Thresholds

In Judaism, it's traditional practice to attach a small ornamented fixture to each doorframe, a mezuzah, inside of which is a scroll handwritten by a scribe who's dedicated themselves to their craft.One reason for this, among others, is to mark out transition places, the thresholds between one space and another, with a call to remember. You can see people touching them as they walk past, honouring this and reminding themselves - remembering - their deepest commitments.Mostly we don't give thresholds the attention they're due. How often we sleepwalk from activity to activity, meeting to meeting, work to home, taking what hooked us or preoccupied us from one place to to the next, reacting to each situation from the frustrations of the last. It's as if, for many of us, we're never quite here in what we do and neither fully in contact with the people we encounter. And we miss the opportunity to use the liminal spaces - the transitions between one place and another - to return to ourselves and to what we most care about.Thesholds - in space and in time - are sacred places in the way that they invite us to pause on the brink, before moving on. They call on us remember ourselves, to drop our preconceptions, judgements and our self-absorption so we can fully meet the situation that awaits. They call on us to be open and impressionable, ready to encounter something new.Approached in this manner, thresholds are an opportunity to wake up to this situation, to these people, to stop rushing all the time so we can be in it all afresh, present and responsive to whatever's coming.When you walk into your house at the end of a long day, can you pause in this way to mark the magnitude of the transition from one world to another that you are about to make? Then you can meet the people waiting there for you with your own genuine face, and with your love for them, and they in turn can meet you with theirs.

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On Relationship to Experience

You’re never just in life, this situation, this moment. You’re also in a particular relationship with it.So often this is transparent, like the air you’re breathing as you read this. But it's illuminating to understand that the world you're experiencing isn't ever simply 'the' world.Perhaps your relationship is to welcome whatever is happening. Perhaps you’re pushing it away, or denying it. Perhaps you’re treating what's happening as a huge opportunity. Or perhaps as a curse or problem. Maybe you’re relating to what’s happening with a longing that it be over. Or maybe you’re trying to cling on to it, already mourning the end of it, even before it’s gone.Another way of talking about this phenomenon is mood. Every mood - anger, joy, love, resentment, frustration, cynicism - opens up a particular kind of relationship to what’s taking place.Can you see how your relationship to it all shapes so much of your experience and what’s possible for you at any moment?That each brings forth a distinctive kind of world?That what’s possible from resentment is different from what’s possible from anger or love? That what’s possible from relating to it all as a curse is different to what’s possible from an orientation of welcome?Once you see all of this, you can first become an observer of your relationship to everything. Reflective practices can help here - a regular journalling practice and sitting meditation are two that are enormously helpful.Much more importantly, once you can observe you open up a second possibility of taking responsibility for your relationship to it all.Because while what’s happening might be just what’s happening, your relationship to it is something in which you're always a participant.Or in other words, the world you experience is never just happening but also, inescapably, something you are doing.

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We are the environment for each other

It's clear that we human beings are deeply affected by the environment in which we find ourselves. We are in a constant exchange with what is around us, both shaping it and being shaped by it.And so it's worth remembering, because it's mostly so invisible to us, that we are each the environment for one another.Which means in turn that difficulties that occur for other people and with other people can often be addressed, first, by taking responsibility for what is ours, and how it's affecting those around us.

Good learning undoes us

It’s common practice in many organisations for people to demand, with some force, a ‘take away’ from every learning experience, course, workshop or coaching session.Perhaps it seems obvious, at least to start with, that this should be the case. After all aren’t we busy, productive, results-oriented people? Why would we do anything unless it obviously moves us forward, to the next step, the next project, the next success?By insisting on this we’ve confused learning with other, more familiar, activities. And we’ve profoundly misunderstood the nature of any learning that’s really worth our while.Firstly, the confusion. Learning is not like going to a meeting, finishing a project plan, coming to an agreement, or delivering a product. When we insist that learning be like every other activity in our working culture we’re not really engaging in learning at all. We’re confusing learning with deciding, or getting things done, both of which are worthwhile activities in themselves, but don’t change us much.Secondly, we’ve misunderstood or wilfully redefined what learning can be. We’ve reduced it to knowing a fact, understanding a step-by-step process, or knowing about a clever technique. We want to learn with the minimum of our own involvement, in a trouble-free, predictable, and narrow way. We want it recognisable in form and structure. We do not wish to be too troubled. And all of this is insufficient for learning that really does something.Unless we want our learning to keep us within our habitual, predictable boundaries (and I am arguing that this is not learning at all) we have to give up our demands that it be familiar. We have to allow it to confuse us as well as inspire us, to dissolve our existing categories and rigidity, and to confound our everyday understanding so it can show us something new. We have to allow it to render us unskilful for a while so that we can embody new skills that in turn open new worlds of possibility. And we have to allow ourselves to feel many things - elation, excitement, frustration, disappointment, wonder, surprise, boredom, joy - so that we can be affected by the experience and not just observe it in a detached way.Good learning undoes us.And for that reason the ‘take aways’ we demanded at the start may be quite different from what actually happens. And what lives on in us as a result may not appear at the moment we walk out of the room, but as the product, over time, of living with, practicing and inquiring into what we’ve only just begun to see.By demanding we know what learning will do before we begin, we’re hardly learning at all.

