The history of ordinary lives

The sweep of history is often remembered through the grand acts - the wars, the revolutions, the public acts of despots, geniuses, and heroes.But it is lived for the most part by so-called ordinary lives. The people who, perhaps like you and me, will be recalled only by a handful of people, and whose memory fades within a generation or two.It's easy to compare our lives with the famous ones, to imagine that a life well lived is one that will stand out across time, one that will be remembered. But what about the everyday dignity of caring for a home, loving people close by, bringing home a living, touching others with simplicity and genuineness?I can't think of a better book about this topic than John Williams' novel Stoner, first published in 1965. Stoner, a university professor, lives an undistinguished life, charted with exquisite precision and compassion by Williams. We know from the start that he will hardly be remembered - by his colleagues, his students - and yet we come to see the beauty in his humanity: in his doubts and confusions, his suffering, the gifts he brings to others, the deep currents of meaning that bubble below the surface, and in the sheer extraordinary everydayness of his life.Stoner is a fabulous reminder of the preciousness of even the most apparently mundane life, and the shining jewels that lie within. And it's a beautiful read.

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How it begins

For the past few days, to mark the first anniversary of this project, I have been republishing favourite posts from the first year of On Living and Working.To conclude this series, here the very first post, where it all began.--

This is the Olduvai hand axe. It sits in a far corner of the British Museum, nestled among artifacts from earliest human history. It's around 1.2 million years old. It's strikingly beautiful. And it marks the beginning of the distinctively human practices of tool-making and art that lead directly to what you'll find here.

Hand axes are among the first great inventions of humanity, and probably came into being at the dawn of the development of both language and culture. They made it possible for the first time for people to cut with skill and precision, and would have opened up the possibility of turning animal skins and wood into products that went far beyond the immediate need for food.They mark the moment when we extended ourselves from living in the world as it is to actively and consciously shaping it, when we first began to create the complex web of tools, words, work and culture that - a million or so years later - could bring about the society of today.Millions of hand axes have been discovered around the world, but what makes the Olduvai axe so striking is that it's much bigger than can be comfortably held in the hand. Its size renders it unusable for most purposes. In all other respects it's a perfect tool - beautifully balanced, sharp-edged, symmetrical - the result of many hours of skilled and careful labour. But it's also a work of art, with a purpose that is a much symbolic as practical, an expression of the artfulness of its maker. That it was made at all reflects the human concern for beauty, for creativity and ingenuity, and for expression. And it's deeply entwined with the practical world of making and doing, the work of providing for a life well lived.The industrial age of the 20th century taught us that efficiency and predictability were to be prized above all else. Big organisations, mass production, standardisation all became possible. But the rise in living standards this brought still left many people's experience of life flat, mundane. When we've tired of climbing the ladder or pursuing status, we find that living fully, fiercely, artfully and courageously are needed to lift us beyond the ordinary into the life and work from which we can make our fullest contribution. The Olduvai hand axe, from the dawn of our history, is a reminder of this - and the inspiration for everything that follows.

Actually asking

This week, to mark the first anniversary of this project, I am republishing favourite posts from each month of the first year of On Living and Working.This is from February 2014.--

If your requests to others aren't resulting in much in the way of action, you might like to look at whether you are actually asking anything at all.

"That office needs tidying"

"The rubbish is collected tomorrow"

"We're spending more on travel than we should be"

"This is really difficult"

"It's my birthday next Tuesday"

may sound to you like clear requests for help. But they quite possibly sound nothing of the sort to the people around you.Indirect requests are a manipulation, a demand that others show they love or respect you by being able to work out what you really want. But when you don't get what you were expecting the result is frustration and resentment. And confusion, for everyone else, when you've become annoyed, or angry, or withdrawn - and they don't understand why.Over time, such vague requests erode the foundation of your relationships even as you're trying to get people to come in closer.Please, if you want to enrol others in supporting you, ask them directly for what you want.It creates so much more possibility and dignity for all of us.

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How trust happens

This week, to mark the first anniversary of this project, I am republishing favourite posts from each month of the first year of On Living and Working.This is from January 2014.--

Trust, in the end, is not built by waiting until the conditions are right - "I'll be able to trust them when I feel confident and secure... when they've given me sufficient evidence that they are trustworthy"Instead, trust is always engendered most by our first extending our trust to others - which requires us to be open enough and vulnerable enough to let others in.And trust is deepened by exactly what we do when we experience breakdowns in trust. Closing down or backing off, declaring the relationship over or under threat, does nothing to build our capacity to trust others, nor they us, in the future.No, trust is built precisely by turning towards one another when it breaks down and talking about what is now possible and required. We invite trust precisely by how we respond when our capacity to trust seems most under threat.

