In an attempt, dear reader, to give you a more friendly experience, I am swapping blog providers to go to Wordpress.
You can now find The Zentricity Blog at "thezentricityblog.wordpress.com", where hopefully you will find it easier to interact – read on your mobile device, post comments and subscribe by email, for instance.
It has been a pleasure to connect with you via Blogger, and I trust you will still visit me at the new destination.
David
I spent many hours in the nineties, without my consent, listening to a band called Pearl Jam, who played with many other grungy bands on the soundtrack of my parenting-teenagers gig. One of their signature tunes, to which I was subjected over and over, was called "Rearview Mirror". I thought about that chorus after I caught up with my friend Emily recently.
It is always a pleasure to see Emily's insouciant blonde bob bounce into the cafe. I haven't seen her for a few months, and she seemed to bring a certain lightness with her this time, which was a bit different to the tone of some of our previous catch-ups.
We have had an occasional mentoring relationship over the past 3 years. As I have frequently advocated, and as I confirmed again to myself looking in my rearview mirror, I get at least as much out of those connections as I may impart as mentor.
Here are two things of the many things I have to thank Emily for.
Emily is the CEO of a national organisation, and the first successor to the long-serving founding CEO. A solid phalanx of the old brigade remained on the organisation's board after her appointment, and mounted a concerted rear-guard action against the transition to a new and progressive CEO.
Personal attacks in board meetings, behind-the-scenes plotting, rumour-mongering and the spreading of misinformation were the most vicious of the tools used, abetted by the complaints of some of the senior staff unable or unwilling to cope with the change in tempo.
Throughout that process, Emily managed to cling to a sense of self-worth, a desire to see the transformation of the organisation to a conclusion, and a conviction that "this too shall pass". We had a number of harrowing discussions during that time, each time concluding with Emily's resolve to keep the mission going.
The old guard has now quit the field, to take up their pipes and slippers elsewhere; the organisation has been fully unshackled and is flying. Emily's resistance to slipping into a downward spiral, or just to giving up and walking out, has kept an important operation alive and able to move forward with renewed focus.
Emily and I developed, in an organic way, a technique in our mentoring sessions which I have termed "The Spill". She would start by just letting everything on her mind tumble out, whether in any logical order or not, and we could then pull things out of that for investigation, discussion or observation.
I have found The Spill to be an invaluable tool when mentoring people who are under significant pressure – particularly CEOs, who are otherwise expected to be measured and dispassionate. But you have to be prepared, as mentor, to sit quietly, listen intently and resist the temptation to intervene until the flow has become a trickle. Only then should you start the unpacking together – as mentor try and use your scalpel rather than your cleaver in that process. Then build the plan to deal with the issues uncovered.
Thank you Emily. As ever, you teach me more than you know.
"Stories are pointillistic paintings in text, not slabs of paint slapped on vast, plain walls." I just read that in the intro to a book about using a clever piece of software for writers, but it clicked with something else that has been banging around in my head the last 24 hours or so.
Memories, the things that create your own story of your life, are like those bits of pointillism as well. (I guess you have to call them "pixels" now, don't you?) But if you just focus on the little dots, you don't get to see the whole picture.
Thoughts drive feelings, and vice-versa. I've struggled with multiple minor health niggles recently, which when aggregated have knocked around my usual aim of equanimity. The lack of well-being somehow triggered a string of memories, about a collection of bad things I have done in my life.
Believe me, it wasn't hard to find a bunch of them. That process has a fair chance of either starting or exacerbating a downward spiral, where you end up getting really down on yourself and in all probability further lowering your physical well-being too.
The only way I managed to dodge that next slide into the spiral was to retreat into what was going on right now. I was walking to the station to go and see the unveiling in concert of the Australian Chamber Orchestra's new Stradivarius – how could you feel bad about that?
It was a bit of a diving catch, but enough to escape a further descent into negativity. One of my gurus, Tara Brach, says we are Velcro for bad and negative thoughts about ourselves, and Teflon for good and positive ones.
While there is no doubt that I have done plenty of bad things, they do not have to define who I can be now. I am pretty sure there are other pixels which would hopefully join up to show a picture of countervailing good things I have done, and which help to adjust the karmic balance.
So if you get assaulted by the bad vibes of your past, or even your present, maybe you can stand back, unhook the Velcro, and look at the whole picture. You are bound to look a lot better on the big screen than in that little slice of negativity you have been watching.
