Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment
Rumi
Our ability to not know, to be curious, is our energy. It breeds learning, growth, relationships, love, movement, dreams, invention, self discovery…
growth
when the conditions are right…
Flowers are amazing.
As Spring approaches and the first flowers of the season are out, it’s hard not to wonder at their sophistication.
They reach up and face the sun in an attempt to maximise their potential. They become open, literally, to possibilities. When night draws in and growth is no longer fed by the nourishing sunlight, they close and bow their heads, patiently waiting for the next surge of life expanding light and warmth.
They are hugely diverse, bright, colourful in a range of sizes. All are welcome in the garden.
We could learn so much.
…the guilt of growth
I wrote yesterday about the innocence of belonging. The compelling sense of loyalty to the tribal rules, thereby securing our belonging.
Yet growth and personal development draw us to move to new systems of belonging – school, university, new organisations, new teams and maybe to create our own family system. As we grow and develop, we risk belonging to earlier ‘clans’ by electing to behave in different ways in new tribes. Behaving and acting in the fashion of the new clan customs ensures our belonging in the new group, but risks our belonging in earlier groups on our life journey.
This tension between growth and belonging, guilt and innocence is described in Systemic Constellations theory as ‘Personal conscience’. Sometimes particular ‘rules of belonging’ to older clans can entangle us later in life. Holding us back, like a rubber bungee, making freedom and growth hard.
When you feel stuck, look over your shoulder and ask yourself, “to whom or what am I being loyal in staying stuck like this?”
What you find there may surprise you.
Acknowledge what is.
beauty on the roof
This morning, the ice on the roof of my car looked like this.
Incredible that a little water, the right temperature and ambient conditions can produce such complex intricacy, yet delicate beauty.
I am exploring personal learning and growth currently, and working with an agricultural metaphor – plant a seed, provide the right conditions and nurture growth. Is this the way for people to learn and grow?
If such beauty on the roof can be created in nature with such simplicity, there has to be something here, surely?
the folding bike of life
If you commute at all, you will have come across travellers with the folding bike.
If you have ever watched the BBC spoof W1A, the folding bike was an ever present star.
I have never owned one. I have never folded or unfolded one. Yet they seem to me to be a marvel of engineering. Collapsing wheels, pedals, frame, chain and saddle into a compact , small suitcase sized, ‘luggable’ package.
Ideal for the linking parts of the journey; fitting easily into the boot of the car, compact for the limited space on a train, portable for the walk to the office or ascending in the lift before you hand it to your office assistant, as in W1A.
Wouldn’t it be great if life was engineered like that? Expandable for the journey itself, practical, functional, expansive, whole, readily facilitating movement and progression as we go about our business of living and growing.
Yet collapsible too. Taking on a compact form for the linking moments of change and transition on life’s journey. Periods perhaps where being expanded can bruise us, or strain us, as we attempt to move through life. Where parts of our own self catch us out, banging against our shins of resilience? Periods when bits of our life maybe stick out, knock against someone else, physically or emotionally? Periods when being expanded, our natural whole self, simply gets us stuck in a doorway, challenges our manoeuverability through a narrow gap and makes change from what was, to what will be, somewhat cumbersome?
If only life were as well engineered and flexible as the folding bike.
where has the magic gone?
The John Lewis Christmas advert is out. The man on the moon. Its intent is to highlight the loneliness of many old people at Christmas and to champion the concept of giving.
But the scientists, the cynics, the ‘ne’er be happies’, the journalists are already criticising the story. In the Guardian the other day, an article entitled “Who is moon Hitler?” appeared. How can a girl have a telescope that magnifies the moon so well? What is a man doing on the moon in a shack? Is he a banished criminal? How can he breathe? Balloons could not carry a gift to the moon, don’t people understand the physics?…
I wonder, have we lost the magic of metaphor? Where have the dreams gone? Does humankind not draw inspiration from the improbable any more? How do we progress without imagination? Where on our journey did we lose that childhood gift?
I have been with a number of people who, on seeing the advert, have shed a tear. Of course they have. As I was discussing here the other day, meaning making is an inherent human need and this beautiful piece of cinematic art gives us meaning. It connects us to our emotions. It reminds us of family, of loved ones, of Christmas, of being alone and of loneliness. That creates meaning for us.
John Lewis is being commercial, naturally. The advert is not entirely altruistic. But its association with Age UK is intended to highlight the number of people, particularly old people, who will feel loneliness this Christmas. A worthy human cause.
