My school German teacher would not tolerate mistakes. His way of teaching was to interrupt us, every time, if we made a grammatical error, even if we were halfway through a sentence. And so while I learned German just fine as an academic subject, a detached exercise in reading and writing, I never learned to speak with any facility. My body - faced with a real German-speaking human being - simply wouldn't do it.It's this that clearly illuminates the difference between learning about a subject and developing ongoing, embodied skilfulness to do something with it. Learning a skill always requires risk and the possibility of getting it wrong. Indeed, we become skilful in the very process of messing up, feeling ashamed and confused, and then trying again in the light of what happened. Making mistakes, and the possibility of shame, call from us the kind of engaged involvement that's required for our activity to have sufficient power to disorganise and reorganise us, which is the mark of any lasting learning.As Hubert Dreyfus argues in On the Internet, this is why online learning (now so in vogue in the world of organisations) is fabulous for learning facts but not good at all for learning to master any complex or sophisticated skill - there simply is not enough contact with the bodily presence of others and insufficient social risk to have our mistakes (or the risk of mistakes) affect us.It's also why author William Westney argues (in The Perfect Wrong Note) that our fumbling errors made when learning a musical instrument are so constructive, useful, and enlightening, especially if they happen in the presence of a teacher or group of peers.And it's why my teacher showed us German, brilliantly, as an exam subject but did not - because he would not let us fail - teach us how to speak.
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It's not just that 
Fear is easy.Really easy.It spreads, like wildfire - my fear becoming your fear becoming their fear becoming my fear again.It makes us feel special - if I'm so afraid, there must be important things to do, like saving myself or saving the company or saving the country. At last, because of fear, I have a role to play.It makes things look simple - there is no choice here, no nuance, no time to talk together or think together about what's really called for, or if we're doing the right thing, or what the consequences over time might be. There is just action, this action, my action, and now.It helps us look right - how dare you suggest another way, a different way? Can't you see what's at stake here? How risky this is? How much we have to lose?It saves us from having to listen to one another - if you're not with me you're against me, and if you're against me you must be wrong, and it's because you're wrong and all of those others of you who are wrong that we're in this terrifying mess in the first place.It saves us from having to think - that there might be another way to see this, that your point of view might have merit, or integrity, or something to offer.It saves us from shame - at the ways I'm hurting you, or hurting myself, or hurting those who will come after us.It sells - the idea that I'm the best, that my way is the right way, that we're the chosen ones, that they're out to get us, that you have to work harder, that you must never stop, that our values are under threat, that we have to do this vital but terrible thing, that after all it's only business or politics or necessity.It allows us to justify - these punishing targets, our culture of hyper-activity, my monitoring of your every move, the hours I expect you to work, our obsession with measurement and deliverables, my not listening, our race to the lowest common denominator, your being available at every moment, our treating others as objects.Of course, fear works best when it doesn't display itself as fear. It's at its most potent when dressed up as civility, and best practice, and just-doing-business, and competency frameworks, and HR policy, and micro-management, and 'smart' goals, and this-is-work-not-a-playground-don't-you-know.Fear is easy, and fear is cheap, but it's dignity that sets the human spirit free to contribute, and create, and address our difficulties, and listen, and change things, and improve our situation. And dignity takes work, and courage, and honesty, and sincerity, and integrity, and wisdom and compassion and humility and love.Yes, love. Not a much-respected word in many organisations or in politics, and easily dismissed by the easy politics and business of fear. But it is indeed love that reminds us how brilliant human beings can be, how capable, how varied, how much there is to marvel at in our situation and our capacity, and how much we need all of this right now, just as we always have done.