My aim has been to post something on my blog each week. Often it has been more than that. But it is now two weeks since I posted.
I have some stuff in the pipeline, 7/8ths ready to go. Nearly all of it, though, is more than a month old. Inspiration for new material to post has been hard to come by recently. I have been pondering why.
There are a couple of possibilities:
You may know from earlier posts that I have been doing home renovations. In the earlier stages I was quite engaged in the actual activities of the building process. I was learning new skills, and achieving progress which gave a personal sense of satisfaction.
Inspiration for writing never seemed to be a problem.
In the last few weeks, while renovation has still been all-consuming, the process has mostly been marshalling different gangs of tradesmen, and then cleaning up or fixing up after them.
It's all been so much of the same; too much admin and not much hands-on. Inspiration has been a scarce commodity.
In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron counsels people seeking creative renewal to take a weekly "artist's date" with yourself – go and do something of your own choosing, by yourself, out of your usual rituals.
Those sorts of activities can help top up your creative well, so you can pull inspiration out of it when you need to. Different experiences beyond the quotidian usually help trigger things for me.
Travelling is also, for me, another time when bits of writing seem constantly to beg being put onto the page.
The current renovation regimen, with the associated fact of not living in my own house in the process, has drawn me away from my usual practice of daily writing. Or possibly, given me a tangible excuse for not writing daily.
Keeping a journal has so often, for me, brought with it unexpected insights and ideas. It has brought out things which would not have emerged if I hadn't been in front of a page needing to be filled, one way or the other with something, anything, before I could declare the day's journaling complete.
So it may also be that I simply haven't noticed things which might otherwise have brought inspiration, because I have not dedicated time to reflect or allow incubation of ideas.
As Belinda Thomson has noted in her recent blog post on Getting Past PR, there are times when you have to: "Just write". ("The day I lost my voice")
In that vein, I am doing something different – posting 2 articles at once. The second one (The girl in the white Corolla) is one of the few bits of random inspiration that has struck me recently.
In the meantime, I had better take my own advice – do something different, and do something the same.
A pretty girl in a plain white Corolla looked across at me, as we were stopped at a red light, and lip-synched "Love your car." And something else I couldn't quite make out: "I have one too", or "You're sexy too". The latter is admittedly unlikely. I mouthed back "Thank you" and then got all shy, hoping the lights would change. A 1999 MGF VVC, with the rare rear spoiler, has apparently still got it.
It's interesting to see what one little incident throw up, if you take a moment to notice that things are being triggered. Three things came up for me, in the next few moments.
Random inspiration
I'm not sure what made the incident stand out (beyond vanity), except that a few moments earlier I had heard a song on the radio, from an Aussie troubadour whose name I wish I could remember, called "Mario Milano's Monaro". I was perhaps just struck by the simple narrative of the song and the unexpected pleasure of the girl in the Corolla encounter.
Sentences started lining themselves up in my head, like some kind of prose poem. I can't recapture that poetry now, or perhaps I just thought it was poetic at the time. Something I hadn't appreciated, but can see now, is that inspiration can be an enjoyable experience in itself, rather than just the precursor to some sort of concrete output.
Patina
There's something re-assuring to me about the look of well-worn leather, or the dull gloss of a frequently used though aging spanner. I flatter such things as having "patina", although there is another way of looking at it, to which my wife subscribes, called "shabby".
I was mildly peeved by the comment from the guy who recently serviced the MGF, that it was "a nice tidy daily driver". Hang on – I know there are a few very minor dints and scratches. The alloy gear knob is mildly pitted and the convertible top is scuffed.
But every time I climb in and drive it, it just seems to fit; envelops me in an aura of comfort and familiarity in a world of throw-aways and rapid obsolescence. I love genuine patina, and even a bit of genuine shabby.
Simpatico
A bloke who was in the midst of an affair with a mid-sixties VW kombi (the one with the long sunroof and the flip-up split windscreens) once told me, possibly in self-defence, that there was a concept called simpatico: the reciprocal bond that can exist between a man and an inanimate object.
I'm pretty sure that he restricted the definition to men, although I wouldn't want to preclude the possibility of there being a female version of simpatico.
The MGF is a colour called Nightfire Red, no doubt some inspiration of the marketing department. I've always called it, and by extension the car, "Frankly Scarlett". I reckon I am entitled to misquote Mr Gable for lyrical effect.
Scarlett makes me smile each time I hear the snick-snick of the gearbox when I change from 3rd to 4th. I hardly ever notice the symphony of rattles and shakes.
