I didn’t know what to expect next at any time and this made for a creative and thought-provoking space. The ‘having no control’ nature of the game whilst having to exercise a high level of control and self-awareness at all times was challenging on many levels and this would suit every member of a team […]
I was surprised to hear myself say “Just shoot them!” and mean it.
That sort of angry response isn’t me, but I just couldn’t believe the restraint shown by the Police Officers on TV who were trying to arrest car thieves who were clearly intent on getting away and didn’t appear to care if they killed someone else in the process. I have a close friend who is a Police Officer and all I could think was that it could have been them! Earlier that evening, I had also been surprised to find tears welling and my voice crackle with emotion as I made a comment to my wife about the unbelievable courage shown by someone in another show we were watching.
If you ask people how they are at the moment, it doesn’t take long before fear, distress or anger comes to the surface and almost everyone has come across someone who appears to be reacting in unexpected or irrational ways.
If that is your experience and you are struggling to understand what is going on, I have a model that I think will help.
Looking back, one of our daughters had tested positive for COVID that morning so, in my defence, it was the end of day one of quarantine with all the uncertainty that brings. I had also been a part of several emotional conversations throughout the day. One with a friend who had decided to sell up and move because they are increasingly unhappy where they are, another who was waiting for their child to land safely in Germany on the day a 737 had crashed in China.
It wasn’t all bad though. Some of the conversations had opened the door to a number of exciting possibilities work-wise in the coming months – but there were some follow-up emails to send and then a lot of things to consider before taking the next steps. The day before had marked the formal end of a multi-year engagement with an organisation so there were still many loose ends that needed my attention…
All that with the evening news full of Ukraine, the ongoing post floods clean-up and repair, climate change and an inquest into a particularly distressing domestic violence murder-suicide involving young children!
Distress, anguish, anger and rage are not popular topics for posts. Neither is fear, but I think it is time we started talking about our experience of all of them, how we might make sense of it and how we can lighten our load.
When I observe myself or others acting in unexpected or unreasonable ways, I have found the stimulus density model of affect developed by Silvan Tomkins has helped me make sense of it all. It is simple and intuitive, but like all the best models it provides us with some powerful insights.
By thinking about our daily experience in terms of a graph of stimulus density over time (Figure 1 below), Tomkins identifies six affective patterns that can trigger a response in us. Each of the affects has two descriptors in order to convey the possible range of stimulus densities it covers.
For example, the affect of surprise/startle is thought about as a high density of stimulus in a very short period of time – from when someone drops a glass in a restaurant through to a nearby lightning strike that delivers an intense flash of light and a loud clap of thunder in just milliseconds.
The affect of fear/terror is characterised by an increasing stimulus density over time that reaches an intensity that we feel is threatening to our being. For example, imagine you have taken a small boat out on a calm ocean for an afternoon of fishing and the sky starts to darken. You look up and notice the huge black clouds approaching and hear the rumble of the thunder. You are concerned as the wind starts to pick up creating a chop on the sea that slaps against the side of the boat.
The sky goes dark, the wind increases, and you see the worrying lightning flashes in the distance. Motivated by your fear you start to head back to port, the swell increases as the increasing wind and large, cold drops of rain begin to hit your face. The time between the lightning flash and the thunderclaps shortens to seconds as the first pieces of grape size hail bounce off the boat around you. It is when the lightning strikes the water nearby and you can smell the ozone that you fear you are in terrible trouble ….
Hopefully, those sorts of intense affective experiences are relatively short-lived for most of us. It is when they continue for an extended period of time, when we experience too much for too long, that we move into the realms of distress/anguish.
The experience of living in the affective state of distress/anguish is, I think, becoming increasingly common for many people.
Tomkins’ idea of a stimulus density is that it can be cumulative. Looking back at all the things that were happening for me that day, Tomkins’ model explains why watching a mildly emotional scene on TV could, on top of everything else, push me further above the line and bring tears of distress to my eyes. Later on, the tension generated by the car chase and the threat I could imagine to Police Officers like my friend might just have pushed the cumulative density higher again towards anger/rage.
