Promises to tomorrow #29 Puddling

A puddle-in-waiting – soon to be transformed by the arrival of Wellington boots inhabited by a toddler who intuitively knows what a muddy water filled crevice in a path has the potential to be. In two jumps the puddle is revealed, squeals of delight and brown goo turns into joy creating matter. Puddles are intrinsically invitational.

Can we make puddles? Places where a hole in our path fills with gifts from the sky? A place where the first empty erosion and corrosive properties remains open to being melted by the transformational H2O. The combination of their union makes happy mud when they meet in the imagination of a toddler. Only by being willing to recieve the invitation like a little child is it possible not to fear the puddle but to jump in “boots ‘n’ all”.

I find myself meandering, puddling about, once easy decisions now complicated and multi layered, requiring meticulous planning and contingencies. Plan B and plan C often needing to be actioned and even then unexpected scenarios turn up to stretch the limits. Each variable another puddle making moment.

My promise to tomorrow is to recognise the puddle-in-waiting is an invitation by having my Wellington boots on so I can jump in and splash around in the mud, to be joyful and see the potential pleasure of mucking about with simplicity in complexity of the puddle made.

Easier said than done. My heart has a hole, my tears fill the hole, my feet know how to say yes to puddles – now if I could get them all to synchronize – puddling about could be fun and less like moving in slow motion through molasses.

Promises to tomorrow #28 Sigmoid Curve

Morning breaks with the first slivers of sunshine as the moon completes her journey. The smooth sine waves of night and day come through my window, one cycle beginning before the next one has ended.

Charles Handy first introduced me to the concept of the sigmoid curve in his book The Empty Raincoat. According to Handy, the best time to start a new ‘curve’ is before you reach the peak of your existing one. His advice was to start something new at a time when you still have the resources, and the spirit, to take it to new heights. He juxtaposed this to those who only start something new, when you are at rock bottom or something has ended. Handy advised this was a way in, to make sense of the future too. Having a preparedness and openness to the future long before it is dawning is the instruction of those darkest moments before the dawn. A new day is always going to arrive and there will be darkness before that, and preparing in the dark is preparing before it is too late.

Preparing means reading the signs of the times, understanding the elements and variables, it does not mean knowing how it will end or what will remain from one curve to another. It means holding the emergent and decaying together in the flow of the sigmoid curve so they co-exist, neither detracting from the other, just as the moon is setting and the sun is rising, they both hold their own space in a single sky. Contemporaneously co-existing no signs of competition between the two.

So it is too with the one I love who prepares for death in equal measure to continuing a practice of living. The sacred night, a school offering different lessons to the day time classroom, Eve and Dawn, concierge sisters sometimes tease with a menu of what is on offer for the next bit of time in dreams and memories. Forecasts and backcasts.

My promise to tomorrow is to live at that point in the curve where the two waves meet, not to get too far ahead or too far behind. To try and hold steady to live in that place and give it due respect and acknowledgement. Adaptation and departure means signing up fully to membership of our species means fully embracing our mortality. As I have written before echoing the work of Stephen Jenkinson, imagine if we actually lived each moment in the full awareness death is always on our shoulder.

Invited to hold and sometimes create the space to enable these co-existing moments to be blessed, sanctified, I too prepare for the future, in the here and now, knowing the energy I have now, may not be accessible to me further along the curve.

As Handy says:“The world keeps changing. It is one of the paradoxes of success that the things and the ways which got you where you are, are seldom those that keep you there.” While he was talking about business, it is true for our times in so many ways – professionally, personally as a planet and a species. Looking to what got us to where we are will not provide the answers to how we will get to the next part of the journey.

The sun gets brighter and the moon disappears. The sun sets and the moon rises with twinkling constellations pirouetting around her. Distinctly day, explicitly night. The in-between times, the paradoxes, places of co-existence, transformational intersections – this is that.

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Promises to tomorrow #27 Hanging out

There is an art to hanging out, sitting around, chewing the fat. Hanging out is not being idle. It does have meaning and value. Hanging out does make a contribution. Hanging out builds up the stocks towards high quality stillness. Hanging out is under threat as an artistic practice. Operating at low speed, disengaged from the engine helps preserve energy.  The informality of hanging out brings relaxation and values spending time with others as a gift of wanting to be in one another’s company and brings respite from the fullness and intensity of intentional high powered times.

Being around others in a soft, footloose and unstructured ways is a sign of deep, easy relations. Just to be, without purpose, is a be-ing of deep certainty of acceptance and freedom. To hang out with old friends, and new, with nature, with your spirit, your god brings a deep rewarding fullness requiring a little effort of marking time together.  Breathing the same air brings its own intimacy. Hanging out is not nothing and maybe indeed a mechanism to inoculate yourself from falling into the Nothing of Michael Ende’s NeverEnding Story – that great abyss where fantasies have no place – hanging out refuels dreams and makes memories.

G’mork: Don’t you know anything about Fantasia? It’s the world of human fantasies. Every part, every creature of it, is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has not boundaries.

Atreyu: But why is Fantasia dying, then?

G’mork: Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So The Nothing grows stronger!

Atreyu: What Is The Nothing?

G’mork: It’s the emptiness that’s left. It is like a despair, destroying this world … People who have no hopes are easy to control, and whoever has the control has the power.