I caught myself saying out loud: "Hey, I missed you" when I picked it up from the Park'n'Fly a few weeks ago.
We both love that long drive home from the airport, with the daggy 60's playlist on the iPod that goes for hours. Scarlett never complains about my rendition of 24 Hours from Tulsa, and it actually sounds in tune to both of us at 3,100 revs. That's part of the reciprocal nature of simpatico.
If ever I'm going to be seriously challenged by the central notion of impermanence, of all things rising and passing away, it will be when I can no longer half-slide, half-fall into that patina-covered leather bucket.
But anyway, I wonder what the Corolla girl actually said as I pulled away from the traffic lights blushing.
PS – If you haven't heard of Mario Milano, or his famous wrestler's finishing move the "Atomic Drop", then either you are under 50 or your dad has never bored you by recounting Mario's battles with Killer Kowalski and Skull Murphy. You could start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Milano
She's a wonderful woman, my wife. I started a conversation with her that I should have started 18 months ago (well, I'm a bloke, okay?). She said: "Yes, I've been thinking about that," and suggested 3 options to resolve the issue.
Suddenly, a potential problem was no longer a piece of unfinished business.
I have had another piece of business going on, which I didn't even realise was unfinished. I was playing around with an article ostensibly about clever budget ways to get from the airport to the hotel, without spending big bucks on a taxi.
A client had managed to book me into a (modest) hotel on completely the wrong side of the CBD from both the airport bus terminal and the job the next morning. I found a free shuttle bus that went to even that hotel, patting myself on the back for having done so.
As I was writing, it sort of emerged that the piece was not a helpful travel-tip blog at all, but a lament for lost status. Life used to be like this:
I swear, when I first saw George Clooney in Up in the Air, I thought it was about me, right down to the slip-on shoes to get through security faster, and definitely the same status obsession.
Those were the days, I was telling myself too often, sitting on some shuttle bus or other and trying to feel virtuous about it.
The kind of clients I work for now I wouldn't consider putting to that kind of expense, and I am certainly too much of a tight-arse to pay for it myself. I'm hanging on by a thread to some residual frequent flyer status, but even that is going to evaporate in a couple of months.
But I think I may finally be close to getting over the trappings of status, and finishing that piece of business.
Brigitte and I just did an overseas trip where we had no lounge access and check-in 3 hours ahead. Buying a drink at the airport bar. Finding the cheapest airport transfers and being pleased with ourselves for having done so. And hey, it was okay.
I guess the issue about unfinished business is recognising that it is actually unfinished. For me, that means usually means picking up the signals – little things that keep recurring like thinking or talking, with mild regret rather than fondness, about the good old days. Someone I don't really want to talk to, or something I am reticent to talk about.
I have someone who has unfinished business with me, and it will probably always be that way. I have finished it on my side, and unilateral finishing can be a challenge, but sometimes it's all that may be possible.
But gee, that champagne in the no-riff-raff lounge was nice. Even though I am getting close to qualifying as riff-raff myself.
I normally subscribe to the same theory about workshop sessions as the British Army SAS does for its clandestine missions: "Proper planning and preparation prevent piss-poor performance". Last week I did a job where we just winged it – but only as a considered decision. And we came out the other end in reasonable shape.
Why would I take a punt like that? The important factors were:
I have to say it felt uncomfortable to turn up a blank page of flipchart, and say: "Okay, here's the agenda." The first thing we put down on the page was the finishing time. Then we agreed in very explicit terms on the purpose of the session – particularly important in this context – and co-created the rest of the agenda.
What worked in the session?
One thing I am not sure really worked: when the CEO said, about the timeframe we ended up facing, "... and David will keep us to time," and I threw a small, but considered, strategic wobbly about everyone need to take personal responsibility about time.
Before taking on facilitation on the run, there are a couple of things I would suggest:
At the end of the session, I had a mild whinge about having had less time than originally scheduled for the session. Someone said: "How much better do you think the outcome would have been if we had that extra hour?" After a very brief reflection, I had to admit frankly that we would have had no less effective an outcome if we had spent that extra bit of time.
Sometimes, you really can achieve more with less.
Thus the scribe continued for a few days, reading or writing for his customers. He found the words of the scroll echoing as he listened to their stories, which gradually appeared to him in slightly different perspective. What some of them sought to cling to, or wish could be otherwise, he could see as holding them back: from finding any sufficient meaning in their current existence to let them move on; or to let them find a measure of happiness. It was not in his mind, though, for him as a humble scribe to be giving them advice.
