One part of me is often very, very scared.It's scared of losing people, and it's willing to do pretty much anything to get people to stay.It can be obsessive. It can fret over tiny details - what someone else thinks, whether they called or not. It can imagine the worst in an email (she wasn't loving enough in the sign-off to that email, something must be wrong), or in a silence. It can imagine - and believe - elaborate scenarios in which people who are important to me have withdrawn already because of a slight, or an oversight, or a mistake on my part.When I think this part is me, I too am afraid. And in my fear I try to drive it away: I do not want to feel the way it feels. I do not want to think the way it thinks. I work hard to push it out of view, out of my thoughts and out of my emotions.And the fear multiplies in direct response to the abandonment I inflict upon it.When I understand this part as if it were a whole person with its own coherent thoughts and feelings, I can see how my own fear of it makes it more afraid. And my abandonment of it gives it the proof it dreads. It knows, from first-hand experience, that it is always at risk of being exiled.I have been relating to this part in exactly the way it most fears. And it is no wonder that is has continued to haunt me.As I wrote earlier this week, our own relationship to the parts of us has a profound effect on them, and hence on us. And so more recently, when I feel afraid of losing someone - when I feel the irrational, obsessive, implacable fear start to form - I practice turning towards the afraid part in as appreciative and loving a way as I can. Welcoming it home. Showing that though others may leave, I will not. And the fear settles.By welcoming my own complexity and contradictions rather than turning away from them, I'm finding that I can create the conditions in which the parts of me, sometimes fearful, frequently needy, often longing, can find some peace. And in welcoming myself I am able to bring myself more fully, more generously, and with much less clinging to those I love, and to those with whom I work.
The parts you push away
When you know yourself as made up of parts, you can start to ask yourself how the parts relate to one another, and how they relate to you as a whole.
Do some parts get loved and appreciated by you?Do other parts get pushed away?
More illuminating still is to understand that parts have their own identity and intelligence as you consider these questions.
What do the parts you love do in response to your love?And what do the parts you push away do in response to being pushed away?
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Parts
See what happens if instead of 'I am afraid', you say 'Part of me is afraid'If instead of 'I am unsure', 'Part of me is unsure'Instead of 'I am angry', 'Part of me is angry'By allowing yourself the understanding that you are a being of many parts, rather than a single, monolithic self, you open up these possibilities:Firstly, coming to understand emotions as something you have rather than what defines you ...
... It really is quite different to know yourself this way - there is much more agency in having rather than being had by what you feel.
Secondly, remembering that there are always parts of you that are feeling something different to what's most apparent to you ...
... parts that are settled when you're experiencing anxiety, parts that love when you're feeling irritated, parts that are courageous and able to take action when other parts of you are paralysed with fear.
And thirdly, discovering that the same is true of others ...
... so that when you're bewildered by her rage you can remember that there is still a part of her that is kindness; when you're supporting him in his uncertainty you can call on the part of him that has clarity; and when you're struggling with his self-centredness you can remember the part of him that still, even in the midst of all the difficulty, cares deeply about all of it.
Is it?
Is it learning when you insist on hearing what makes you comfortable?Is it love when you're in it just because you feel good around him or her?Is it practice when you stop because you don't feel competent, or because it's not much fun?Is it harmony when you deny the conflicts within you and around you?Is it leadership when you won't tell anyone what's really important to you?Is it conversation when you're paying attention only to what you have to say?Is it commitment when you stay in only when things are going your way?Is it trust when you demand that everyone always meet your standards?Is it freedom when you insist on never, ever being constrained?Is it strength when you won't ask for help?And is it respect when you won't say what you think in case they don't like it?
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Pouring it away
So much of what we waste - time, money, trust - we waste because we haven't found skilful ways of talking to one another.
All the time spent pursuing projects that nobody wanted.
All the time doing things to try to look good in the eyes of others, without even asking them if it actually looks good to them.
All the work we do trying to guess what other people wanted because we're afraid we'll look stupid if we tell them we don't understand.
All the projects that could not happen because we did not find a way to agree on what we really intended.