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Midrash

In the Jewish tradition, any story is an invitation to interpretation, to imagination, to invention. You read a story not so much for what's true in it, as for what can be imagined into the spaces. So a straightforward story can become the launching point for wildly differing interpretations, all of which are held alongside one another even if they're paradoxical, mysterious or downright contradictory.It's a tradition known as midrash and it embodies a commitment to see things from many angles, to have many different kinds of explanations for what might initially look obvious and simple. In midrash there's no such thing as a story with a monopoly on the truth.Often, it's helpful to do midrash with your own life, with your work, with your relationships.You probably already have habitual ways of explaining who you are, who others are, what's happening, and what's possible. Perhaps you currently have only one telling available to you, one that's so familiar, so trusted, you can't even tell that it's there.Making midrash from your own life involves starting to tell a different story from the one you're currently telling. Maybe you're not the righteous, wounded hero after all. Perhaps they're not out to get you, but are trying to help. Maybe you're not as in control of your life as you think - or perhaps you're much more in control already than you knew. Maybe it is possible for you to be someone who asks for what you want. Perhaps there's a contribution you're making that you can't see because of your self-critical stories. Maybe life has an invitation for you that's not going to come from trying harder and harder until you work yourself into the ground.These are just a few of the stories you might have about yourself and life, and a few of the alternatives you could start to imagine. You could also ask others how they'd tell the story of your situation - great midrash can begin simply from here.Even if you have only one way of explaining your life, it's already midrash, already just one interpretation of many that are possible.So much opens, and so much suffering can be avoided, when you stop believing your own stories as the only truth.

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Con-trick

How easy it is to be up to something while simultaneously denying it.I have sophisticated strategies for trying to be in control while looking like I'm being inclusive, for trying to get people to love me while looking as if I'm just trying to help, and for being stubbornly attached to my own view while looking as if I'm asking what other people think.All of these allow me to hold on to a particular kind of self-image (kind, accommodating, self-effacing) while simultaneously getting my own way. And they involve some sophisticated kinds of denial - spinning stories that blind me to my real intentions.When I relate to other people in this way, things can get pretty complicated.Sometimes, though - sometimes - I am able to see what I'm doing while I'm doing it. The intentions which I was subject to become object, moving from the background to the foreground, and then I have a chance to intervene and to take responsibility for what I'm doing.I am less had by my strategies. I become someone who has them.This move, making what we are subject to become object to us, is at the heart of all profound developmental transitions. Every time something moves into view (a part of us, or a way we're thinking, or a way we're constructing the world, or a way we're being shaped by our interactions with others) it affords us more freedom to act, a more inclusive view of ourselves and others, and a greater possibility to take care of whatever and whoever it is that we care about.And this move requires that we get onto our own con-tricks - all the ways we'll convince ourselves of our rightness and deny our part in what's happening.Often, it seems, what I'm hiding from myself about my intentions is pretty much the worse-kept secret of all, known to everybody else but me. And that is why, for each of us to develop, it's so important to be surrounded by people who extend love our way, who see us for our goodness, and who extend the kindness and respect required to tell us the truth (with care for timing, and in ways we can hear and understand), rather than keeping what they see to themselves.