A week or so later, as he trudged down to the bazaar laden with his writing materials and silently bemoaning his own fate, he stopped, struck with a sudden realisation. What he had lately been observing about his customers' situations applied equally to his. Wishing things were otherwise gave his days nothing extra, and sapped his own ability to be happy.
He set up his small stall that morning, and looked around the bazaar. He noticed the vibrancy, the natural rhythm of the commerce which surrounded him, the colours of the stalls, the cries of the stall holders. He felt the gratitude of his patrons, for the aid he was able to render them despite their often sad tales. He became attuned to the natural joys which many of them were sharing, joys which he had not previously focused on. He felt his own spirits lift as he read or wrote of them.
At the end of that day he packed up his stall and returned to his modest lodgings with an unaccustomed lightness.
In the succeeding days the scribe's life felt as though it were filled with a little peace, which he had not experienced since his humbling change of circumstance. Then as such things happen, his former accuser whose lies had laid him so low, was caught out in another falsehood. The untruth of his accusations against the scribe was revealed; the local prince reversed the previous punishments and added interest by way of compensation.
The scribe could be an advocate once more, with assets sufficient to last him for life.
The once-again-advocate returned to his former home. He sat amidst his comforts and possessions. As he glanced around, his eyes were drawn to the scroll. He remembered the foreigner's parting advice again: "Find your purpose through its words." He reflected on his recent happiness in accepting his own life changes and even finding small joys within them.
He knew then that he would no longer be an advocate.
He retrieved and unrolled the scroll from his writing materials. He unrolled it, and observed that its spaces, where his name had appeared on first reading at the bazaar in the presence of the foreigner, were once again blank, and shimmering softly.
The scroll called to him. Its potential to transform and enlighten others became clear. The foreigner's parting words retuned to him – "Find your purpose through its words".
He gathered a pack of travelling clothes and his writing materials. He carefully stowed the scroll in his pack. He returned to the bazaar, and put his feet upon the road out of the town.
A successful advocate, in another place and time, had made a sound career and a good income from representing wealthy merchants, to protect their assets from depreciation or loss. He was prudent enough to put aside a healthy store of funds, so that he would be able to maintain his situation when he was no longer advocating. A childhood spent in relatively modest circumstances had taught him to hang on to what he had earned.
It was difficult as an advocate to avoid some parties suffering loss, if he was to succeed in representing his own parties. One of those losers took some malicious tattle to the local prince: a story with enough seeds of credibility for the prince to be convinced of malfeasance on the advocate's part. Sentence was delivered after guilt had been decided: revocation of advocacy rights and confiscation of assets. The advocate was reduced to the thing he most feared and had clung to most tenaciously – loss of current and future circumstances.
The no-longer-advocate fell on hard times and struggled just to eat. Former friends and colleagues shunned him, forgetting or ignoring services he had performed or favours he had rendered. "This should not be happening to me," he said to himself. "I took all precautions I could against such adverse changes." He railed against whatever fate had foiled those measures to ward off adverse change.
The no-longer-advocate was forced to seek such work as he could. He could at least read and write, rare enough skills in that time and place. He found occupation at the bazaar. For a coin, he would read letters to people who had received them but could not read them, and write letters for those who wished to send them but could not write them.
For a year the now-scribe toiled at his new craft. He heard, as he read or wrote, many tales of gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and ill repute, life and death. Along with his patrons he shuddered against the consequences of change.
One day, into the bazaar, came a man in clothes which spoke of distant parts. The foreigner brought with him a scroll, tattered now but obviously once having been richly decorated. The foreigner had a sharp and worldly look about him.
"Scribe, I wish to engage your services," said the foreigner, and unrolled the scroll. "Do what you can to decipher this for me."
The scroll was written in an unusual script, in a strange tongue but in the common language as well, as though each passage had been lettered and then translated. In the first passage, in each tongue, was a blank space. As the scribe read, the space shimmered. He saw, as he looked back at the space, that it gradually formed into recognisable letters – his own name now appearing.
"All things are impermanent," he read in the words now addressed to him. "They rise and they fall away. True happiness is not to be found in shoring up defences against change, which will all crumble, but by finding harmony in its midst."
The scribe noted the words addressed to him, but could not fathom their meaning. Change had reduced him to this humble occupation – where was harmony to be found in that?
