Famous

I sit in the darkness, watching my daughter and her friends singing, dancing and performing with such joy and exuberance in a local musical production, and right when I could release myself into joy and wonder a dark, coiled-upon itself part of me claws repeatedly - 'You should be able to do that', it says.On a gloriously sunny May Thursday, I'm hosting a conversation about leadership with a group of thoughtful, principled people who run a large hospital. Right when I could be at my most curious, open and available, there's a part of me that tells tugs, hard - 'You should be better at this', it says, 'You should be like them.'In my living room, a long afternoon of freedom available to me, I'm reading Robert McFarlane's beautiful book 'Underland', and I find myself checking the time again and again. 'You shouldn't be here', it says and, more perniciously, its tendrils of shame that I haven't published a book, that I don't know what to say, that I'm not famous, slip through the gaps in my thoughts and wrap themselves around my heart.On the tube, in the shower, watching a film, holding my loved ones and, more than anywhere else, in the dark of the night, the endless voice of comparison keeps speaking its poison. Its promise is alluring enough - salvation. If I'm equal to or better than the ideas it has about me, or the people it measures me against, I'll be saved. Once I'm well known enough, or have made a world-changing contribution, I'll be safe. If I make sure never to annoy anyone else, or disappoint them, if I keep up an image of gentleness or responsibility, everything will be OK.As my dear friend and colleague Lizzie Winn says, all of this has us 'pretzel ourselves' into ever more distortions. And as the poet Naomi Shihab Nye reminds us in her poem Famous, there's a more straightforward way to be in the world, one filled with dignity and aliveness which recognises the uniqueness of the being we already are,

... famous in the way a pulley is famous,or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,but because it never forgot what it could do

It may seem like a paradox, but it's often when we give up our crazed attempts to be what we're not that we have the greatest chance of flourishing and unfolding fully into what we are. It's when, as Lizzie says, we can inhabit our qualities wholeheartedly, that we find the deep reserves of kindness or courage, wisdom or attentiveness, that allow us to meet the world.Naomi Shihab Nye shows us early in her poem that all our attempts to save ourselves by holding ourselves in the grip of a comparison (such as with fame) are inevitably doomed by the transience of everything:

The loud voice is famous to silence,which knew it would inherit the earthbefore anybody said so.

As Simon Seligman so beautifully writes, in response to those lines:

'We are but a moment, and all around us nature and time, and the silence that came before us, are unfolding as they must. And so our voice, our moment, can only speak for itself, now, as we find it, and should let go of any hope that we will silence the silence. It is always there, it should always be there, and without it we would not be able to hear our own voice anyway, just as light has no meaning without the dark. The silence does not need us to confer upon it any meaning or purpose; it knows it will inherit the earth. We get to dance within and upon it for our span; it allows (indulges?!) us in this, and lets us witter on as if we were in control. But the water will close over our heads, the gravestone will be subsumed into the earth, and our one job is to accept and embrace both our living span, and its end, in time.'

Our one job - to accept and embrace both our living and its end. I know when I can do this, I can sit in the dark and watch my daughter, and let myself be overcome by joy and love and sheer wonder that she is here. I can work with a group of very capable leaders with curiosity and openness and truthfulness, without holding back and without closing down. I can love and speak and listen and create without holding onto a myth of safety or salvation. I can much more readily give up the demand for safe passage and instead participate, turning towards life with a whole-heartedness and playfulness that's robbed from me when I'm caught in comparison with how I am supposed to be, or how things are supposed to be. I stop pretzeling myself to try to get life to go my way.-The poem, Lizzie and Simon's wonderful words, and everything I've expressed here came from conversations in and around the Turning Towards Life project. You can hear the episode that includes Naomi Shihab Nye's poem, and much else, on our website here, and on our podcast.

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All that he taught me by leaving