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Convergent and Divergent

Convergent problems are the kind for which diligent, patient and repeated efforts produce answers we can trust. Many problems in mathematics, for example are convergent, as are the vast majority of engineering problems. Such problems are convergent because a suitable methodology and sufficient effort allow us to converge on a single, practical, true answer to the question at hand.Convergent problems lend themselves to solution by technique and process. And once we know what to do with a convergent problem, we can repeat the technique and expect to find a reliable answer, every time.Divergent problems are those for which, with diligent, patient and repeated efforts, we could expect to find many different answers. For example, in sentencing someone who has committed a crime, is justice or mercy more appropriate? Or, in the midst of many competing financial pressures, should we centralise our operation, seizing control of all the details, or should we decentralise, allowing the people with the most local expertise the opportunity to bring their own insights to bear? Is discipline or love more important in learning to do something well? Should we dedicate ourselves to conserving tradition, or supporting change? And in organising a society, is freedom to do what we each want most important, or responsibility to the wellbeing of others?Divergent problems are divergent precisely because it is possible to hold so many different perspectives. The more we inquire - if we are prepared to do so with sincerity and rigour - the more possible responses we discover. And such problems are inherently the problems of living systems in general, and human circumstances in particular - circumstances in which our consciousness, values, commitments, cares and many interpretations enter the fray.Divergent problems do not lend themselves to easy answers, to platitudes, or technique. Instead, divergent problems require us to make a transcendent move, in which we step out of the easy polarities of right or wrong, and good or bad. Such a move, which is clearly a developmental move in the sense that I have described previously, calls to the fore our capacity to live in the middle of polarities and complexity, uncertainty and fluidity. In the case of justice and mercy, this move might well be called wisdom. We run into enormous difficulty whenever we treat divergent problems as if they were convergent - as if there were some reliable process, however complex and sophisticated, by which to arrive at a correct answer. When we do this, we treat human situations as if they were mathematical or machine-like. And we strip ourselves of the possibility of cultivating discernment and genuine wisdom, reducing ourselves to rule-followers and automatons.It can never be justice alone - for strict justice is harsh, and unforgiving, and has no concern for the particulars of a human life. And it can never be mercy alone - for mercy's kindness without justice can be cruel and damaging to many in its wish to take care of the few. And it is never sufficient to say 'well, it must be mercy and justice' as if there were some simple, easy to understand combination or position between the two.And all of this is why paying attention to development matters so much, because cultivating the capacity to respond with wisdom to the many divergent problems of our times must, surely, be an ethical responsibility for all of us.

Changing the path

We human beings are both path-makers and path-followers. Both are important, but it's our innate capacity to follow paths that makes possible so much of what we are able to do, and gives it its character.Notice this in your own home. How the door handle draws you to open the door, how the kitchen table is an invitation to sit, how the half-full fridge calls you to open its doors and find something to eat. Notice how a library is a place you find yourself hushed and reverential, how you push and shove to take up your place on a crowded train even though you would do this nowhere else, how you rise in unison to shout at a football game, how the words on the page guide you through the speech you are giving even when you're not concentrating closely on them, how you quicken your step in a darkened alley, how you find yourself having driven for hours on a busy motorway without remembering what actions and choice any of the minutes entailed.Our capacity to follow the paths laid out for us is no deficiency. That the paths support us in the background, and that we do not have to think about them, is what frees us for so much of what is creative and inventive in human life - including our capacity to design entirely new paths for ourselves and others.To be human, then, is always in a large part to find ourselves shaped by what we find ourselves in the midst of.It is all of this that exposes the limits of our individualistic understanding of people and their actions - an understanding we use to make sense of much of what happens in organisational life. For when we are sure that it is the individual who is the source of all actions and behaviour, we are blind to the paths that they find themselves in the midst of.And as long as we concentrate only on getting individual people to change, or firing or changing our leaders until we get the 'perfect' right one, we miss the opportunity to work together to change or lay out the new paths which could help everyone.Indeed, working to change the paths that lend themselves to whatever difficulty we wish to address may be the most important work we can do. And this always includes our developing - together - the skills and qualities that support us in being purposeful path-makers in the first place. 