"I see your name has appeared herein," said the foreigner. "The custody of this scroll now must consequently fall to you. Find your purpose through its words." The foreigner then turned and disappeared into the crowded bazaar.
The scribe marvelled at the foreigner's gift and parting words, but saw no sense or application in them for him. He shook his head and stowed the scroll under his writing desk. He returned his attention to the queue of customers who awaited him, to read or document their own tangles with change.
(To be continued.)
That may sound a bit like the précis of a bodice-ripper, but I was caught in a reflection yesterday about my feeling towards my new Kindle, and a random collection of other things kind of grouped themselves in my head.
Love
Hate
Intrigue
And finally, I am intrigued by the fact that stuff like the above wants to order itself in my head as a potential blog post. No doubt, there is more than one person out there who would want to say to me: "Get a life."
Sometimes, many times, I just can't predict where things will end up from a hum-drum starting point. You'd think I would know better by now.
There are times when what clients really want to talk about is "structure". Or think they do. I have always found it a little dull, compared to other elements. I had spent some previous hours discussing "structure" with one of my favourite clients, and I guess it was essentially about that: how to frame your organisation to respond most effectively to the strategic and operational challenges facing it.
Structure must also respond, sometimes, to people. This client still sits in the post-start-up, pre-explosive-growth stage, with 2 inspiring co-founders running different streams. Happy and willing to share the power and the accountability of leadership. Neither wanting or needing the glory of sole control.
In corporate style show-and-tell during the previous session, I had sketched on the whiteboard a wiring diagram with boxes and arrows, depicting the "program" and "operations" sides of the organisation, and "joint CEOs" at the top of each stream. Not an unknown paradigm.
Now we were running a workshop to flesh out that paradigm with the full team. I started again on the whiteboard, with the two joint CEO boxes at the top. Then I said: "We need a box for Eric."
Eric said "Do I have to be a box?" which was a question I had never been asked before, but a fair enough one, I suppose.
"No," I said, "what would you like to be?" We eventually settled on putting Eric inside a fluffy cloud.
"When you put me up there, can I be a love-heart?" said Gabby, who is about to get married. So in one stream of the structure diagram we had a cloud, and in the other a love-heart.
At that point I suspended judgement, and said "Okay Anna, what do you want to be?" Anna went up on the board as a 5-pointed star.
Of course I then had to back-track to the joint CEO boxes: Mary-Ruth went up as a crescent moon, and Kim as the sun. There were no longer any lines or arrows in the diagram, just clusters like two constellations. We spent the rest of the session in discussion around what would be happening on the "moon side", and what would be needed on the "sun side".
It was liberating and effective. So there's a new kind of organisational design structure: the astral plane version. It's wonderful to walk out of a job feeling like I have learned at least as much as I have contributed.
Does anyone know how to run a meeting any more?
I have recently been to 2 annual general meetings, both for strata plan bodies corporate. Each has been chaired by a representative from the strata manager. In one of the meetings, for a body corporate which I chair, the strata manager actually asked if he could chair the meeting instead of me, "because there are a lot of technical points." Okay, go for it.
In each case, people who do this for a living paid scant regard to any proper process. They will, I am sure, just purport to fix it up with a set of minutes which will attempt retrospectively to make everything sit properly.
Really, it's not that hard. Here are 5 things which you can do (none of which were done in either AGM) when chairing a meeting which has some element of statutory requirement behind it. They will not only contribute to passing valid resolutions; they should also help the orderly flow of the meeting.
Is it just me, living up to a nickname I once had of "that pedantic bastard"? Maybe. But if you hang out your shingle as a professional who does this kind of business, you ought to do it properly.
And if you are an accidental chair (i.e. no-one else could be conned into taking the job), then you probably need all the help you can get. If you use these 5 steps, you will have done better than at least 50% of people who run meetings.
(If you want to see a more comprehensive one page guide to running a board meeting, or running an AGM, just email me on zentricity@optusnet.com.au)
An unexpected sparkling blue-domed day. Contrarian in view of the forecast and after horizontal rain the day before, it came like a blessing. Especially on a little island off Auckland, which has a micro-climate especially suited to growing certain types of grapes.
We climbed aboard our little wine tour bus, guided by Wayne the local expert. He took us to our first vineyard, and the first lesson for the day: choosing your own path.
The vintner, call him Les, had constructed for himself one of those chequered careers which seem so typical of smaller wine-growers: originally a geologist, then morphing into a medical degree and a successful practice with a lengthy spell in Europe. Remarkable guy.
