I am on my way home from an evening of joyful, experimental playfulness. Ten people, mostly unknown to one another, gathered together by a friend and colleague for an evening of games inspired by the world of comedy improvisation.We've laughed, talked, experimented, and experienced some moments of surprising light and tenderness. And now, done, we head off into the damp London night.I'm struck by how little space genuine play has in many of our lives, and particularly how absent it is in most workplaces. Since the days of the industrial revolution we have largely thought of work as a place of utmost seriousness. We have play progressively schooled out of ourselves by an education system obsessed with predictability and measurement. We've relegated it to the margins, thought of it as a distraction, boxed it in to prescribed spaces and times - away days, workshops.Our most productive, inventive, connected and generative moments come when we abandon our pretensions and tendency to over-think and allow ourselves to be playfully drawn out of ourselves by situations and by others. Such play has enormous restorative power, bringing us back to the aliveness of our bodies and the richness of our interactions with others.It seems we'd rather ignore the signs of our own stiflement - boredom, tiredness, fogginess and stress - and plough on with our processes and structures even when they no longer serve us. Seriousness has become equated with professionalism, play with taking liberties.And, yes, play is the taking of liberties - a necessary act of freeing ourselves from our rigidity so that something surprising and fresh and alive can happen.
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"It's different. It's not like it used to be."or"She's different. She's not like she used to be."Perhaps so.When you're so sure that the world, groups you're part of or people changed in ways you don't like (or find difficult to make sense of) it's tempting to want to fix them, to pus them back into a form that's familiar. This is the way of complaint, of resentment, of dissatisfaction, of judgement.And it locates all the responsibility far away from you.But maybe what's happened is you're not like you used to be.If you were prepared to entertain the possibility that you're the one who's different now - that you've developed or grown or shifted in some way, or maybe that you've momentarily lost touch with something that used to be important to you - what would it open up to you?Maybe a new kind of curiosity. Perhaps a new kind of acceptance. And maybe some new ways of engaging with what is rather than an outdated idea of what ought to be.
An early and necessary step in taking care of your own development is being able to say no to yourself, especially the part of you that acts unreflectively and habitually to soothe you, calm you, or keep things familiar.
Around some people 
It's a new moon tonight.Did you know?Did you notice?How much do you let the cycles of the natural world touch you, shape you?Is there a cycle to your months? Your years?Are you different in summer, autumn, winter?Is your work different?Do you do anything to respond to the changing energy of the seasons?Do you demand that you, and maybe those around you, act as if constant, uniform: dependably busy, dependably productive, dependably dependable?Or can you allow yourself the kindness - and the aliveness - to be someone with cycles and seasons of your own?
Trust is easy to misunderstand.The most common mistake is to say "I'll only trust when I know you're trustworthy". But this is trust without risk. Trust without putting yourself on the line. Trust as a demand. Trust without trust.Genuine trust does not come about this way. Instead, it's brought into being by your courage, openness, and willingness to risk that things won't work out the way you hoped. Genuine trust requires you to not know how things are going to go. It can never be a demand, but must be an invitation to act, and an invitation to keep talking when things don't work out as you'd hoped. More than anything else, genuine trust is an invitation into a relationship that you're committed to even when things go wrong.When you offer trust, but only on condition that nothing is placed at risk, can you say that you're really inviting trust at all?
One of the reasons that culture change is often so difficult is that we see it as a change of behaviour without understanding that it always involves the capacity to change our habits. 
This evening I settle down to read, and then to sleep.But my mind is restless, active, thoughts crashing in on one another. Everything is interrupting everything else. I'm whirling from one thing that needs doing to the next. Emails ignored demand attention. Projects unfinished. Shame arises, and harsh inner criticism. I'm caught by all the ways I've been inattentive, by everything that is still undone.I cannot read. And I cannot sleep while I'm in the grip of this.But there's a pattern in all this chaos, and in seeing the pattern is part of its undoing. I'm longing. Longing for peace. Longing for everything to be ok. Longing to be free of imperfection, of incompleteness, of uncertainty. Longing to be home. And I have made an error - one which I imagine most of us make, often - in thinking that the way home is to get it all done, tie up all the loose ends, attend to everything and everyone. I am sure that I can be at home only when I have met all of the world's demands, when I am perfect. And I should not be surprised my mind is so active, so frenetic, so critical, filled with so much confusion. It seems there is so far to go and, whatever I do, home feels just as far away as it was.In this way, I keep myself far from myself, far from any sense of peace.The antidote? Learning that I am home already, in every moment, in every place, no matter what still needs doing. That I do not need to pursue anything to be there. That home is not at the end of a list of tasks. Nor is home an empty email inbox. Home is not a finished project, or the recognition of others.Being home does not require the completion or achievement of anything.Home is always here.
I have written before about the wonder that is Daniel Landinsky's book 
Until you dedicate yourself sufficiently to