Steve Ridgley

the transition to Autumn

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autumn season
I like this time of year.

The light is different. The colours somehow deeper. The air somehow crisper.

Change is coming, as evidenced in the leaves and the trees, yet there is something peaceful about the shades of Autumn. A calm, crisp beauty and a rich palette of colour in nature.

I notice how the properties of Autumn align for me with things that matter to me. Light, depth, peace, beauty and a uniqueness of difference in colour reflecting human diversity…

Maybe your favourite season is Autumn too, but it says something different to you?

Maybe your season is Spring? New shoots, new life, bracing breezes, changeable weather, possibilities?

Maybe Summer? Maybe Winter?

Which season is your favourite and what does it say about you?

the gift of light, the tune of life

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light gets in

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That is how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen

We only see, because light enters our eyes.
Light illuminates everything.

Yet so often we try and keep light out. If we aren’t perfect, we attempt to conceal our weaknesses, our failings. Our judgement of self means we often wrap up our gifts, our truth, our own light. All sealed up like a neatly wrapped Christmas gift, with tape on every edge. Our gifts wrapped safe, but hidden from view.

We do this, not just in our work, our projects, our outputs, our external offerings to the world. So too with parts of our internal self, our humanity. We attempt to neatly package away our mistakes, our unwelcome behaviours, our memories, our judgements, our fears and our dreams.

Often we wrap them badly. So that despite our efforts, when shaken, the contents leak out.

Still we persist, as if boxing them neatly away is the best thing. The safe option. Yet as the lyric suggests, we simply give ourselves fewer bells. Our melody is simplified. Our music reduced to a few chords or notes. We are less.

Maybe we should embrace the cracks? Enjoy the light? Peek in through the partly open corner, remove a small piece of tape and see what the dim light illuminates?

Seek to play our tune with all of our musicality?
Percussion adding brightness to woodwind,
strings showing dexterity to booming brass,
baritone adding depth to our tenor?

the shadow cast by judgement

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shadow judgement
I was struck the other day by two meanings for the word judgement.

In a meeting we were lamenting the loss of a capability to make judgement calls. The ability to hold uncertainty. How rules, laws, policies etc have made us over sensitive to getting it wrong.  What’s the ‘right way?’ we ask. Our risk averse nature in an essentially critical world would seem to make the art of judgement a difficult tool to handle.

In a separate conversation we were discussing the dangers of judgement. The judgement we all make about other people and about ourselves. The way, in an increasingly diverse and inclusive world, we still jump to conclusions about people and equally get stuck in our own patterns of judgement about ourselves.

Wanting greater judgement, yet at the same time challenging its use.

I looked to the dictionary.  The relevant definitions are “the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions” or “an opinion or conclusion”

Perhaps that’s the point?  One misses the ‘considered’ or ‘sensible’.  Jumping to an opinion or conclusion without considering alternative perspectives, without seeking to explode well worn patterns and subjectivity?

Judging ourselves and judging others casts a shadow over our lives.

It strikes me, we need to get better at this, as human beings.

 

the emergence of the selfie

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looking at self
What gets a lexicographer up in the morning? Where does the energy come from?

Maybe the advent of new words? Maybe the evolution of old ones?

Selfie is a new word. This sudden penchant for capturing ourselves against our current environment. Looking at ourselves in our context. Getting an arms length perspective. Using a selfie stick to get even greater perspective. To see from further out. To fit more of our situation in.

Our desire to share these 2D representations of self in these static snapshots of life, is curious. We seem strangely reluctant to show ourselves in living 3D, in reality, as we exist in the world with other human beings. Alive. Both beautiful and beautifully flawed.

Of course we have always had the ability to look at ourselves from the outside. Inside our head. Long before technology gave us the ability to record an image, many of us did that in our mind’s eye. Imagined it. We see ourselves in that awkward conversation. See ourselves in that meeting where we were criticised. See ourselves in that beautiful moment of joy, of fun, of love.

Our mind’s eye has an important advantage over the selfie. We are not limited to the current moment. Not limited to a selfie snap and a hard drive of past experiences captured in still reflection. Inside, we can do this imaging, this ‘selfie’, for our future too. Imagine our own future. Our upcoming holiday. Our new home to be. We can manipulate the image – past or present. Make it brighter, more colourful, turn it around, zoom in or out. Take parts out, add parts in.

Take a mental selfie now of where you will be next week, next month, next year.

Perspective and context are crucial to our humanity. They allow us to see possibility, to reflect, to dream, to make sense, to know we’re ok.

Click.

Remember too though that living, sharing, enjoying reality in the moment are more deeply human. Share the gift of you, now, in glorious living technicolour. Not just in smiling, staged, two dimension tomorrow.

Don’t just take a selfie. Be one.

Lexicographers – let’s add ‘be a selfie’

stuck in the tunnel of life

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stuck tunnel life
My tube train stopped today at Edgware Road. The driver informed us that we would be held there for a while. There was a problem with the train in front.

It got me thinking. If a train becomes completely immovable, what happens then? The tunnel, the only route forward, is blocked. I guess we would all decamp and be forced to exit the platform, leave the station and find another way to our destination. Or I guess we could wait. Wait for life, for someone else to remove the blockage so that we can continue on our chosen path.

It struck me that in the event that this happened, we would just cope. Sure we might moan that we’ll be late, gripe about the cost of tickets and the poor service, worry that we don’t know how to get to our destination, but we would find a way. We would move on. Yet in life we often get stuck and stay stuck. Unable to see another path, we become disabled.