Then like so many Kiwis, the hobbit returned to the Shire; bought a few acres whose geology he could analyse and appreciate; carefully considered the history of the land including a volcanic eruption on the neighbouring island 900 years ago; planted his vines and waited.
Les only does single varietal vintages, and pretty much single paddock ones at that. He does what he reckons will work, and what he thinks he will enjoy, like:
I talked to Les about the commercial model, versus his kind of going your own way attitude, the Field of Dreams theory – build it and they will come. Plenty of money went down the drain doing that in telecoms in the recent past.
He just backs himself, his judgement and his knowledge. Marlborough is suffering a wine glut, but Les's vintages sell out, and:
Look, I know Les is doing what he's doing because he can choose to, after a long, arduous and probably lucrative career. But it's still a pretty remarkable result built on:
If it can work in a high-stakes, capital-intensive business like wine-growing, I reckon there's scope for your humble blogger to back himself on a few more judgement calls.
I've learnt an even rougher version of accuracy. We were putting in the windows, and the plate for one of them needed to be lower for the window to sit at the right height.
Bill the builder set the Makita to the inevitable 10 mm depth and did his usual multiple cross-cut intervals along the 2 metre plate.
"You wouldn't chip that out for me, would you? Have you got a little tomahawk?"
Yes, I've got a tomahawk, but I've never conceived of it as a carpentry tool. "It'll be faster," Bill said. So there I was, chipping out the waste with vehemence. "There's another lesson for me," I said to Bill.
"You've heard of an adze, haven't you?" he said.
Yeah, I've heard of an adze, in fantasy novels or some 19th century story like Robbery Under Arms. Still, whatever works most efficiently.
Bill did a bit of final cleaning up along the plate, then took my tomahawk home and sharpened it for me. It's not a total Makita world, not just yet.
I was standing with eyes down, hanging onto a steel beam which Bill the builder was welding; making sure to avoid looking at the glare from the arc welder. A big drop of welding rod fell to the ground in front of me and spattered a bright shower of sparks upwards in a blossom of reddy-gold.
It reminded me instantly of fireworks. Not of the exotic stage managed extravaganza of NYE (as we are apparently now supposed to call it) but of the chook pen in our old family home, and a little "flower pot" that dad was lighting beside the bonfire on Empire Day.
Yep, when we still had vestiges of the pink bits on the globe, and grown-ups did a mild bit of forelock tugging, and kids sang "Hurrah for the red, white and blue" while we waved dolly pegs with appropriately coloured crepe paper strips wrapped around them held by rubber bands. When we stood up and bawled out "God save our gracious Queen."
And fireworks and big blazing bonfires that dads would spend weeks building before the 24th of May each year.
The Empire Day flashback didn't last long though, just like the day itself as imperial glory finally faded. It pointed me to the real fun about fireworks – Empire Day's successor, Cracker Night (nominally the Queen's Birthday in June), which became symbolic for me of all the stupid things boys like us could possibly manage to do with fireworks.
It's the baby-boomer blokes' lament, tinged with guilty recognition: our grandchildren will never be allowed to have the fun and the mayhem of doing dangerous childhood things.
Like these:
1966, where are you? Oh for long backyards, far enough from the house where mothers couldn't see the potential carnage going on. I know, I know, kids lost fingers, even eyes; the good burghers of Sans Souci lost letter boxes and the odd cat lost its life, when the really mean kids took up the bunger thing.
Now instead, it's like this:
I blame the lawyers. My former colleagues were very successful in eliminating bad luck, misadventure and just plain shit-happens from our lives, and turning it instead into someone's fault.
With that someone, of course, and their public liability insurers, having in the interests of truth and justice to be well and truly sued. And the nanny-state stepping in to protect us accordingly in line with the precedents set.
But I'm glad, I think, at least deep down, that my grandchildren will never be able to make bunger guns.
Sometimes people touch our lives, significantly, harshly or tangentially, as if blown towards us by one of the Buddhist worldly winds of pain, loss, shame or blame. I just had one of those touches, someone a bit lost and struggling , needing to find a focus of blame to help ease their suffering; or just needing to lash out to deflect some fleeting pain; I dunno which. Anyway, I got the whacking, and it was nicely pointed at one of my potential hotspots.
There's a temptation inevitably to respond in kind. I suppose whatever wisdom I may have gathered from various hard lessons learned in life tells me that when that temptation arises, saying "Stop!" to myself before finally going through with a response can save me some pain, and give that other person a shot at minimising their pain.