Part of the power I find in Tomkins’ model is that it is independent of the type of stimulus. The negative things like dealing with the practicality of a COVID quarantine and thinking about the war in Ukraine contribute in much the same way that positives like writing email follow-ups for opportunities and the relief of completing a successful engagement do. The stimuli can come from an aching tooth just as easily as from the whirr of our minds as we anticipate a simple check-up if we fear visiting the dentist.
Your affective system doesn’t care who or what creates the stimulus!
How then can we use the model to reduce our own levels of stress and distress?
One of the biggest sources of stress in our lives can be the behaviour of other people we interact with at home, at work or when we are just going about our business.
The unexpectedly emotional outburst from your teenager over breakfast, a sharp comment from your partner as you head off to work or that crazy person yelling at you in traffic who seems to think you changed lanes purposely to cut him off – they can all leave us wondering what is wrong with them and what we have done to deserve that kind of treatment from them?
A lot of the time the answer is, nothing.
They are probably just dealing with a lot of different stuff in their lives at a density that has gone on for too long and feels like it is getting to be too much. You just happened to be the person who provides that last straw, the final piece of stimulus that tips them over the line and is then on the receiving end of their expressions of distress or anger.
The truth is it had almost nothing to do with you so don’t take it personally.
Tomkins’ model creates the opportunity for us to acknowledge that:
- The people that we come in contact with throughout our day might just be feeling overwhelmed by all the things (positive and negative) going on in their lives and that their “irrational” responses to what we might see as the very small things we do can actually make a lot of sense;
- Their responses have very little to do with us so there is little to be gained by taking it personally (by personally taking on their responses as another stimulus, another source of stress in our life); and
- We can make the choice to not take it personally and respond with compassion and understanding and by doing so benefit both of us by not creating an additional stress that neither of us need.
It isn’t always easy to make that choice and there are a lot of times when it isn’t until well after the fact that we remember that we had a choice.
That is ok though, you can still benefit from Tomkins’ model. In the same way that our thoughts and worries about an upcoming trip to the dentist adds to the cognitive load we are carrying, staying angry at someone (or at ourselves) for the way they reacted helps sustain the very feelings of overwhelm we are trying to avoid.
Remind yourself that it had very little to do with you, offer them (and yourself) compassion for the distressing circumstances life places us in and chose not to pick up that particular straw. I guarantee that you will feel a whole lot lighter.
***
My new book Listening Differently In Professional Life can be found here in eBook, Audiobook and paperback.
If you would like me to come and share with you and your team the benefits that come from my work in the theatre, coaching and the experiential learning environments that I create and facilitate, make me an offer via the Contact Me page.
Here is what some participants have said about their experience with me:
― Selina
As a participant in my first ever Samurai Game I can now understand why the world has embraced this experience to take people out of their comfort zones and enable them to explore their own everyday existence, values and morals. I would recommend this to any leadership team or business unit wanting to unlock that […]
For more on the Samurai Game(TM) you should start here and here.
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts and you would like to read more, you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
After you have subscribed, send this post on to your friends. Go on. You know at least one person who should read this post and three more who could use a bit of shaking up… seriously. Do it now. You read this far so send it on! I promise they won’t judge you or think less of you if you do.
Process, not outcomes.
January 3, 2022
There are countless articles and posts about how Japanese kintsugi bowls are a beautiful metaphor for life. How the bowl represents us, and we shouldn’t judge others for the obvious flaws and imperfections that arise from simply living their lives. We are encouraged to believe that our cracks, when repaired with gold or silver, give us character and let our true selves shine.
This isn’t one of those posts.
My wife, youngest daughter and I recently tried our hands at kintsugi. The kit was a Christmas gift, an opportunity to repair three handmade bowls that had been damaged due to an unfortunate incident that arose from simply living our lives.
We started with the pieces in front of us. We each thought we had collected what we needed, but it wasn’t until we started to look closely that we saw the different ways the bowls had been damaged. Even within a bowl, large clean breaks looked like they fit back together almost seamlessly, while other parts had shattered into tiny pieces. Often it wasn’t clear how (or even whether) they would be able to be repaired.
Our bowls were all impacted by the same event, but the damage done to each was very different.