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Shaped by others

This week, to mark the first anniversary of this project, I am republishing favourite posts from each month of the first year of On Living and Working.This is from December 2013.--

Just as places shape us, calling us into particular ways of acting and relating, people we're around do the same. Another way of saying this, using the language of my recent posts, is that people can be affordances too.

Stop and watch for a while and you'll probably see what I mean.Around some people we open up, bringing our troubles and difficulties and confusion into the light. And around others we close down. Nothing seems possible to say around them.Some people bring out our hopeful optimism. Others evoke more of a sense of darkness, despair or resignation. And around some people we get to see and think clearly, perhaps in a way that isn't possible for us when alone.Over time, who we are with significantly shapes us, our preferences, our language and our everyday responses to the world.Two consequences of this:Firstly, the way other people are around you might have a lot to do with you.Secondly, who you spend your time with matters, more than you might know.

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Exhausted

This week, to mark the first anniversary of this project, I am republishing favourite posts from each month of the first year of On Living and Working.This is from November 2013.--

Mostly the stories we're living are invisible to us. They're like the air we breathe, or the water we swim in.If you're someone who never rests, who keeps going even when you're exhausted - as so many of us do - do any of these stories shed light on the way you're living?Are you taking yourself to be

An orphan? Carrying a huge burden given to you by others that cannot be put down. There's nowhere to rest. Nobody who can really be relied on. Nowhere that's safe. All you can do is to keep on carrying, carrying, carrying, knowing that life is ultimately exhausting and nobody can help you.

A frantic hare? Always running to get to the finish line. The point of life is to hurry, hurry, hurry so that you can be there first. If you stop, even for a moment, you'll lose the race. Because everyone else is apparently running too.

The emperor in new clothes? Trying to look good or at least acceptable, but fearing that everyone else can secretly see that it's all a façade. So you have to work hard all the time to keep up an image, and not let any cracks show, in case you get found out.

Atlas? Holding up the world for everyone with unceasing, superhuman effort. If you don't do it, nobody else will, and then the sky will fall in and everything will come apart.

And if not one of these stories, is there another one you can find that will explain why you're so sure you can never stop, never take care of yourself?

Where did you get your story from? From your family? From the wider culture into which you were born?

And what happens if you let go of your story, just a little, and find out that it can't be completely true? Perhaps then you'll find out that you'll still be alive, and people will still be around, even if you lie down for a while.

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Aliveness

This week, to mark the first anniversary of this project, I am republishing favourite posts from each month of the first year of On Living and Working.This is from October 2013.--

It seems to me we could go a long way in work and in wider life we were to take aliveness more seriously.Many organisations I come across seem to be in the middle of a constriction that's going the other way. More processes, more rules, more plans, more meetings in which people wonder why they're present, more measures, more hours, more rushing, more emails, more unexpressed panic, more overwhelm, more spinning in tight spirals, more quiet fearfulness.Where does all this lead if we continue down this path?And yet, if you look closely and quietly for a while, you get to see that most of what's happening that's of value take place in spite of these, not because of them. The new idea sparked in a conversation in the lift, a moment of genuine connection between members of a team that allows for new understanding and trust, the discovery of some inner resourcefulness that allows someone to speak up in a new way, a fiery exchange in which what's important is expressed and heard: all are examples of this.When we forget that organisations are alive we miss a huge opportunity. At the moment I think most of us have our heads turned in the other direction.

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Brighter than the sun

This week, to mark the first anniversary of this project, I am republishing favourite posts from each month of the first year of On Living and Working.This is from September 2013.--

Sometimes, in the midst of all our striving, longing, and reaching, our building of towers and the making of names for ourselves, it's important to remember that one day we will, with certainty, lose it all.Some of this will happen piece by piece. We'll gradually say goodbye to people as they leave life. We'll realise, perhaps suddenly, that their presence in the world touched our hearts and lit up our eyes. We'll find out that their worth is beyond words.And for all of us, the loss will also come entirely at once - maybe at a time when we least expect it, before we can even know it's happening - when it is 'I' who is leaving and it is others who have to say goodbye.Some of us take a long time to find all this out, holding our inner gifts back from the world until we're sure the time is just right - a time that may never come.But others seem to live with this understanding so fully in their hearts it's as if nothing is withheld. They've discovered that the point of life is life itself, and that each of us is simply another expression of life's beauty and wonder. And from this understanding flows their kindness, their generosity and their wisdom, so that they shine brighter than the sun.