Notwithstanding the commerciality, the charitable intent and the human story though. Surely, even in a commercial, money driven world, there is space in our humanity still for hope, for imagination, for a wonder delivered through the magic of metaphor? If not, then as human beings we have fallen far.
We should look to our children, where magic and wonder still thrive. Where story and metaphor is still rich and wondrous, filled with meaning. Where experimentation and imagination fuel learning and growth. As adults we would do well to reconnect with the child in us.
Otherwise, where has the magic gone?
you can’t have pizza without pizza
These were the words I heard this morning.
I laughed at first, but then, on reflection, realised the logic was irrefutable.
My wife was explaining a need to go to the shop, to buy pizza, so that we could have pizza for tea. The sequence of the thinking intrigued me.
It seemed to highlight the significance of setting a goal and that once the goal is in place, the steps, the resources, the requirements to fulfil that goal can follow. They become almost inevitable. The goal is pizza, pizza is required, pizza comes from the shop.
So, if you can’t have pizza without pizza, maybe…
You can’t change without changing?
You can’t move without moving?
You can’t learn without learning?
You can’t grow without growing?
You can’t see without seeing?
You can’t feel without feeling?
You can’t be without being?
Of course, these action words necessitate a self awareness – a knowledge of both the intended goal. the current state and a means of connecting them. What is learning for me? What is it I want to change? What am I feeling and what do I want to feel? What am I moving towards and how do I create movement for me? Who am I, who is the person I’m seeking to be?
It is true you can’t have pizza without pizza, but knowing what pizza you want will certainly deliver a more satisfying meal.
growing at the edges
Trees would look strange with spindle-like trunks supporting thick-set heavy branches. New shoots necessarily grow at the tips. Established branches and the trunk, thicken to support this expansion.
My wife and I walked around a housing development site the other day – new houses being built near us. As we walked further in to the development, roads were less complete, houses half finished, before we reached a temporary fence and gate through which we could peek at groundwork for a subsequent phase. New growth building literally on established infrastructure.
Across the country, roads themselves are built at the extremity of existing roads. Sensible really, as a road that is unconnected to the network is pretty useless.
You only have to observe weeds pushing through paving and tarmac to see what power lies at the most delicate tip of the plant. The drive to push through, to break new ground, belying the tender fragility of that new growth.
So too it would seem with our development as human beings. Growth comes at the edge. It builds on what already exists. At first it is new, a little fragile, but gradually with confidence and practice it strengthens and opens up new possibilities for learning and growth.
Sometimes we don’t want to go to the edge. It can be scary. A little uncertain. A little too new. We feel vulnerable.
But if we don’t go to the edge, we won’t grow new shoots, expand our capability, learn more about ourselves and our potential.
Stand at the edge of yourself. Branch out. Literally.
the weather system of growth
“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder”
Rumi
the move for movement
Water seldom stands still.
Part of the endless water cycle. Rain, snow, hail and other precipitation falls. It runs from mountain to valley, it seeps into the ground, it pours into rivers. Driven by gravity, it is drawn down towards the earth. Providing a life source for plants, humans and other species. Then, from the land, the oceans and seas, evaporation and condensation draw the water up again, high into the atmosphere where the cycle begins again.
Water in many forms, with many uses. Always moving, always transforming, always serving.
As human beings we too seem drawn to movement. To move away from a past or present truth or to move towards a future one. Drawn too to transformation. Drawn to experiment. To change our state. To experience change. To work towards something. To grow our usefulness. To breathe life into something, someone. To find a new place. To simply find a place.
The inevitability of movement.
Yet water pauses too. Beads of water hesitate in the arms of the leaf, pause as a dew droplet on a blade of grass, hang in the air in a foggy breath, rest for a moment in the rock pool. Socialise with friends in the puddle, the lake.
Water reflects the beauty of now. The glassy eye of the water bead displaying its surroundings in a full panorama. The puddle reflecting passers by, life in action.
As human beings we would do well to mimic this behaviour too. To pause in the moment of now. Life comes in these moments of rest, these moments of reflection, these moments of connection with each other and the world we live in. For in one sense this is our purpose.
The cycle of movement will continue, relentlessly. It will happen whether we seek it or not. Just like the water cycle, it will complete. But like the water droplet, we would do well to pause, to reflect the light around us. Ours and that of others.
illuminated dandelion 