Our bowls were all damaged, but what was needed to make each one whole again was also different.
The bowl that initially looked the most damaged had been broken into a few large pieces. The efforts to make it whole and functional again seemed to advance most quickly, leaving some envious of the progress. It didn’t become evident until later that our early attempts at repair, though well-intentioned, were clumsy and had created further problems for us. Minor errors in alignment meant that later in the process it took much more effort to get the other pieces to fit.
We each had our own approach to repairing the damage.
We each had different ideas about the outcome we were looking for, what would be acceptable, and in what order we needed to do the work of putting it back together.
What I noticed most of all though, was that it was all too easy for me to be critical of someone else’s attempts at repair until I found myself struggling for much the same reason.
It is not the kintsugi bowls that are a beautiful metaphor for life, it is the process that creates them.
***
If you would like me to come and share with you and your team the benefits that come from my work in the theatre, coaching and the experiential learning environments that I create and facilitate, make me an offer via the Contact Me page.
Here is what some participants have said about their experience with me:
Leaders of today and tomorrow need to understand the meaning of trust. They must then demonstrate it in their behaviour. This participatory personal learning experience stands alone in developing these traits. The Samurai Game helps aspiring leaders to identify and reinforce their code of honour and ethics, their Bushido. Paul Marshall’s brilliance guides you across […]
I participated in the Samurai Game workshop Paul facilitated and I highly recommend it. I found it to be an exceptional opportunity to learn more about who you are as a person and how you behave/respond to different situations and events that you have no control over. You think you know how you will behave/respond, […]
For more on the Samurai Game you should start here and here.
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts and you would like to read more, you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
After you have subscribed, send this post on to your friends. Go on. You know at least one person who should read this post and three more who could use a bit of shaking up… seriously. Do it now. You read this far so send it on! I promise they won’t judge you or think less of you if you do.
“Over 30 years ago I participated in The Samurai Game® …” is how the recent blog post from Annelisa MacBean starts and it doesn’t surprise me. Just last week one of the participants in the very first series of Samurai Games that I facilitated said to me “I still think about that experience you know …”
When you are offering workshop experiences to people they often ask what the outcomes will be for them? In a corporate context, can I guarantee that participants will find value?
I tell them what my friend and mentor told me when I first asked him that question.
The Samurai Game lights a fuse in everyone who participates and it will set off a charge that will reverberate throughout their lives. The only unknown is how long the fuse is for the individual concerned. For many it is minutes long and you can almost feel the “boom” during the workshop … but for others it can be weeks or even months.
One thing I can guarantee – whenever it does, it changes you for ever.
***
If you would like me to come and share with you and your team the benefits that come from my work in the theatre, coaching and the experiential learning environments that I create and facilitate, make me an offer via the Contact Me page.
Here is what some participants have said about their experience with me:
I attended one of Paul’s public offerings of The Samurai Game in early 2015 and was very impressed, both with Paul’s skills as a facilitator and the immense personal/professional value of the game itself. I would have no hesitation recommending The Samurai Game as an avenue of personal development/reflection, or as part of a leadership […]
I didn’t know what to expect next at any time and this made for a creative and thought-provoking space. The ‘having no control’ nature of the game whilst having to exercise a high level of control and self-awareness at all times was challenging on many levels and this would suit every member of a team […]
For more on the Samurai Game you should start here and here.
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts and you would like to read more, you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
After you have subscribed, send this post on to your friends. Go on. You know at least one person who should read this post and three more who could use a bit of shaking up… seriously. Do it now. You read this far so send it on! I promise they won’t judge you or think less of you if you do.
cultivating strangerness
June 13, 2021
It usually happens at night.
The feeling of other-ness. Of not being of this place.
Not recognising the silent streets and houses that I can see out the window of the Uber. Being driven by someone I don’t know. It is almost familiar but, not. It opens my eyes – literally and figuratively, and I am aware that I am aware in a way that I am usually not.
It happens more when I travel. When the signs are in a different language the other-ness is more obvious. When they are in my native English it generates a more deeply unsettling sense of almost-but-not-quite.
This time it was the middle of the day.
