The hidden cost of hiding

I am reposting this today, because two very dear friends - fiercely loving people - took the care to point out to me some ways I've been hiding what I can bring to the world. Most of us are hiding, at least some of the time, and although there are necessary protective and restorative gifts in hiding until it is our turn, it's easy to hide when it is actually our turn to step up, to speak out, to see something or someone that nobody else is seeing, and to respond with all the humanity and care we can muster.So this is my offering to all of us who are still hiding when we shouldn't be, and my encouragement - to all of us - to do what's called for in these changing, shifting times when we need, so very much, everyone to make their gifts available.It's easy for us to hide in plain sight.We hide in our busyness and in our distraction.We hide by saying only part of what's true, and withholding the rest.We hide by leaving parts of us out - our courage, our vulnerability, our truthfulness.We hide by throwing ourselves into our work,and thereby saving ourselves from showing up outside it.And we hide by throwing ourselves away from our work,and saving ourselves from showing up within it.We hide in our addictions, in numbing ourselves, in scrolling the facebook feed.We hide in pretending to be happy, when inside we're crying.We hide in our self-importance, and in overdoing our smallness.We hide behind rules and regulation, policy and procedure.And we hide in meetings through our silence and compliance.We hide by shutting down our hearts in the face of the suffering of others.We hide by stifling our ideas and holding back what only we can say.We hide in our pursuit of money and status.We hide ourselves in looking good and avoiding shame.And we hide by refusing to ask for help when we need it.And every moment of our hiding robs us, and the world,of wonders that only we can bring,from seeing that only we can see,and from words,perhaps the most necessary words,that only we can say.

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Muted

Because we are story-telling beings, we humans have a million ways of avoiding being present to what is right in front of us - people, projects, possibilities, suffering - and what is within us - thoughts, feelings, and the sensations and wisdom arising in our bodies.We so easily spin stories, throw ourselves into guilt and reminiscence about the past, worry about and try to anticipate the future. And while each of these have their place, they so easily distract us from what we're most directly in the midst of.Missing what and who is here robs us of the opportunity to experience life in its richness as we go.More importantly for everyone else, it denies us the opportunity to bring ourselves at our fullest. Because in our distraction, we respond not to the needs of the moment, but to the needs of our fear, or to our wish to not have to face the world as it is.Our deepest possibilities for connection and contribution are muted - whenever here is not where we are, and now is not what we're responding to.

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Seeing Systems

When you start to see that your organisational dramas (see this recent post) repeat themselves in organisation after organisation you can also start to see that your difficulties are often not so much personal as they are systemic.Another way to say this is that what you might think is the problem with Dave or Jill or Aggrey or Sue (or with yourself) is often being brought about by the wider system in which everyone is participating and not simply by the person themselves.We are not used to looking in this way.We blame Jill, who is in a senior position, for being aloof, distant, and unresponsive to our needs. But all the while Jill is experiencing her own position as overwhelming - caught between her personal accountability for the organisation and all the problems others keep on bringing her.We blame Aggrey, who is in a middle position, for being unable to respond to our reasonable requests for information or support or action. But in order to respond to you he needs the cooperation and response of others. All the while his experience is that of being pulled in opposite directions by the demands of his bosses and the demands of the people on his team.We blame Dave, who is a team member, for complaining that he is under-resourced, while missing that Dave is experiencing the vulnerability and uncertainty that comes from others deciding what work he will do, or even if he will have any work at all.Jill, Aggrey and Dave are experiencing the archetypal difficulties that come with being in a hierarchically 'top', 'middle' or  'bottom' position. And we judge them, mistakenly, with archetypal and personal judgements, which misunderstand their situation.We come to believe that for anything to happen they must change and that until they do we must wait and put up with it. While we wait for them to change, or demand that they change, we reserve the right to complain. We don't see the particular difficulty their positions bring, and we don't see that our very complaints are part of the problem.Our complaints assume the difficulties we experience at their hands are personal, and that the solutions to them are personal too (which is to say that Jill, Aggrey and Dave simply need to get their act together, buckle up, and do what we need of them). But much of what we're experiencing - and much of what Jill, Aggrey and Dave are experiencing -is systemic, which is to say it's being brought about by all of us. Until we see that, we're trapped in a cycle of judgement and blame which asks the impossible of our colleagues.The first step required to get out of this drama is compassion - which includes finding out what the world is really like for those whom we find troublesome.The second step is seeing that we keep these systemic difficulties going through the stories we tell about others, and that there are many alternatives to the stories that are most familiar to us.When we find and act upon stories that account for people's actions more accurately than our usual blame and judgement stories, many possibilities for connection, responsiveness and partnership open to us.For a wonderful, articulate and very practical exploration of all this, I can't recommend Barry Oshry's book Seeing Systems highly enough.

