difficulty rather than turning away, welcoming back the parts of ourselves that we've disowned, failing and falling and getting back up again. It's not served by looking good, or knowing the facts, or keeping it all together, or learning just what's comfortable and familiar, or comparing ourselves with others.And it's probably the most important work we can do with the gift of these extra decades, if we're lucky enough to have them. Because the world faces challenges of a complexity our ordinary way of speaking, thinking, acting and relating to one another are often ill-equipped to face. And perhaps we have been given these decades - through the long slow evolution of human beings as a species - precisely so that we can work on the problems our shorter-lived ancestors never got the chance to tackle.References:[1] Modal Age at Death: Mortality Trends in England and Wales 1841-2010, monograph available for download here[2] In Over Our Heads, Robert Kegan and Changing on the Job, Jennifer Garvey Berger
Concentric Circles
Whereas development in children is easy to see, because of the obvious physiological changes that accompany it, our development as adults - if it happens - is more subtle, but no less profound.
One way of describing successive developmental stages is as a series of concentric circles. With each developmental shift the world we inhabit (the world of possibility, action ideas, responses) grows bigger, including rather than replacing the world in which we lived before. Another way of saying this is that we find ourselves inhabiting a world with bigger horizons than we had known. And along with that, usually, comes new language to describe our experience, new skills, and new ways of relating to others and everything.
In Robert Kegan’s language (and he is one of the most comprehensive, thoughtful, and grounded writers I know of on this topic) our development is always in some way a shift in subject-object relationships. Or, put more plainly, we come to a different understanding of what is me (subject) and what is in relationship to me (object). Often, we find that what we’d taken to be obviously ‘me’ is only a small part of what being ‘me’ really is - a shift in which we discover that ‘me’ actually includes more than we could have imagined before.
An example. In an earlier stage of our development we relate to our emotions as if they are a feature of the world, enveloping us like the air we breathe (and similarly invisible). We’re frustrated, and so it's the world that is frustrating. We’re angry with another person, and conclude that they must be making us angry. We’re in love, joyful, and so the world is joyful. We feel despair and take it that the world is a despairing place.
In this way of being an adult the world, and we, are indistinguishable from the mood we are feeling. In this stage we’re subject to our emotions. It is almost as if, instead of having emotions we are being had by them. We can’t see that they might have something to do with us.
When the subject-object shift in our development comes we start to see that emotions are something we have. We’re able to say that we’re feeling anger about this or that, and feeling joy about something else or at some other moment. We see that although our despair or love seems all consuming it’s not the world that is despairing or lovely but a feature of our relating to it that has it be that way for us. We can understand too, maybe for the first time, that others really do often feel quite different from us - that we can feel anger about something while somebody else, quite legitimately and truthfully, feels joy. It’s not until our relationship to our emotions move from having us (being subject) to being something that we have (an object) that all this becomes apparent to us.
Concentric circles, widening, as we inhabit the world in a new way.
When emotions are object rather than subject many other possibilities open to us. We can question our feelings for their accuracy and appropriateness, rather than be swept up in them. We can open to the different experience of others, instead of insisting that they feel the same. We can start to wonder about our own relationship to our emotions in a way that simply was not possible when they were part of the invisible background that had us:
What is this emotion about?What draws me more towards some emotions than others?How is it that I’m participating in keeping sadness going, or joy, or longing, or despair, or frustration, or resentment?What can I learn about others’ worlds in all of this?
Indeed, it’s only when such a developmental shift happens that we really start to understand that other people inhabit worlds that are related to, but not quite the same as, our own. The world, which we were previously subject to - the world that had us - seems much more like something we have or are at least participating in. And it’s from here that a deeper understanding of, and compassion for, others can grow.
Cultivating such shifts matters because, as perhaps you can see, a world in which we fully experience emotions as something we have rather than something we are had by is a world in which we have much more freedom to act. And a world in which we are less imprisoned by what seems - so obviously - beyond us.
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Part of ourselves
How easily, how readily, we see in others - we project onto others - what we don't want to see about our own lives. And how easily our projections turn others into an enemy to be corrected, scorned, hated or feared.How easily we end up enslaving ourselves with all this. We lock ourselves into battles in the outer world, when what we want to correct, what we hold in contempt, what we need most to be reconciled with is actually part of ourselves.