Pushing a shopping trolley around a new “market” though it wasn’t because the new just meant haven’t-been-here before. The layout was more serpentine and there were even dead-ends. Who does that? The products were things I recognised though the brands and names sometimes weren’t. It was almost familiar but not. Like that market across from the place we stayed the last time we were in New York City…
A machine for making “fresh” peanut butter! Bread on Ferris-wheel like structures operated by handles? The smell of a fresh seafood section that will always be Japan for me.
And that is when it happened.
The people. There were a lot of people. Close together in a way that used to be familiar to me, but now it felt strange. Strangers and stranger for the almost-but-not-quite of the place. Eyes wide open. Ears too – though the absence of the expected foreign accents created an even greater dissonance that magnified.
There was a part of me that wanted to run, to find a way to staunch the flow of the all-of-it flooding into my system.
There was part of me watching me struggle with the feeling of being not of this place in my home town that wanted to just be with it all and wondered what if…
…
I believe the experience of the pandemic has forever changed us and continues to change us. Our world today is almost but not quite the same as it was yesterday. Tomorrow that will also be true. In response our systems are constantly scanning – constantly searching outside of us for what is the same and what is different, what is seen and what is unseen.
Inside too.
There is no spare bandwidth.
Normal isn’t but now this is.
My sense is the better we can get at being ok with that the better we can be. That is why I didn’t run. I took my place in the strangely dis-organised queue, noticed my elevated heart rate and practiced just being with the strangerness of it all. Weird.
***
If you would like me to come and share with you and your team the benefits that come from my work in the theatre, coaching and the experiential learning environments that I create and facilitate, make me an offer via the Contact Me page.
Here is what some participants have said about their experience with me:
The real world is never straightforward, and it’s seldom clear what the right answer is for many of our major decisions – especially if there’s some moral aspect to those decisions – and we have to dig down to our core values to make the decisions we can live with afterwards. It’s not often we […]
I participated in the Samurai Game workshop Paul facilitated and I highly recommend it. I found it to be an exceptional opportunity to learn more about who you are as a person and how you behave/respond to different situations and events that you have no control over. You think you know how you will behave/respond, […]
For more on the Samurai Game you should start here and here.
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts and you would like to read more, you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
After you have subscribed, send this post on to your friends. Go on. You know at least one person who should read this post and three more who could use a bit of shaking up… seriously. Do it now. You read this far so send it on! I promise they won’t judge you or think less of you if you do.
Is anxiety all it is cracked up to be? I wonder…
May 23, 2021
If you always want to know how things will turn out and you don’t like the not knowing that comes with uncertainty, then you will know anxiety well. Fighting the uncertainty can seem like the only viable option. If you are constantly on alert and worry that the worst will happen and you won’t be able to deal with it when it does, then you will always be responding from a place of anxiety.
If there is one thing that the last year or two has shown us it is that the world is an uncertain place and that things will happen that we do not expect! (128 days of lockdown anyone?)
“It has been a long time since I have posted anything here. For a while I told myself it was because I was busy – with work, with family, with all manner of things. But what I have come to realise is that I write when I think I have made sense of something and I believe that something is worth sharing.
The truth is that for much of [the year] I struggled to make sense of what is going on around me. In my city, in my country and in my world. One thing I have either heard or read recently is that times of tumultuous change brings out the worst and the best in us.
What life looks like on the other side of that tumult depends on whether we choose to respond out of fear or out of hope.”
I wrote those words back in May 2016. I am sure at the time the lack of making sense felt real and confusing. Five years on I can’t even remember what the circumstances were then that caused me to feel that way.
As I write these words in May 2021, I don’t have any difficulty pointing to the specific circumstances that are creating a similar sense of an uncertain future for us all.
It still doesn’t make much sense to me … but here I am and I feel like writing and I think that the reasons why are worth sharing.
In 2016 I didn’t comprehend the implications of the choice we have – to respond out of fear or out of hope. Maybe it was because the words seemed too strong? I wouldn’t say I was afraid … more anxious I guess, and maybe that was enough for me to conveniently avoid reflecting on the choice I was actually making.
Today, I would write that last paragraph differently:
What your life looks like on the other side of the uncertainty that always comes with change depends on whether we choose to respond from a place of anxiety or a place of wonder.