All the effort spent on what we thought was urgent because we could not talk about what we felt was important.
All of the energy we put into doing things because we felt that acting now was more important than talking with one another about how to act rightly.
And how much we could improve things if, as well as rushing into restructures, reorganisations, and process redesigns, we were prepared to invest as much time and effort learning to talk and listen well together.
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Blinded to half of our lives
The separation of subject from object brought to us so powerfully by René Descartes in the 17th century (and which I have written about here) gave us new ways of understanding and manipulating the material world which in turn gave birth to modernity. His work ushered in an age in which at last science, technology and medicine could seriously take root. You don't have to look far to see how much this has made possible.But you have to look more closely to see how it has also led us into a deep misunderstanding of ourselves.In the 19th century August Comte built on Descartes' position to create logical positivism, which argued that nothing in the human world could be considered to have authority unless it could be objectively measured. For positivism what was real about people included behaviour, action taken, money earned, measurements made. Feeling, meaning and stories were distinctly second class as far as truth was concerned. In a stroke, positivism declared much of the experience of being alive, the unique subjectivity that makes us most human, to be irrelevant, a marginal footnote to the real stuff of existence.We've enthusiastically taken positivism into the heart of our institutions and as we've done so we've understood ourselves and others primarily as objects and as consumers - a surface, materialist understanding that leaves a huge part of ourselves behind. We relate to people primarily through how they can be 'of use' to us, what they can get done. And consequently we are often at war with ourselves, suppressing and denying our longing for something real, something that has depth, something that's more than surface.It should be no surprise that positivism was seized upon enthusiastically by the architects of that most modern of human institutions, the organisation. By reducing people to surface and to measurable activity, and by discounting the rest, the early factory owners could have people become extensions of the machinery of production. It is at work in so much of what's considered 'best practice' in contemporary management - in behaviour frameworks, performance grading, the banishment of the inner world from the workplace, the label 'human resources', and our insistence that people fit in rather than bring themselves forward fully.Positivism is so prevalent and so often unquestioned because, in many ways, it works - just as long as you are happy that people stop being people so they can become part of the machine.But it fails to take account of so much of what we are - symbol-making, metaphor-creating, meaning-seeking beings who navigate our lives wondering, dreaming, fearing, hoping and longing - and that our measurable doing is just the tiniest part of it.
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In praise of shadows
Although there are clearly constant qualities that each of us carry from place to place, relationship to relationship, there's also much of us that gets expressed - drawn out of us - by the places we're in and by who we're with.The offices, public areas, homes, living spaces, kitchens and meeting rooms we inhabit, each with their lighting and decor and furniture and equipment, afford us certain possibilities and deny us others. Some places bring out the possibility of being focussed and diligent, others bring out our playfulness, and in yet others we get attuned mostly to our boredom or agitation.As we move from place to place, situation to situation, we might notice the different possibilities that are brought forth. But we rarely see that the entire cultural and architectural background in which we live is shaping us all the time. The very kind of people we come to be is, in large part, being produced by the built environment in which we live. And because it's all pervasive - we're born into it and, unless we immerse ourselves first-hand and deeply in other cultures we rarely escape from it - much of its shaping effect is completely invisible to us.I have been reading Junichiro Tanizaki's book In Praise of Shadows this week, which is all about this. Tanizaki shows us how, in the west, our contemporary buildings emphasise light. We build large windows to catch the sun, and where this is impossible we add bright electric lighting - fluorescent tubes, halogens, bright white bulbs - to illuminate and to banish darkness. And while this can be beautiful, and is at the least enormously practical, there is something profound about the possibilities of deep shadow that we rarely encounter, and so barely know.On the traditional Japanese way of building a toilet, for example - so different from bright white, tile and porcelain constructions - he writes:
"There are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and a quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain, especially if it is a toilet of the Kantō region, with its long, narrow windows at floor level; there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops falling from the eaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the stepping stones... Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas."