I wrote the first words of 'On Living and Working' six years ago today, drinking tea and sitting on a high stool in the cafe window of London's Wellcome Collection, a museum exploring the intersection of life, the body, science, and culture.As I finished the first post a call came in to say that my father-in-law had died.We drove to his home that evening, curving our way through the rush-hour traffic, and sat in the kitchen drinking more tea and preparing ourselves to enter the small ante-room where he had spent the last weeks of his life.The dead are so incredibly, shockingly still.In the absence of the ongoing micro-movements that animate even someone who is sleeping, in the absence of breath, there is a perfect, uncanny silence. And it is the absence that reveals just how alive it is to be living. No flutter of the eyelids, no flexing of fingers or toes, no gentle rise and fall of the chest, none of the tiny cues that a person is present that I find my own eyes searching for. Just silence, and an absolute stillness like the stillness of stone, but strange and unsettling and sacred and exquisite and perfectly, unarguably real.In the jarring realness of absence, in this space where his warmth and movement and presence had been only hours before, I am brought into a fresh encounter with life's unlikeliness, its strangeness, its fierce beauty, its transience. I am thrown back into life by my contact with not-life.And I see how often I forget that I am actually alive. How readily I act as if I am not fully here: deadening myself and numbing myself and absenting myself and distracting myself. As if finding myself living in this brief shining flash of consciousness is too much to bear. Or as if I will always be alive.But here in this quiet room I see that one day I too will be this still, as will everyone else I love, and everyone else they love, and everyone else they know. And another day, in the unimaginably far-off future that will still come too soon, everything will fall into stillness and this grand experiment that we call life will itself be over.Somewhere I always know this. But when it fades into the background, when I am 'had by' this knowledge, its shadowy presence can easily act as an encouragement to go to sleep, to exist as if some of me or all of me is already dead. It's simpler that way, quieter. Apparently. And though living this way actually scares the hell out of me, the fear loops back on itself, fuelling and feeding the addictive numbness with its guileful promise of safety.So it's better to know the truth directly, I think. To keep reminding ourselves how different we are, even in our most humdrum everydayness, from absence.To be human is to live in this dance between remembering and forgetting ourselves, being awake and asleep, being present-in-life and dead-to-life. At least, that's how my life seems to be. But there are practices of presence, and remembering, and truthfulness that we can take up if we so choose - practices of art and body, movement and song, contact and attention that can help us return to the intense realness of life when we have lost our way. We can choose to stare directly into the unbearably bright light of our own ending so that we have a chance of being here, right here, while we are actually here. To be like fierce angels, heralding the sunrise. To be alive, before it's too late.On this 6th anniversary I'm grateful for words and language, for writing and speaking and those of you who read and listen to the many forms this project has taken since it began. And I'm feeling grateful for Sidney, my father-in-law, for all that his way of being showed me, his way of singing and hoping his way through, and for all that he taught me in his leaving.

Photo by Andraz Lazic on Unsplash

Looking good

Could it be that it's time for you to give up looking good so you can be real instead?I'm not saying this lightly.Five summers ago, I found myself rendered momentarily speechless, mid-conversation, as a dear friend and I walked together for lunch. A few minutes later, flat on my back on the pavement, heart pounding, short of breath, mind racing.I knew for certain only after a few days - but had an inkling as it happened - that an undiagnosed blood clot that had been forming in my leg for some time had at that moment broken loose from its moorings.Terror, love, longing, hope, confusion.I called home while we waited for the paramedics to arrive."I'm fine," I said. "There's nothing to be worried about".Not, "I'm scared.". Not, "Please help me". Not, "I don't know if I'm going to be ok"."I'm fine".It was a hot June afternoon, blue skies, but there must have been clouds as I remember watching a seagull wheel high overhead against a background of grey-white."I'm fine".Just when I most needed help and connection I played my most familiar, habitual 'looking good' hand - making sure others around me had nothing to be worried about. A hand I've played repeatedly since I was a child.Even in the most obviously life-threatening situation I had yet experienced: "I'm fine". Too afraid to be seen for real, to be seen as something other than my carefully nurtured image of myself.It was there, on the pavement, that I started to understand in a new way the cost of holding myself back from those I most care about; the power and necessity of vulnerability and sincerity; that my humanity, with all its cracks, complexity and fragility, is a gift to others, not a burden.I began to see that the realness I treasured in the people who love me the most was my responsibility too - a necessary duty of loving in return.I'm still learning, slowly, how to fully show myself.One step at a time.And I'm learning, too, that sometimes we'll carry on trying to look good, even if it has the potential to ruin our lives as we do so.

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On the side of life

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 The Death of Ivan Ilyich for a stunning account of just this).Whole organisations - their structures, processes, practices - can be dedicated to the side of death too (the difficulty here is that the side of death looks so respectable, so reasonable).But it doesn't have to be this way. Life is never out of our reach, even in trying circumstances.And the good news is that there are many people, and many organisations, whose commitment to life shines strongly, and who are just dying to share with us what they know.

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The end of things

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.

A difficult time with choice

We have a difficult time with choice (or, at least, with choosing) because we have a difficult time with death.Choosing always involves the death of what is not chosen. The death of a possibility. The death of a particular future that will, now, not be.And because choosing requires us to face death, many of us would rather not choose at all.And then we can only live a life that is never quite our own, because in the absence of our own choice everything is effectively being chosen for us. There’s no less death here – we’ve simply turned our face away from it.But there is much less dignity, and much less responsibility.Stepping into our lives means, inevitably, that we step also into the death of things.