Difficult times

We seem to live in uniquely difficult times.We face multiple, simultaneous, almost intractable difficulties. The widening inequality of our societies. Economic uncertainty, and the undoing of many of the assumptions upon which we have built our economy. The effect we're having on our climate. Billions living in slums. The rise of violent religious and political fundamentalism and populism. An uncertain energy future. Rapid population growth.It's understandable in such times that we should feel afraid. That in the face of all of this difficulty we should get caught up in protecting ourselves, before anyone else. That we sooth ourselves and numb ourselves with glowing screens, with our busyness. That we distract ourselves from the buzzing, whirling sensations in our bodies and emotions that try to show us that something is wrong. That we amass whatever we can for ourselves as we try to cling on. That we wait until we feel better before we step forward and make the contribution we're here to make.But as we do this, as we pretend we're fine while all the while feeling very afraid, we forget that the world has always been this way. Human life has always been perilous. We have always been faced by crises and by threats to our very existence. We have, most probably, always told ourselves that our own times are particularly troubled ones.Seeing this opens up two new paths.The first is that we stop adding to our very real difficulties with our stories about the uniqueness of our troubles. Those stories make us mute, frozen, self-obsessed. When we know that we human beings have, for millennia, found ways of responding creatively and with great resourcefulness to what life brought us, we can begin to trust our own faculties more. We can begin to turn towards one another and the world again, and ask ourselves what's needed, and what we can do.The second is that we remember that it's right in the middle of difficulty, when we are most uncertain, that our most noble and life-giving qualities can emerge. When there's trouble and we find ourselves turning towards our neighbours, towards people we hardly know, towards community, and towards the society in which we live, we remember that compassion, care for others and being in relationship are powerfully life-giving and meaningful activities.Which way we turn - towards defensive self-centredness or towards relationship and compassion - is not just a matter of choice but a matter of ongoing practice. In other words, we live lives in which through our actions we cultivate one path or another.Let's not wait until we feel safe and settled before we start to cultivate the second path, one that can bring great meaning - and great healing - to ourselves and those around us.

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Automatic or alive

Two paths available to all of us, that are an inherent part of being human.(1) The automatic path

Our bodies and minds have an exquisite ability to learn something new and then reproduce it without our having to pay much attention to it. It's what we rely on to get us around in the world. Navigating doors, cooking utensils, cars, speaking, phones, cities, social niceties, and paying for things would all be practically impossible were it not for this capacity. Without our automaticity we would have to learn and relearn how to interact with just about everything in the worlds we have invented.  Indeed, without our capacity to automatically respond to the vast and rich background of culture and tools in which we live, culture itself and tools themselves would be impossible.

(2) The responsive path

We also have an exquisite ability to make sense of and respond to the particular needs of the current moment. In any given situation we can find ourselves doing or saying something we've never done or said before. Sometimes our creative response can be surprising, sometimes clumsy, and sometimes we find ourselves able to respond with beautiful appropriateness to what's happening. From this comes our capacity to invent, to respond with empathy and compassion to others, and to change the course of a conversation or meeting or conflict mid-flow. Without this capacity we'd hardly be human at all. We'd be machines.

But here's a problem. We so often call on or demand the automatic path when what's called for is the responsive path:

We fall into habits shaped by the strong feelings that arise in our emotions and bodies.

We tell ourselves 'I don't like that' (and so don't do it).

We say 'I am this way' (meaning I won't countenance being any other way).

We insist other people stay the same as we know them, and put pressure on them to remain predictable in all kinds of overt and subtle ways.

We institutionalise or systematise basic, alive human interactions in our organisations, insisting on frameworks and codes and processes and procedures so that we won't get surprised.