An idle engine is a promise to tomorrow, purring before embarking on a journey, getting ready to warm up the car to maximise the capacity of the carburetor may be a thing of the past with modern vehicles, but the principle still has worth.  To ensure all the moving parts are ready to go, is a well known technique for the body to manage physical fitness – so why not hanging out be part of what maintains our humanity fitness?  My promise to tomorrow is to hang out more. Idle conversation, meandering with others in not so well organised ways, to find moments to chat about dreams and fantasies, to keep the Nothing at bay.

The Nothing

 

 

Promises to Tomorrow #26 Stop signs

Stop signs are there for a reason: to help the traffic flow, keep everyone safe, helps drivers work out who has right of way. They don’t appear randomly, they are placed with considerable attention by traffic engineers who are looking at a whole system of roads and routes. I would love to see some stop signs popping up in conversations.

As a facilitator I often act like a traffic engineer helping people to pause and rest before moving through a junction, or enabling a moment of self correction to get back on track; yet in everyday conversations I sometimes find myself wanting to crash through and just get to the next point. It has been said that not listening is the first form of violence. Paying deep attention, feeling heard, being received for who you are, where you are, and indeed why you are – is in the ears and actions of a listener. This is not a passive role in any conversation, and the power of great listening may be a stop sign in disguise. Good listening often slows the conversation down.

Knowing when to stop means recognizing the sign for what it is and there is no mistaking the red and white hexagonal message board that calls us to attention.  Not everyone recognises the stop signs in conversations but when people stop listening we usually notice and are pulled up in our tracks. We send ourselves messages that we are not very interesting or not important enough to be heard or control of the situation has switched and we are no longer relevant contributors – these all deal little injuries to our ego. Back in the 90s Hugh Mackay wrote a book Why Don’t People Listen? It became a classic. It’s not what our message does to the listener, but what the listener does with our message that determines our success as communicators was one of Mackay’s key points. Our message has the power to motivate the listener to take action and therefore drive the conversation forward and our communication to the next level. Stopping to listen and to stop listening, are the invisible stop signs in conversations.

My promise to tomorrow is to use stop signs in conversations to reinforce and reward listening by listening first. Hearing others thoughts into words and applying Mackay’s discipline to ask ourselves a tough question : What will this person do with my message? And in order to arrive at that answer, it will mean taking stock, taking a breath, listening to the other person and knowing them well enough to be able to make an honest assessment; it will mean applying a stop sign to yourself.  You can’t yell louder just to be heard. We are being offered off road stop signs many times a day, paying attention to them with the same discipline as we would behind a wheel may bring some easier traffic flows in conversations and life.

PS

If you are not familiar with Mackay’s work, he prescribes ten laws for solving the communication problem and while this was written in 1994, I don’t think it has gone out of date. In a nutshell:

1) It’s not what our message does to the listener, but what the listener does with our message, that determines our success as communicators.

2) Listeners will generally interpret messages in ways which make them feel comfortable and secure.

3) When people’s attitudes are attacked head-on, they are likely to defend those attitudes and, in the process, to reinforce them.

4) People pay most attention to messages which are relevant to their own circumstances and point of view.

5) People who feel insecure in a relationship are unlikely to be good listeners.

6) People are more likely to listen to us if we also listen to them.

7) People are more likely to change in response to a combination of new experience and communication than in response to communication alone.

8) People are more likely to support a change which affects them if they are consulted before the change is made.

9) The message in what is said will be interpreted in the light of how, when, where and by whom it is said.

10) Lack of self knowledge and unwillingness to resolve our own internal conflicts make it harder for us to communicate with other people.

 

 

Promises to tomorrow #25 Hugs

Somewhere between stumbles and skips, lies the accomplishment of becoming steady on your feet. The toddler knows this well as they pick themselves up and start again after a fall. There is the breath held to the injury, sealed with a kiss that propels the one first felled into action for the next adventure.

We all need hugs and kisses when we fall, administered by loved ones who know how to integrate the wound back into the body and for healing to start straight away. There are so many open wounds around us all the time, where the getting up again was not supported with the right touch to help us get up and try again. (I know not all falls can be fixed with the ease of a kiss, many are more than skin deep, but there are some.)

My promise to tomorrow is to notice where a hug and a kiss might be just what the doctor ordered and to apply where necessary. Formed in the warmth and simplicity of an embrace, the restorative power of a kiss dispenses courage to go on. Picking yourself up aided by these simple acts of compassion is empowering. Being witness to the fall and then bestowing a blessing through touch is a sign of confidence in the other, that they can go on, you have hope in them, you trust them to be able to keep at it and that the fall is over … until next time … and like the faithful eye-witness you are, your dispensary will be open for the next time there is a spill.

Touch is gift and in this time where touch is often under suspicion, of all the senses it is the most vulnerable to being misunderstood. We all know the dis-ease of a hug that is held a fraction too long, but that doesn’t mean we should stop giving them, if we know what works and often it is touch, well lets not shy away from its healing potential. The amazing organ of the skin and the power of skin to skin contact is what helps a child to thrive, the happy hormone of oxytocin is released and sets off a reaction in the body not just for the person being touched but the person doing the touching as well. Hugs are a health tonic for all concerned, and build trust.

I am respectful of people’s space and we can always request permission to give a hug, we become empathy builders, healers, bringers of hope when we hug and we definitely begin to ‘make it better’ when we give freely the simple gift of a hug and a kiss. These tiny acts of human contact may well be all that is needed in times when we fall to help us get up again. I have both giver and recipient of a lot of hugs this past week and can attest to their power to bringing more solid ground under my feet.  In the immortal words of A.A.Milne coming from Christopher Robin to his beloved  and much hugged Winnie the Pooh:

Promise me you’ll always remember that you’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

 

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