It is a small shift and, aside from anxiety being much more relatable (and easier to admit I am feeling), it lands me squarely in a distinction I was reminded of this past week that is behind the difference between anxiety and wonder – and the key to helping shift from one to the other.
Both anxiety and wonder are rooted in uncertainty. The difference is a question of acceptance.
All that is required to shift you to a place of wonder is accepting (or maybe just not opposing the fact) that change is both inevitable and a source of uncertainty. It doesn’t mean you have to be happy with the way things currently are or have to give up on the possibility that things might improve. It does mean you have to accept you don’t (and probably never can) know for sure what will happen and get curious – about what will happen and how you will deal with it.
And if you are like me, that means you have to change (!) from your usual way of dealing with it and, like starting to write these blog posts again, the anxiety around how it will turn out seems ever present and I feel like I am in limbo between a place I don’t want to return to and a place I can’t yet consistently find…
So, I am practicing being ok with that feeling because it really is just a more subtle version of the uncertainty of not knowing. At least for now I can honestly say “I wonder how it will turn out?”
***
Thanks to my coaching colleagues Santiago Mateos Turner, the CEO at Thought Box Asia for helping me see the possibilities anew and Suzanne Strike for giving me the nudge I needed to get this post out.
If you would like me to come and share with you and your team the benefits that come from my work in the theatre and the experiential learning environments that I create, make me an offer via the Contact Me page.
Here is what some participants have said about their experience with me:
The real world is never straightforward, and it’s seldom clear what the right answer is for many of our major decisions – especially if there’s some moral aspect to those decisions – and we have to dig down to our core values to make the decisions we can live with afterwards. It’s not often we […]
I participated in the Samurai Game workshop Paul facilitated and I highly recommend it. I found it to be an exceptional opportunity to learn more about who you are as a person and how you behave/respond to different situations and events that you have no control over. You think you know how you will behave/respond, […]
For more on the Samurai Game you should start here and here.
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts and you would like to read more, you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
After you have subscribed, send this post on to your friends. Go on. You know at least one person who should read this post and three more who could use a bit of shaking up… seriously. Do it now. You read this far so send it on! I promise they won’t judge you or think less of you if you do.
Are we losing the ‘community’ in our community theatres?
July 17, 2017
Community is something I have been thinking a lot about lately. Being the best community theatre should be about being the best community who just also happens to create some wonderful theatre.
I can still remember the opening night of my very first show. As a 15 year old, you are a messy mix of wanting to be noticed and being horrified when you are. Oh, the ‘actoring’.
The joy was that I was surrounded by experience; people who helped me learn to perform and become brave enough to grow. The community in ‘community theatre’ was strong and, while I learned that there are good and not quite as good ways to approach a piece of theatre in the amateur world, I became aware that it was what participation in community theatre did for individuals that made it most appealing to me.
I love the ones who struggle with nerves, but do it anyway; who are brave; who step out of their comfort zones and into the cushioned and understanding arms of fellow performers in their local community theatre company.
Since I…
View original post 974 more words
How your integrity influences your theatre life.
April 29, 2017
Bushido on the stage!
What does integrity look like to you? Is it even a thing anymore, and how does it play out in our world of community theatre?
On the surface, integrity can mean simply being a person of your word but, move deeper and it can influence how you treat people and allow others to be treated.
Let’s take a quick survey, and be brutally honest with yourself. No one is watching, so tell me which one of these statements applies to your current way of thinking –
- Integrity is like breathing to me. It says who I am and what I believe in.
- Integrity is something I put on when I need it. I wear it like the jumper Grandma gave me for Christmas last year – it’s itchy and uncomfortable but I have to put it on when she’s watching.
- Integrity – “Can you put it in a sentence?”
Here’s…
View original post 486 more words
hey buddy! What’s your story?
December 29, 2016
I am a firm believer in innate knowledge – stuff that we know but don’t necessarily know that we know. When we see that innate knowledge displayed in the people around us we don’t always recognise it in them either. It just is and they just know.