That latest salvo aimed at me landed, serendipitously, at a time when I had floated through quite a peaceful meditation, and a couple of days after having spent some life-affirming time with my consulting colleagues talking about respective personal journeys.
I was standing at the sink, washing dishes, just reflecting on that salvo, with a thought like, "Oh no, not again," when another thought followed (or was sent): "You are my great teacher," you who had made the carefully aimed attack. I gradually experienced the lessons I was being taught by my teacher:
Patience – it may be a while, if ever, before people's attitudes might change or their anger fade. That's okay, they are usually each more than worth me letting any such prospect of change have the space to blossom.
Tolerance – whatever is motivating the attack maybe has a fair basis in fact behind it, and that point of view is one for which I ought to show at least a bit of respect.
Humbleness – I have plenty of unworthy thoughts myself, and plenty of temptation to air them (to which I am sometimes known to succumb). I can easily marshal a biting return salvo which perhaps if I were a little more enlightened myself would not even form in my mind.
Restraint – there was an even chance, in this instance, that snapping back would be pointless and more likely counter-productive. A response would most likely fuel the suffering that prompted the attack. I could minimise that prospect by restraining the urge to say a bunch of things which would only feel good for a very short time.
Compassion – Jack Kornfield says "Compassion is when love meets pain." Its essence for me is a recognition that we are all in this shit-happens world together. I know what is behind some of the pain this person is feeling. Meeting that pain with love, at least vicariously, would seem to be the least I could do.
I have a different perspective on this person now, from assailant to valued teacher. And God knows I can use the lessons. There are other potential teachers that I should be looking out for and recognising, no doubt about that. And they're not all shooting at me.
My lesson for the week is: "If it's not going to show, it doesn't have to look great, so don't waste time trying to be perfect."
I reached the next stage of my builder's apprenticeship. Bill the builder deigned to let me use real tools, that is, tools beside a mattock and a shovel.
We have been building the frames. We went down to see eight-fingered Dan (his brother accidentally cut off 2 of his fingers with an axe when Dan was 6) and bought second hand oregon.
The used wood looks a bit scruffy but it's not going to bend or warp any further, being well and truly seasoned by who knows how many decades standing in someone else's house.
We got to the stage of rebating the top and bottom plates where the wall studs go in. You set the power saw to a depth of 10mm, then do a series of lateral cuts close together so you can chisel out the excess more easily.
My job was the chiselling. I know about chiselling. You always go with the grain of the wood; if you go across the grain, you can splinter the wood.
I started chiselling my stud carefully with the grain, then Bill the builder started on his stud. He had done 3 while I was neatly finishing my first one.
"I didn't think you could go across the grain," I said. Bill was belting the chisel across the grain with gusto.
"Framing is butchery," he said, "accurate butchery anyway. It doesn't have to look great – it's all going to be covered up inside the walls anyway."
So with licence like that I got into the across-the-grain act and increased my speed of rebating two-fold. When we got to the deeper rebates for the window and door lintels, it wasn't even chiselling; you just whacked the bigger wafers sideways with your hammer and tidied up a bit afterwards.
The Buddhists say: "To be enlightened is to be without anxiety about the non-perfection of the world." There's a place for rough and ready, if you think about when.
My carefully chiselled first rebate would work no better for its intended purpose than Bill's rough-hewn ones, and doing it my way was slowing down the process considerably. It would have looked very neat and tidy, but it will be encased by a brick wall on one side of it and a gyprock wall on the other.
When else do I waste time and energy in the pursuit on pointless perfection?
I guess all those things are okay in their own right, as long as they aren't impeding some more pressing process. I'll be keeping an eye out for just the right time to employ some more "accurate butchery".
(Since writing this, I pegged some washing out, not caring what the peg colours were, and experienced a small sense of liberation.)
On top of the fridge in the old family home sat an old Bakelite wireless; they called it a "wireless" in those days even though you had to plug it in. Dark brown, with an almost art deco shape of rounded corners which echoed the curves of the Hallstrom fridge.
It was the type of radio which had the stations printed on the dial rather than numbers, as if to reflect the relative stability of society then when radio stations didn't come and go. How did they run up the dial? 2FC, 2BL, 2GB, 2UE, 2CH, 2UW, 2SM. Stations now irrelevant, or the home of shrill talk-back, or delineated by numbers rather than letters. No FM radio then.