For Christy

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Business and personal

This week, to mark the first anniversary of this project, I am republishing favourite posts from each month of the first year of On Living and Working.This is from August 2013.--

Many business difficulties are, at root, personal difficulties...

... conversations we're not bold enough to have, motives we hide and dress up as reason, emotions we don't know how to deal with, resentments we fuel, imagination constrained by blame and the fear of shame, judgements of people who are different from us, fear and anxiety we won't name, scapegoating, saving face, projections of what's in our shadow, self-pity, self-aggrandisement.But we've convinced ourselves (since the start of the industrial age) that businesses are machines rather than collections of people. It conveniently leads us to try to engineer our way out of difficulty - a detached move that saves us from having to own up to our own part in what's going on.And so when faced with what seems unsolvable, we turn to

restructures (a recurring favourite)competency frameworksmergers and acquisitionsleadership frameworksthe latest update to company policychanging what's measuredcharts of acceptable behaviourstraining programmes

rather than do the apparently more difficult, more unpredictable, more messy work of turning to one another with sincerity and curiosity, and being truthful about what's going on.So many difficulties can be solved by talking about what's happening, both within us and between us. But mostly we allow ourselves to take up the convenient story that this is irrelevant to business, out of place at work.We even call it 'soft'.Addressing the personal, emotional, relational part of our business difficulties is anything but soft. It's the hardest, most important, most rewarding and most practical problem solving arena of all.

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More more more

For the next few days I am republishing favourite posts from each month of the first year of On Living and Working. This is from July 2013.--

We've built our culture on the premise that more is always better. That there's no such thing as enough.We think we'd be better off we had more time, more money, a bigger house, a nicer car, the latest fashion, the newest smartphone, a bigger job, more market share, more efficiency. We construct our lives around this premise and we construct our organisations, institutions, and politics around it too. It's endemic.We've even gone as far as to relabel ourselves in this fashion. We're no longer people but consumers. Without acknowledging how demeaning it is to be understood as yawning open mouths sated only by the arrival of more stuff, companies and politicians refer to us in this way - and we take it. Once upon a time we used to be citizens, but you'll have to listen hard to hear that in our public discourse these days.All of this 'more' seems so obvious, and so unquestionable, we can't see what it's doing to us. We can't see the way it has us relate to the whole of life as if there were not enough. Not enough time, not enough space, not enough shiny things, not enough holidays, not enough growth, not enough experiences. We can't see how it has us hoard our possessions such that many of us have way more than we require, while others cannot meet their basic needs. We can't see how it has us work like machines, ignoring our families, our loved ones, our friends, our relationship with nature, with art, with stillness, with beauty. We can't see how our obsession with more fuels the degradation of the environment in which we live, and of the bodies that support us. We can't see how our sense of lack, even when all our basic needs are more than fulfilled, eats away at our lives and our experience of living.If you look closely at life, you'll find that once you've satisfied your basic, most essential needs, acquiring more on its own rarely - if ever - produces the fulfilment and feeling of safety you've been longing for. Or if it does, it doesn't last for very long, replaced as it is by a gnawing anxiety that what you now have still isn't enough.Only when you start to see the hollowness of the 'more' narrative we're all living in can you also begin to see what's genuinely satisfying. Deep, truthful, courageous relationships. Community. Seeing and being seen. Serving others wholeheartedly, and accepting the gifts of others' service. Finding your voice, your unique contribution, and bringing it. Curiosity and wonder. Being part of a commitment bigger than yourself. Slowing down enough to be present in life rather than ever absent from it.The best question to ask yourself when you are caught up in the spiral of more is 'for the sake of what?'. If your only answer is 'so I can have more' or 'because I want it' you'd better ask again. Perhaps you'll find a genuine, honest answer why more is necessary. But if you can't find one perhaps it's time to turn away from what you're so sure you must have, and into life itself.

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