Of course London Underground would probably have staff available. Advice would be on hand. Guidance about how to get to our destination. Failing that, we would simply surface and surf. The Internet would tell us what to do.

Life isn’t like that. Even if people are around to listen or to give advice, our life situation is more complex, more individual, more unique, than the tube journey. The Internet doesn’t offer solutions to complicated life problems, riddled with feelings, entwined with complexities of relationship, weighed down with challenges of expectation, paralysed with the fear of coming up short in some way.

As fellow human beings, we seem hopelessly ill equipped to support each other, even if we were minded to.

Maybe this is the Internet we really need?

making meaning from now

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making meaning from now
The concept of ‘now’ intrigues me.

I have always considered myself someone who is very present, in the moment, in the ‘now’. But reading something in a book by Steve Chapman the other day, gave me a different language to describe it. This is what I took from what I read…

Time as we know it, is a social construction, a human invention, something that over many centuries we have honed and agreed universally as a good way of orienting ourselves to movements of the solar system, and to getting to our next meeting on time!

The most obvious ever-present reminders of the concept of time, are the clock and the calendar.  These have developed over centuries from lunar calendars to solar calendars, sundials etc… to, I guess, the i-watch.

This clock time, or chronos time – the on going perpetual march of seconds, minutes, hours – ticks away on our watches, clocks and electronic systems all over the world.

Daniel Stern argues that if chronos time were real, then the moment of ‘now’ would be so fleeting that we would never be able to dwell on it long enough to make meaning of the experience.  We would in effect be goldfish, with each ‘now’ moment lasting +/- one second; the unit of chronos.

The Greek concept of kairos offers an alternative perspective. Kairos is a moment of indeterminate time in which everything happens. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative, permanent nature. In kairos there are no seconds, minutes, hours, just the idea that kairos time is a passing moment of consciousness, in which something happens that offers us new meaning in our experience.

The author of my book summarises the two like this…

chronos time is a concept informed by clocks
kairos time is a concept informed by meaning

What would happen in organisations if we abandoned chronos time and just interacted, communicating, learning, until a new collective meaning emerged?

Meetings wouldn’t have agenda items with start and end points, but each item would be explored until collective new meaning emerged. Some agenda items might take five minutes, some items ten times as long.

Of course for this to work, people need to be open to learning, open to having generative conversations, open to enquiry with others as to where collective meaning existed, or was lacking.  People would need to be very present in this ‘moment of meaning making’. No longer slaves to chronos time, people would interact throughout the day until sufficient meaning had emerged for individuals to move forward, for the business to move forward.

In such a kairos informed culture I wonder if this would make us more curious, more exploratory, more accepting of alternative viewpoints and enable us to both seek meaning in our work and in our lives? It might also free us to play with our creative spirit.

What would happen if we lived our lives to kairos time? Not just at work, but all our experiences?

Even as you read this, you may be seeking to find new meaning for you?

Welcome to kairos 🙂

needs and wants, wants and needs

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want need
Waiting in for a plumber. I’m not good at waiting for someone. Deliveries, tradesmen etc. My choice is removed. I’m in their control.

I want to get out.

I need to wait though. We may have a leak. A telltale little brown patch has appeared on a ceiling.

I should wait. The leak could get worse. Despite this more sensible course of action, I’m still drawn to go out. Nowhere special, just to have the freedom to decide. It’s the freedom I want. The expert opinion I probably need.

The tension between what we want and what we need is intriguing. Are needs more powerful than wants? Are needs more fundamental to our sense of self and our wellbeing? Certainly needing shelter, water, food would seem to be basic needs. Yet wanting something can be a pretty strong draw too. Wanting to move, wanting freedom, growth, learning, progression, choice. These too are powerful motivators.

Refugees and economic migrants pouring into Europe seem to demonstrate the power of wanting a better life for your family. Wanting opportunity. Wanting freedom. Or is the migration need driven? The need for safety, for security?

I wonder if our modern world has confused the two? Do I need a new phone, or do I simply want one? Do I want a hug, or are there times I absolutely need one?

Do we know the difference any more? The difference between a need and a want? How the difference motivates our thinking? Which has more feeling? Which trumps the other? Which do we value more? The things we want and have, or the things we need and have?

Are the words interchangeable, or is it some other orientation in our lives that motivates us to prefer one word over the other? Do independent people have a penchant for wanting things? Is wanting essentially selfish? Wanting something certainly implies choice, preference. Needing something suggests less choice. It suggests necessity.

But is it the same for us all? Is there a common thread to our humanity? Or is this a more personal matter?

Maybe you want to know? Or need to? Maybe you don’t? Understanding that which motivates us would seem to be useful though? How your choice of language impacts your thinking, your emotions, your behaviours?

the need for consonants

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consonants fully present
In the sunshine at Leyton Orient today.

Half time and my team are 1-0 up.

We have been singing ‘Barmy Army’. All except one. His contribution seems to be ar-eee ar-eee. For ‘Blue Army’, it’s ooo-ar-eee.

It works though. Lost in the crowd. It adds to the noise and would seem to be quite economical. No need to waste consonants. No need to use facial muscle to form lips, mouth and jowel to enunciate all the suggested letters and sounds.

Where else can we be economical and still fit in? Save energy and still be part of the team? Go through the motions but still add something?

At work, at home, with friends, with colleagues, in relationships…?

Maybe at times we all do that?

Maybe we signal agreement, dissent, act as if we are together, pulling as one, but our commitment is only partial. Without consonants perhaps? Partially present, noisy, but somehow incomplete?