How about we get on the side of life, which means not being on the side of death?The side of life: taking ourselves seriously, which means taking seriously all of these and more: aliveness, vibrancy, intimacy, vulnerability, openness, courage, integrity, play, joy, anger, sadness, dignity, compassion, wisdom, uncertainty, fear and freedom.The side of death: turning away, suppressing, denying, avoiding, constraining, limiting or controlling anything on the side of life.The side of death is alluring, comforting even. Deadening ourselves means we won't have to feel what we don't want to feel, or experience what we don't want to experience. And perhaps if we can deaden others, they won't bring us any of that either.If we're unlucky, we can live a whole life on the side of death, perhaps only waking up to life when it's too late (see Tolstoy's short novel 
Walking among tall oaks in London's Hyde Park, my thoughts turn towards the end of things. Leaves are falling, their curled crisp edges crunching beneath my boots. There are still many trees clothed in green. The end of this will come soon, I can see, leaving the dark shape of curling branches clear against the sky.One day, each of these trees, too, will be gone.It is a relief to know that this is how it is. That things come to an end. Quite naturally. Quite ordinarily. And that it is true for us too.How many mornings I have awoken with such deep lonely sadness at all this. That I will lose myself. That I will lose all of my faculties. That I will lose everyone I love, and they will lose all this too. That all this has already begun.But here, among the trees, I am gladdened. Losing it all is not my fate alone. It is not a gross unfairness visited upon me. It is not something I always need to mourn. It is the way of life, and always has been. It is the condition of humanity, and always will be.I am joined in this path by every living thing that has ever existed, and every living thing that will exist. I am unified with all of life, indivisible from it.Yes, deep sadness at how all of this ends has its place, reminding me how I long to live and how much there is to lose. But equally appropriate is joy, and wonder, exhilaration and radical amazement that any of this is happening. That I get to take part. That I am, for now, here.My heart quickens and my eyes widen at the beauty and fragility of life, at its preciousness, at how fleeting it is. I see that there is no time to waste. There is so much to do, so much I can do. Whatever contribution I am here to make, now is the time. Every moment until now has been preparation for this. Every moment to come, however many or few, calls with the promise and possibility of participation in life's grand, beautiful, tragic, surprising, endlessly creative unfolding.It is time, as it always is, to begin.
Stepping back from serious writing for a couple of months has been a necessary joy.And I've discovered again the joy of having something to say.I'll be back tomorrow.Thank you for holding on for me.
I'm thrilled that 
It has been hard to write these past two months. The familiar flow of words and ideas have slowed to a trickle. My body has not moved into the work with the grace and flow with which I have become familiar. It's as if some kind of gridlock has taken hold, with each part - mind, heart, body - pressing against the movement of the other.It has been tempting to try to force myself into action, to believe the inner judgements and slurs that whisper into the vacated spaces. You'll never be a writer this way. You've run out of anything to say. You're not brave enough, smart enough, honest enough to do this.But this time, I am not so convinced by all the inner chatter as I once might have been. This time, I've been waiting - patiently, quietly - to see what wants to write itself through me.We make production and consumption the highest measure of value in our culture. But we are part of nature, born of nature, and we are subject to its cycles just as much as a field, or a tree, or a river.I am remembering that fields must lie fallow in order to be fertile,spring must turn to summer and autumn to have any chance of returning,and human beings must rest and nurture themselves - often - in order to flourish.
We can't help it. We're sense-making beings, us humans. And so you and I are always living our lives from a sense of story.The story profoundly shapes our interactions with other people, and with ourselves. Watch how you'd relate to your sister, your colleagues, from the narrative of 'the burdened one' - the one who has been handed too much to carry, and who can't find any place to put it down. See how much busyness it breeds, how little time to rest, how much resentment, how much of a sense of being in life alone.And see how differently you'd encounter all of life from the narrative of 'a healer' - the one whose responsibility it is to heal herself by taking care of her own body, mind and heart so she can take care of others. Or 'a painter' - looking for the hidden light and beauty in everything. Or 'a bestower of blessings'. Or even 'an ordinary person'.The stories we're living seem so compelling, so true, especially as they seem to account so coherently for everything that's happening. But any story is only one out of many possibilities, and each story conceals much even as it reveals.And so it's important to ask ourselves what other stories we could imagine, particularly those that would bring forward our virtues - patience, kindness, courage, imagination, integrity, compassion, love, commitment, steadfastness, playfulness - qualities that allow us to meet the world more generously, more creatively, and let more of life through.
At every moment in life, you can choose whether to be a blessing or a curse to others.How you open the door to her when she comes come, how you reach across for him when you wake, how you speak when you order your coffee, how you move through a crowded train, how you are with a crying child, how you put out the bins.How you answer the phone, how you begin a meeting with your pressured and anxious team, how you write the next email, how you announce your intentions, how you respond when you're hurt, how you listen to the request of a lost stranger.The capacity to bless will have its seeds in your capacity to bless yourself, which always means welcoming yourself and what you're experiencing rather than denying it, raging against it, or judging yourself for it.Will you turn towards that of you which loves without dismissing, or denigrating, or criticising it for its impracticality?Will you turn towards your fear and acknowledge how afraid you are with dignity, rather than pretending it isn't true?Many of the curses in the world arise from our denying our own very basic, vulnerable, mysterious, confusing humanity. Much of that comes from being afraid and pretending that we're not - a curse upon ourselves which curses others as we go. And many blessings come from the discovery that this one, brief, precious life simply won't go exactly how we want it.Of course, it's rarely as simple as just 'deciding' to bless as we go. Too much of us has been shaped by years of habit for that. But the good news is that the capacity to bless - which is given to all of us - grows with practice. And that you can start today.