Three myths to give up on if we want to grow up

At the times when the world has shrunk to its smallest horizons, when I have been most despairing, desperate, or alone, or when I have found myself working and pushing much too hard, it usually turns out that I have been living in thrall to one or more protective myths about life that I have carried from childhood.Myth 1 - I’m not like other peopleIn this account I’m not really a person, while other people are. Others' lives are complete in ways that mine is not. Other people know where they’re going, while I am lost. Other people made the right choices, while I stumbled. Other people aren’t as confused as I am. Other people don’t suffer as I do.Underpinning this myth is a great deal of negative self-judgement, which fuels a sense of deflation, self-diminishment or self-pity. But it can equally be worn as a mask of grandiosity, in which I puff myself up with certainty and arrogance. Sometimes I bounce between the two poles, from deflation to grandiosity and back again.Myth 2 - Death has nothing to do with meSomehow I’m separate enough from the real world that death is not an issue for me in the way it is for others. It’s frightening but far-off, a rumour, something that happens to other people. Consequently, I need pay it little real attention. I can ignore what my body tells me, and what my heart tells me. I’m protected from seeing that my time is finite and that I have to decide in which relationship to life I wish to stand.Myth 3 - A saviour is comingIf I’m good enough, popular enough, loved enough, successful enough, recognised enough, powerful enough, rich enough, famous enough, caring enough… then I’ll be saved. Someone - one of the grown-ups in the world - will see me and, recognising my goodness, rescue me from my troublesAnd then I won’t have to face them any more.This myth keeps me working really hard. Sometimes it has me try to save others in the very same way that I am desperate to be saved.--I know these are not myths I carry alone.Growing up calls on us to see how these myths of childhood keep us as children, and to find that the that the protection they offer is little protection at all:Myth 1 is the myth of specialness. It boosts our self esteem by giving us a reason for all the difficulty we’re experiencing. And protects us from feeling the suffering of others by keeping us out of reciprocal relationship with them.Myth 2 is the myth of no consequence. It saves us from the burden of having to choose, or face the outcomes of our choices.Myth 3 is the myth of dependency. By rendering us helpless it keeps us from taking on the full responsibility (and possibility) of our own adulthood.I think we cling onto these myths because, as well as the explanations they give us, we’re afraid that if we face the true situation of our lives (we’re not so special, we’ll die, there’s nobody to save us) then our troubles will be magnified. But, as with any turning away from the truth, they come at an enormous cost. In particular they keep both our dependency and our hopelessness going.And when we can learn to see through them, we can also start to learn how to grow up. We can find that the world has much less to stand on than we thought, and that we nevertheless have enormous ability to stand. We can discover deep sources of hope, courage and compassion which which we had been out of touch. And as we allow ourselves to step out of hiding and into relationship, we can discover that our capacity to help others - and to be helped by them in return - is far greater than we could possibly have imagined.

Practice, not events

Between June 2011 and the following July I had three close encounters with death. Three life punctuating events brought about by sudden and unexpected changes within my body, each shocking and frightening, each a reminder of how fragile and unpredictable life can be.As I recovered from each episode I expected - hoped - that I would in some way be profoundly different. I wanted so much to find myself more grateful, more accepting, more joyful of life's many small blessings, less judgmental, less afraid, less irritated by small things, more kind, and more dedicated to being present and welcoming and loving with the people who matter to me.But it didn't work out so simply. I emerged from each experience blinking and shaken and grateful, and soon settled back into many of my familiar patterns.Over time I've found myself thinking about this differently. What happens if I allow these experiences to inform the way I live rather than expecting them to change me? How can I, having encountered the possibility of death so closely, use my experience to commit fully and wisely and generously to life?In taking on this question I'm finding out that the change I seek is a question of practice rather than of events. And that I am an ongoing process much more than I am a thing with enduring properties, an object that is a particular way. I live myself into being, day after day. I am always living myself into being by the very ways in which I live.How I move, how much I take care of myself, how I express curiosity and interest in the world, how I speak and listen, how I sleep, how I sing and laugh, how I play and create, how I bind myself up in community, how I practice compassion and stillness, how I love, how I work - all these shape the life I am living and who I become, far more than the punctuating events themselves.And this tells me so much about the mistaken ways in which I look for change in myself and in my relationships with others. When I mistake life for a thing I imagine an event of sufficient power will do it. An affecting conversation, a kiss, a show of force, a book with a revelatory idea in it, an illness, a windfall, a conference, an argument, the right gift, or a brush with death will fix things, in the same way that I might fix a dented metal bowl by attempting to knock it into shape. But when I know myself as a living, unfolding process, events take up their proper place as teachers rather than fixers, educating me about the ongoing practices by which I can take care of this one precious life.The more I imagine events alone will do it, the more I set myself up for the despair and frustration that comes from relying on something that cannot help.And the more I commit to the ongoing, long-term, diligent and patient practice of living in a way that brings life, the more genuine reason I have to hope.

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