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Declaring Meaning
When we find out how much of the world is made up - by us - it's tempting to pull everything apart. We pull apart institutions - because we see how groundless their authority is. We pull apart politics - because as we see more into the ordinary lives of our politicians we discover that they are ordinary and flawed like us, and we no longer have reason to simplistically trust either their intentions or their abilities. We pull apart relationships - because we don't feel any reason to commit, beyond our moment-to-moment likes and dislikes. And we pull apart beliefs and practices that can bind us together.This step - using reason to see through what we'd taken to be unquestionably true is in so many ways a necessary developmental step for each of us and for our society. Indeed, it's the step that allowed us to discover science and its methods of rigorous, grounded inquiry. And it made it possible to undo the divine right of kings to rule over us, and to bring about democracy.But it's also so easily the route to nihilism: the move to render everything meaningless, everything pointless, everything disposable as we discover that the structures and stories and roles we used to trust were made up by other people. And, as the philosophers Kierkegaard and Nietzsche warned us, this ends up with us tearing meaning apart too, as we find out that what meaning we encountered in the world was only there because other people declared it anyway.And so the next step important after undoing it all is to find out that it's also within our power to put things back together, to declare meaning for ourselves. To find out that there are many kinds of truth, including those that take into account goodness and beauty as well as just reason. That out of the fragments of what we have taken apart, we can still choose practices, people, relationships, stories, commitments and vows to live by that invest life with purposefulness, care, and dignity. And that this is possible, and necessary, in every sphere of life - in work, home, community and politics - specifically because we've found out that without it there is so little for us to stand on.
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Better off knowing this
Behind all our attempts to manipulate and control the world so it's just as we'd like it (and behind the pain, frustration, sorrow and disappointment that our inevitable failure brings), we're just trying to find a way to feel safe and to feel at home.I think we'd be better off knowing this.Then we'd set aside our mission to control what can't be controlled. And we'd work on how to feel safe and at home in the world as it is - in this ever-changing, surprising, vast and mysterious life in which we find ourselves.
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Taking responsibility for our stories
Given that we are the only creatures (that we know of) that can tell stories about ourselves;and given that we live totally, inescapably in the stories we tell;and given that stories of any kind can be more or less truthful, more or less kind, more or less generous, more or less creative, more or less freeing of our enormous potential...... given all of this, don't we have a profound responsibility to question the stories we were handed? To not just take things 'as they are'?And to actively find - and consciously live by - the most truthful, kind, generous, creative, possibility-freeing stories about ourselves, about others, and about life that we can?
Yes to what?
Many of us will say yes to anything.If you observe closely for a while, you'll discover that this is effectively a yes to nothing. Wrung out and over-extended, you find yourself in a half-hearted, resentful relationship with others and eventually with life itself. And although it might look to you like you're only trying to help, it turns out that you're serving your own sense of being needed more than really helping anyone.The antidote to all of this is neither giving up nor retreating from the world. It's finding a genuine, wholehearted yes which allows you to discriminate; a yes that goes beyond looking good, getting ahead, or feeling better about yourself; a yes which allows you to genuinely serve; a yes that at last allows some things to be more important than others.Commit to a yes that comes from your deepest principles, your integrity, and your heartfelt longing to contribute to something bigger than yourself, and you'll find that a new form of clarity emerges. Now it's possible to respond with discernment, to say yes over and over again in a way that serves everything and everybody. To care for yourself and for others. And to say no, to what was never yours to do in the first place.
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Our stories about our feelings
When you feel emptiness, what do you do?
Reach for something to eat?Turn on the TV?Pick up the free paper on the train?Hide away in sorrow and resignation?Zone out?Lash out at your colleagues or your family?Find someone to blame?
What's the story you're telling about what this feeling means that has you act in this way?We're so quick to tell stories about what we're feeling. This feeling is something to be fixed, a sign I've done something wrong, proof my life is heading nowhere - or that it's heading somewhere. It's because of you, it's because of my parents, it's to be avoided at all costs, it's precisely the thing I need to feel in order to know myself and be ok.But our familiar, habitual stories about our feelings can imprison us in smaller worlds than we deserve.There's always another story you can tell.Maybe the emptiness is because you're tired. Or you're under attack from your inner critic. Maybe it's pointing you towards something essentially true about all of our existence - that everything is changing all the time and there's not so much for us to stand on.Or maybe you're feeling it because you've forgotten something important - your essential aliveness, the deep roots of your history and biology, all that supports you moment to moment.Each of these stories points to a different course of action. Same feeling, different response. Sleep perhaps, or an act of self remembering (creating art, meditation, poetry, music, prayer, beauty, touch).Or maybe what to do with what you're feeling is simply to allow it to be for a while, no correction or compensation required. And no story either. Let it do its thing and watch as it eventually, inevitably, and with no apparent help from you, changes you and turns itself into something else.
When the conversation dies, what do you do?
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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