It is shadow around which the traditional Japanese interior world is constructed, and which Tanizaki describes so beautifully in his book. His attention ranges from the design of living rooms and bathrooms - and their affect on us - to the experience of eating steaming rice in the dimness of low-eaved, paper-walled dining rooms; from the practicalities of cleaning and heating our living and working spaces to the possibility of ordinary, everyday buildings as places of spiritual repose.In Praise of Shadows is readable in one short sitting, and an exquisite way of seeing in a new way what's possible for us, and hidden from us, in the contemporary world of work and home.
Change is a practice not a thing
We would help ourselves greatly if we saw change not as a thing but as a practice.When we treat change as a thing we imagine that inventing what we want will be enough. We return from an away-day or conference brimming with ideas and plans, commitments and to-do lists, and we think those are the change. And then we get disheartened when nothing seems different - when it turns out that our habits have far more tenacity, and our ideas far less power, than we had given them credit for.When change is a thing we imagine we can systematise it, programme it, schedule it, roll it out, cascade it. We think a series of workshops ought to do it. Or a clever deck of powerpoint slides. Or a rebranding exercise.When we find out how difficult this is we think we didn't try hard enough, or weren't committed enough, or weren't smart enough. And so we go round the cycle again. Or we give up - a result of our growing cynicism and weariness.But change is not a thing. And anyone who has ever experienced the changes that come from learning a musical instrument, or a new sport, or a language knows this deeply.To bring about change in those fields we know that imagination is not enough. We have to practise. We understand that it takes time, and that there will be many setbacks along the way. We know that from the vantage-point of the beginner we cannot understand all that it will require. And we know we have to keep practising even when the path is unclear, the results uncertain, and when we've become bored and frustrated and disillusioned.We practise because we know it's in practising that what is going to be born will be born.Seeing change as a practice allows us to keep going in the face of our anxiety and confusion. And to see it as the process of living, and learning, that it always is.
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Finding joy in a messy life
It's so easy to fear and despair, and to self-judge, when the world seems so obviously and continuously to fall short of your expectations:
- when it's so hard to bring things about
- when accidents of timing or geography make some paths impossible and you catch on to all the could-have-beens and never-would-have-beens
- when people are unpredictable and unknowable
- when things fall apart
- when you make mistakes, and when others do
- when the world is so hard to understand
- when projects and plans fail
- when things get scary and unpredictable
- when the sweep of world events is so much bigger than you
- when you're filled with a longing that does not seem to be fulfilled
- when you don't quite know who you are
It's a mess. And no amount of effort seems to make the world less messy.But, perhaps, it might gradually be possible to see that you could love this sacred, unchangeably messy life with all of its inevitable disappointment. And that it is possible to cultivate joy - that the very mess that it is exists at all. And wonder, and amazement - at the miracle that you're here to be in it, to witness it, and to contribute in whatever way, however incomplete, that you can.
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The danger of silent expectations
It's so much more powerful to make clear requests of others than it is to hold silent expectations.
If you expect all of your team to speak up for themselves...but don't ask them to
or if you expect your friends to remember your birthday...but don't tell them how important it is to you
or if you expect your family to invite you round...but don't say that to them
or if you expect your partner to put the bins out...but don't mention it
or if you expect people to be punctual in meetings with you...but don't let them know
If you do any of these, if you say 'they should just know what I want', you're setting yourself up for disappointment, resentment, and resignation.Because silent expectations require other people to be mind readers. They set invisible standards that are almost certain to be missed because of their invisibility. And they cause confusion when others' good intentions (that just didn't happen to match your hidden expectations) fail to satisfy you.Perhaps this is what you intend. Maybe you have expectations rather than asking because it keeps proving that nobody cares as much as you do.It may feel clunky and awkward, but if you really care about things happening, and if you care about being in relationship in a way that maintains everyone's dignity, it's far more skilful to ask, directly for what you want to happen:
"Please, speak up in this meeting. I want to hear what you have to say""Please remember my birthday. It really matters to me""I'd love to see you more. Would you invite me round more often?""Please can you put the bins out?""It's important to me that we start on time. Please be there before 9."
At least then everyone knows what you wish for. And you give everyone the dignified possibility of saying no, or offering to do something different, both of which are denied when your request is hidden by a silent, invisible expectation.
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