We repeat ourselves again and again - saying the same things, the same jokes, the same ideas, the same cliches.

We think rules, tools, tips and techniques will save us.

We form fixed judgements of ourselves and others which we can fall back upon when we're in difficulty.

We turn away from anything that causes us anxiety or confusion. We prefer to know rather than not know. We're hesitant to step beyond the bounds of what's familiar, and comfortable.

We would often rather settle into the predicability and sense of safety that our automaticity allows. Sometimes we even call this professional or businesslike.And all the while what's most often called for in our dealings with others, in our businesses, in our work and in our organisations is the responsive path - our capacity to respond appropriately to the particular situation and its wider context; to be unpredictable, creative, exciting, unsettling, sensitive, nuanced and, above all, alive.

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The four of you

When you're talking with another person, remember that there are always more than two of you present.At the very least there's you, and them, and your inner-critic and their inner-critic.Whatever the two of you are visibly up to, there's an often hidden dynamic between the two inner-critics (who work hard to keep themselves invisible) as they jostle to keep you in line, watch out for attacks or supposed attacks from the other, spur you into defending yourself (often times when no defence is called for), have you be insistent or rigid or judging or withdrawn.And each critic spurs the other on, inventing slights and hurts, and anticipating what's it imagines is yet to come.All of this is one reason why you can sometimes look back on a conversation with bemusement and confusion. 'What on earth happened there?' you ask yourself. 'I thought we were only talking about this morning's meeting, but now I feel hurt and uncertain, and so does she'.One way to help yourself and others is to spot all of this and give name to it, at first to yourself. Learn the ways it shows up and what it gets up to when your attention is elsewhere.And then, over time, bring the existence of the critic and all its manifestations into conversation. This takes courage and openness. But bringing the inner critic out of its hiding place allows it to be seen and talked about, and responded to, and lessens its power to manipulate behind the scenes.Your inner world is always making itself known in the outer world, whether you like it or not, and it's true for everyone else too. The more you can give name to, and the more you can bring it forward from its otherwise invisible background, the more chance you'll have of working with it in service of you and everyone around you.

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Both sides

In the ancient Jewish tradition, people are thought of as having two primary orientations to the world - an inclination towards good (yetzer hatov) and an inclination towards evil (yetzer harah).The inclination towards good draws us out of ourselves towards what is most compassionate and most principled. And the inclination towards evil draws us towards our most self-centred interests, from which we care only for ourselves and not for others or the world.Surely, in this way of thinking, the inclination towards good is itself good and should be cultivated, and the inclination towards evil is bad and should be extinguished? No, say the rabbis, they are both good, and both necessary.How can this be?With only the inclination to good we risk spending all our time basking in the wonder and awe of life. Many possibilities for action are denied to us, because they cannot be known to have positive outcomes. The inclination to good, on its own, is noble but paralysed, unable to decide what to do when uncertain about consequences, when the world in all its complexity and unknowability becomes apparent.And so we need the inclination to evil also. Given free rein, it dooms us to a life of self-centredness, of action purely for our own gain. But without it, say the rabbis, nobody would create anything. We would not build houses, bring children into the world, nor do the difficult and creative work of shaping the world around us. The inclination to evil, with its indignation and rage and cunning and huge creativity is what brings us into purposeful action.Denying either side leads to trouble. It takes both inclinations in a constant dynamic tension to have us act in the most human, and most humane ways.And this is the foundational task facing each of us if we want to act with integrity in the world: we must find a way of knowing ourselves fully so that we leave nothing of ourselves out. We have to stop denying and pushing away the parts of ourselves that we don't understand, or don't like so much. We have to take our fear and confusion as seriously as our hope and our joy. We have to stop pretending to have it all together.Integrity is exactly that - integrating all of it. When we bring our hope and our fear, our nobility and selfishness, our love and our disdain, our serious adulthood and playful childishness, our light and our darkness, each informs and shapes the other in a constant dance of opposites. And this is what brings us into creative and purposeful and appropriate action in the complexity of the world.

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We are the environment for each other

It's clear that we human beings are deeply affected by the environment in which we find ourselves. We are in a constant exchange with what is around us, both shaping it and being shaped by it.And so it's worth remembering, because it's mostly so invisible to us, that we are each the environment for one another.Which means in turn that difficulties that occur for other people and with other people can often be addressed, first, by taking responsibility for what is ours, and how it's affecting those around us.