Think of an average guy, minding his own business when a man in a dark suit pushes past him provoking a surprised/angry response of “Hey buddy! What’s your story?” The dark suited man angrily mumbles something about making a huge mistake and then disappears into the crowd.
We might not think of the average guy as being particularly wise, but in that moment he is giving voice to a profound insight that unfortunately it seems our sullen friend in the dark suit isn’t able to hear. Shame really, he needs to. We all do.
So let me be that average guy for you – and you don’t even have to be rude and push past me!
What is your story?
What is the story you are telling yourself over and over again that is creating all this trouble and worry that appears to be the reality of your life? Whether the story is about you, or about someone else and the way you relate to them, what story are you telling yourself that is making you angry? Or sad? Or frustrated or disappointed?
Got it? Can you see it clearly? Good.
What ever the story is, stop it. Stop telling yourself that story and the feeling will change. Stop telling yourself that story and the reality of your life will change.
Now I am not saying don’t feel anything. Our feelings are there to give us important information about what is going on in the environment around us. We need to feel joy, surprise, anger, despair, disgust and shame.
What we don’t need is to keep telling ourselves the stories that keep re-triggering those feelings so that they become sustained, negative moods in our life.
And that is the wisdom that is in the average guy who yells “Hey Buddy! What’s your story?” at us as we push past him full of self-pity, frustration or righteous anger.
We are like the younger monk in one of my favourite teaching stories…
A young monk is traveling with an old monk when they come to a fast running river where they meet an old woman who asks for help in crossing. The young monk immediately informs her they are unable to help her as they have taken a vow to never again touch a woman. The old monk however simply smiles and lifts the woman onto his shoulders and carries her across the river and deposits her safely on the other side. The woman thanks the old monk and head off towards her destination.
The two monks continue their journey for many hours in silence until the younger monk cannot take it any longer and goes into a lengthy tirade, angrily accusing the older monk of breaking his vow and questioning his commitment. The old monk listens carefully and nods as the young monk berates him. When he has finished the old monk waits for a second before turning to his younger companion saying “I put the old woman down beside the river, why do you insist on continuing to carry her around?”
Listen to the average guy and the old monk. Give up your story about how things should be. Stop carrying all that extra weight around with you.
If you want to take this idea a step (or ten) further, watch this TED Talk by Donald Hoffman. His message is the same – what we think we perceive is not reality. Let go of that story if you can! Mind blowing stuff.
***
If you would like me to come and share with you and your team the benefits that come from my work in the theatre and the experiential learning environments that I create, make me an offer via the Contact Me page.
Here is what some participants have said about their experience with me:
I participated in the Samurai Game workshop Paul facilitated and I highly recommend it. I found it to be an exceptional opportunity to learn more about who you are as a person and how you behave/respond to different situations and events that you have no control over. You think you know how you will behave/respond, […]
Paul facilitated the Samurai Leadership Challenge with the graduating Bond University 2011 MBA class. Compelled by the Samurai values and continuously challenged by Paul in his role as the unfair and capricious Fate of War, my team & I pushed personal boundaries to acknowledge, adapt and compensate for both self & team limitations. In the […]
For more on the Samurai Game you should start here and here.
If you enjoyed reading this or my other posts and you would like to read more, you can subscribe and receive them via email simply by putting your email address into the Email Subscription box just on the right of my blog home page. You will receive a confirmation email (which some systems will think is spam so keep an eye on your junk mail) that you need to acknowledge to complete the subscription process.
After you have subscribed, send this post on to your friends. Go on. You know at least one person who should read this post and three more who could use a bit of shaking up… seriously. Do it now. You read this far so send it on! I promise they won’t judge you or think less of you if you do.
you are not naked until I can say you are
December 7, 2016
Vizzini: He didn’t fall?! Inconceivable!
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The Princess Bride
We grow up swimming in words and are at any moment at risk of drowning in our own meaning.
Think of words like mother and father. Love and family. Discipline and respect. You and I both know those words. I know they have meaning for you but I do not know for certain what that meaning is. Words like soon, today, adequate and acceptable are tossed into conversations with barely a thought that between your mouth and my ear their meaning is subject to change without notice or noticing.
A lack of words can make absent that which we do not wish to exist.