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Numbered

Sometimes I remember that my days are numbered.My days for working are numbered.My days for seeing a cloudless sky are numbered.My days are numbered for sitting beneath tall trees.And my days are numbered for learning.My days for holding the ones I love are numbered,As are my days of kisses.My days of anguish, fear, and longing - they too are numbered.And my days of walking the crests of high hills.My days of deep conversation with friends and colleagues are numberedAnd the days on which I can make a dent on the world.My days for inventing, creating, demolishing, undoing, subverting, contributing.My days for mending and tearing apart.My days of confusion.My days of spreadsheets, keyboards, pens, paperclips.My days for travelling by train, bus, boat, plane.My days for reading, music, turning my face towards the stars, and washing the dishes.My days of getting to know myself.My days for understanding what life is.My days for loving.My days for knowing.All of these, too.I don't think I can remember this all the time.I am too forgetful for that.Too easily absorbed in the work of the day.But when I do remember, life shines with new depth and wonder.And I find it much more straightforwardTo do what I am here to do.

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Drowsiness is a red alert

In my research for yesterday's post on our profound sleep crisis, I came across some startling work from Dr. William Dement of Stanford University's Center of Excellence for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Sleep Disorders.I had to tell you about it.So many times in my life so far, in order to get somewhere that was important to me, I have continued to drive while feeling drowsy. It's often seemed to me to be not too bad. 'Just a little further', I tell myself. Wind the windows down. Put some music on. Grip the wheel. Sip some water. I'll soon be there.Never again.Dr Dement tells us we must treat drowsiness - which so many of us experience while driving - not as a sign of being a little tired but as a red alert, as the last step before falling asleep, not the first.'Drowsiness', he tells us, 'means you are seconds away from sleep.'Although I say to myself I take safe driving seriously, I really didn't understand the seriousness of this before. And I am shaken by the possible consequences of my self-reassurance, my denial of the seriousness of the situation, and my turning away from the wisdom of my own body.Surely this, if anything, is a call to wake up.'Imagine what it could mean', Dement says, 'when you're behind the wheel of a car driving on the highway. Drowsiness may mean you are seconds from a disaster.'He continues - 'If everyone responded as if it were an emergency when they became aware of feeling drowsy, an enormous amount of human suffering and catastrophic events would be avoided ... Seconds away from sleep may mean seconds away from death.'You can read more of Dr. Dement's work on his website here, or read about his work and that of many others in the sleep section of Tony Schwartz's wonderful book Be Excellent at Anything (previously titled The Way We're Working Isn't Working).

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Pay attention

If you read the news, speak to friends, look at what's happening around you, it's hard not to be reminded of the transience and fragility of life. And even if we manage to avoid disaster, accident or misfortune that ends our lives early - even with a long life - we are gone in the blink of an eye.

In the light of this it’s understandable that we’re spooked - rushing and spilling over ourselves to make a mark on the world, or numbing ourselves with our busyness. In the face of our own finitude the contemporary world affords us endless opportunities to scatter ourselves into a million projects and distractions.

But there are parallel paths available to us, that I think are worth returning to, often.

When you eat, just eat.

When you are with another, just be with them.

When you work, just work.

When you read, just read.

When you kiss, just kiss.

When you walk, just walk.

When you arrive in a place, look.

Stop, sometimes, to do nothing apart from paying attention, for longer than you can usually bear.

These are paths to putting things down - outer things, inner things - in order to be in contact with the life we are each in the midst of living, for a while. While we still have it.

None of this comes easily to most of us. We are so practiced at being in a billion places simultaneously. And so we have to consciously take our practice in the other direction. We're called upon to practice simplicity. To practice being up to one thing at a time.

And to practice paying attention to the exquisite depth of what is, always, right here in front of us.

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Towards or away?

Watching Julianne Moore's sensitive and touching portrayal of a women with early-onset Alzheimer's disease in Still Alice, I'm struck by how much each of us stand to lose. Whether it occurs for us as the loss of our selves first, as it does for Alice, or in some other configuration, we'll one day lose all of our relationships, all of our possessions, all of our stories.We'll lose trees and buses, boring train journeys, washing the dishes, music, kisses, worrying about money, sun-filled afternoons, drawing, gazing into the eyes of another, learning, the saltiness of the ocean, tax returns, earache, job titles, paperclips, mountains.It's the knowing that Alice's departure awaits all of us, though in wildly varying forms, that makes watching it so tender and so affecting.And it raises a question for all of us - what to do with this knowledge?Surrender and despair because nothing ever works out anyway?Open ever more widely to the wonder of the life that is here already?Make ourselves feel strong, impenetrable, holding rigidly onto our ideas and fighting away what scares us?Retreat into a world of banal distraction, turning into what's trivial because it soothes us?Build towers and edifices - real or symbolic - so that our names are never forgotten?Damage and destroy others, using our destructive power to give us the feel of conquering death?Open ever more to the knowledge that we're all - all of us - in this together and act from there?It seems to me that we're always in the midst of choosing one of these responses, or others like them, whether we're paying attention to our choices or not. And the kind of life we lead will flow, in significant part, from the way in which we choose to run from life and death, and from the way we choose to turn towards them.

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