Convergent and Divergent

Convergent problems are the kind for which diligent, patient and repeated efforts produce answers we can trust. Many problems in mathematics, for example are convergent, as are the vast majority of engineering problems. Such problems are convergent because a suitable methodology and sufficient effort allow us to converge on a single, practical, true answer to the question at hand.Convergent problems lend themselves to solution by technique and process. And once we know what to do with a convergent problem, we can repeat the technique and expect to find a reliable answer, every time.Divergent problems are those for which, with diligent, patient and repeated efforts, we could expect to find many different answers. For example, in sentencing someone who has committed a crime, is justice or mercy more appropriate? Or, in the midst of many competing financial pressures, should we centralise our operation, seizing control of all the details, or should we decentralise, allowing the people with the most local expertise the opportunity to bring their own insights to bear? Is discipline or love more important in learning to do something well? Should we dedicate ourselves to conserving tradition, or supporting change? And in organising a society, is freedom to do what we each want most important, or responsibility to the wellbeing of others?Divergent problems are divergent precisely because it is possible to hold so many different perspectives. The more we inquire - if we are prepared to do so with sincerity and rigour - the more possible responses we discover. And such problems are inherently the problems of living systems in general, and human circumstances in particular - circumstances in which our consciousness, values, commitments, cares and many interpretations enter the fray.Divergent problems do not lend themselves to easy answers, to platitudes, or technique. Instead, divergent problems require us to make a transcendent move, in which we step out of the easy polarities of right or wrong, and good or bad. Such a move, which is clearly a developmental move in the sense that I have described previously, calls to the fore our capacity to live in the middle of polarities and complexity, uncertainty and fluidity. In the case of justice and mercy, this move might well be called wisdom. We run into enormous difficulty whenever we treat divergent problems as if they were convergent - as if there were some reliable process, however complex and sophisticated, by which to arrive at a correct answer. When we do this, we treat human situations as if they were mathematical or machine-like. And we strip ourselves of the possibility of cultivating discernment and genuine wisdom, reducing ourselves to rule-followers and automatons.It can never be justice alone - for strict justice is harsh, and unforgiving, and has no concern for the particulars of a human life. And it can never be mercy alone - for mercy's kindness without justice can be cruel and damaging to many in its wish to take care of the few. And it is never sufficient to say 'well, it must be mercy and justice' as if there were some simple, easy to understand combination or position between the two.And all of this is why paying attention to development matters so much, because cultivating the capacity to respond with wisdom to the many divergent problems of our times must, surely, be an ethical responsibility for all of us.

Changing the path

We human beings are both path-makers and path-followers. Both are important, but it's our innate capacity to follow paths that makes possible so much of what we are able to do, and gives it its character.Notice this in your own home. How the door handle draws you to open the door, how the kitchen table is an invitation to sit, how the half-full fridge calls you to open its doors and find something to eat. Notice how a library is a place you find yourself hushed and reverential, how you push and shove to take up your place on a crowded train even though you would do this nowhere else, how you rise in unison to shout at a football game, how the words on the page guide you through the speech you are giving even when you're not concentrating closely on them, how you quicken your step in a darkened alley, how you find yourself having driven for hours on a busy motorway without remembering what actions and choice any of the minutes entailed.Our capacity to follow the paths laid out for us is no deficiency. That the paths support us in the background, and that we do not have to think about them, is what frees us for so much of what is creative and inventive in human life - including our capacity to design entirely new paths for ourselves and others.To be human, then, is always in a large part to find ourselves shaped by what we find ourselves in the midst of.It is all of this that exposes the limits of our individualistic understanding of people and their actions - an understanding we use to make sense of much of what happens in organisational life. For when we are sure that it is the individual who is the source of all actions and behaviour, we are blind to the paths that they find themselves in the midst of.And as long as we concentrate only on getting individual people to change, or firing or changing our leaders until we get the 'perfect' right one, we miss the opportunity to work together to change or lay out the new paths which could help everyone.Indeed, working to change the paths that lend themselves to whatever difficulty we wish to address may be the most important work we can do. And this always includes our developing - together - the skills and qualities that support us in being purposeful path-makers in the first place.