I heard a very successful CEO and member of many Boards attribute their success to growing up in a traditional Chinese Malaysian family where all the children were treated equally and subject to the same parental expectations. She was not any different to her brothers. No words were spoken that suggested to her that there was things she could not do or should not do.
Nor was the absence of those words spoken about. She went out into the world like an Empress in her new clothes.
Like the proverbial Emperor, she was surprised to hear the whispers suggesting that she wasn’t behaving the way she should behave. Didn’t she know that women don’t do those sort of things! Unlike the Emperor though, she didn’t begin to doubt herself because she had clothed her self in the certainty that comes from experience. She could and had achieved many things and she knew why and it had nothing to do with gender.
Research suggests that we cannot see something unless we have words that can describe it. Up until now I guess I had thought that would be something that created limits to what was possible in our lives. Words have helped me to see their absence can sometimes mean those limits are never created which makes anything possible.
***
If you would like me to come and share with you and your team the benefits that come from my work in the theatre and the experiential learning environments that I create, make me an offer via the Contact Me page.
Here is what some participants have said about their experience with me:
I have just been reflecting on the amazing success of our Year 6 and 7 Leadership retreats this year. Finding a way to engage and motivate students for two days about the qualities of leadership in a practical way is no mean feat. Keeping 60 boys engaged for that period of time is even more […]
I attended one of Paul’s public offerings of The Samurai Game in early 2015 and was very impressed, both with Paul’s skills as a facilitator and the immense personal/professional value of the game itself. I would have no hesitation recommending The Samurai Game as an avenue of personal development/reflection, or as part of a leadership […]
For more on the Samurai Game you should start here and here.
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the kindness of a tattooed lady
November 10, 2016
She wept alone but not unnoticed, surrounded by parents drinking coffee while their young families played in the morning sun and couples ate breakfast roti procured from the nearby market stalls.
I can’t say if it was the tattooed lady who first noticed her but she was the first to act. A simple act of inquiry. I was too far away to hear them but I imagine that the words “Are you ok?” accompanied the gentle touch on her shoulder.
It was embarrassment that came next, the shame. Thinking that other people now know that you are that person, the one who sits alone in a park beside the Sunday market crying into your latte. Composure quickly regained, assurances are offered
…yes I am fine and thank you no and really I will be ok there is just some stuff that I am dealing with at the moment
are you sure there isn’t anything I can do?
no thank you i will be fine but thank you …. thank you for asking. I’m fine…
The tattooed lady returns to her friends as unconvinced, I think, as I am that she is.
And I am at once overcome with despair and filled with hope and conflicted about what, if anything, I should do or not do. She is not ok, clearly. But that is ok, I think. There are plenty of things in this world that could easily see me sobbing in the street and many that should but that I don’t allow. Perhaps this woman is setting an example of crying into our coffee that we all should follow (though choosing perhaps a soy latte or long black if you are lactose intolerant. No need to create suffering unnecessarily!)
But then, I think, is it my reluctance to also offer myself and my concern about how that may be received that contributes to the current state of the world? I want to give her flowers, to buy her coffee, to invite her to sit with us a while and just be. But we are males and she is female and maybe that might be a cause of her sorrow and I may make it worse not better.
The tattooed lady has filled me with hope and maybe that is what I want for her. But she is crying again and I imagine that having been recognised for what it is by someone other than herself, the sorrow, or the grief or whatever it is that has overtaken her is now undeniable and has a depth and a density that she is no longer able to ignore.
And now I am struggling not to cry. I am discussing the complexities and frustrations of the electricity market in Australia with my brother and I can hear her sorrow rising up around through my words.
She has her head in her hands when the tattooed lady stops both our tears. She has bought the flowers I could not and again I am filled with despair and with hope. I want to believe that those flowers made enough of a difference, maybe not to ease the pain of living but to at least help make it bearable.
I hope they did.
Later as we were getting into the car to leave I saw the tattooed lady. I was clumsy and I think she might have thought for a minute that I meant her harm. Standing in her path all I could manage was to blurt at her an unexpectedly sudden “Thank you.”
“What for?” she asked. “For what you did back there” I replied and fled into my car.
***
finding my own Way 