All that came back to me unexpectedly, triggered when in the early hours one morning I heard "Pearly Shells" by Burl Ives on the radio. I was surprised by the vividness of the memory jolt. I remember that song being played on our old wireless too often, along with others like "Spanish Eyes" and "Hello Dolly".
The wireless seemed to be stuck permanently on 2GB. What would you call it now, "easy listening"? Until I was 12 or so, I had no experience of any other radio format – there was only one wireless in the house and I wouldn't have contemplated pulling a chair over, climbing up and changing the station.
Something changed for me, around 1966. Maybe it was starting high school, bringing exposure to a wider world. Whatever it was, I came across, and was captivated by, the Top 40. Every Saturday night, from 7 pm to 10 pm, they played the Top 40 on 2UE from bottom to top. Somehow I talked mum into letting me change the station just for that time, inflicting pop music on the house, and staying up till 10 o'clock.
Each week, some songs would be falling down the chart, others climbing; some shooting up the rankings as "star performers" with a bullet. I would be hanging out until maybe 10 to 10 before I could guess which song would be number 1 that week.
That Saturday night Top 40 was the highlight of my week, since I had outgrown Disneyland and was by then, if only just, a too-cool teenager. I'm not sure now what the rest of the family was doing, watching TV maybe, or the younger kids were in bed. I remember mum out in the dining room sewing and doing other jobs, tolerating the music.
The ritual went on for a couple of years may be, until mum got a small transistor radio which I was able to borrow and take into our bedroom – removing the affliction of pop music from the living areas to an audience which may have been more sympathetic or just didn't care yet, my younger brothers with whom I shared the room.
Eventually dad went on his first overseas business trip, and came back laden with duty free including the marvel of my own transistor radio. "Trannie" had a different meaning in those days.
I was struck by the power of that one sound bite, the opening bars of Pearly Shells, to pitch me back 45 years to memories which I hadn't touched for decades. Another time, I remember opening a pantry door in someone's house, and being taken back to the spicy, clovey smell of the cupboard in my nanna's old kitchen and the comfort of her cooking.
They are out there: sounds, smells, sights, even tastes, which help us, if we wish and if we care to notice, to capture things in our lives with which we have lost touch, like my tentative teenage breaking away. We just have to keep an eye, an ear and a nose out for them.
Around noon on Tuesday, the Ides of March, my dad slipped away peacefully from us at Southhaven Nursing Home. His daughter and one of his sons were with him. What's the accepted phrase – "blessed release"? A wrench to our hearts nevertheless.
I spoke to one of his friends the next day, who said "He was a really nice bloke". Someone else called him "a really decent man". I remember him when he was strong and solid and capable, when at his peak he gathered respect and admiration for his vast output, his calmness under fire, his willingness to tackle the big stuff and not be daunted by it, and his capacity to pull it off.
I've learned too late, and not from him, about his early life, and some of the things which formed him, and appreciated the momentous times through which he lived at a very close remove. I regret not having talked to him more about that.
I stood beside him shortly after he left us and said to my family around me: "The best advice he gave me I didn't take. The best examples he set me I didn't follow. He bailed me out of so many of my youthful scrapes." The last few months I have reflected on and better understood the positive lessons that he taught me.
May his journey from this human existence be smooth. May his next destination be beautiful. May he be released from the pain which has dogged him. May he find the lucidity which has recently eluded him. May he be happy and free.
A solitary figure stood on top of the station steps, hair and clothes being snatched by the early morning wind. It was 6 a.m., I was going to the train, and the figure handed me an election flyer through the gloom.
It was my local Labor candidate, doing what candidates do. She is standing in an electorate which is odds-on to swing against her in about 3 weeks. She's lining up to replace a high profile, well-regarded local Labor member who has decided not to run again. The timing and circumstances are all against her.
In that early morning context, I didn't think I should just take the flyer and run. We had a brief chat, and I asked her how she was feeling about her campaign. "Determined," she said. "I'm not entitled to claim confidence, but people like me need to stand up at times like these for what the Labor Party really is."
I had to admire her determination, and her willingness to take a stand. The commitment to occupy a lonely corner before dawn to connect with prospective voters; the guts to be part of an election race when so many in her party have either screwed up or bailed out, or both; the willingness to cling to core purpose in the face of a potential rout. Whatever your politics, you've got to respect that kind of courage and belief.
There's a difference between plonking yourself futilely in front of a tide that won't be turned back, and the commitment to be counted for your belief even knowing that success is unlikely. May I be granted the wisdom to know that difference.
