ntgr8

Power, presence and purpose

2008-05-22T23:03:00.002-04:00

Have you found something that you were born to do, something that feels so centred and so right that you are convinced that it makes you who you are, and that the world would be less if you were to do something else?

Many people will shake their heads wistfully and say that they have not found such a thing. Many will not be sure such a thing exists. We are never sure it exists: except in the rare and compelling moments when we feel it.

We do feel it - it's not possible to prove that everybody feels it, but most people feel it - from time to time, or maybe only in a moment that passes too quickly. Flow is more than being so caught up in a thought that everything else fades into the background. Flow is being caught up in a thought that means - a thought that has purpose. We feel it, and we think it, and then we step into a different flow: the flow of change.

You were born for both these flows: the flow of presence, when you are aware of your purpose and the flow of power, when acting out your purpose subjects it to change.

New music for a new season

2008-05-20T08:08:00.002-04:00

I was delighted by a recent visit to a very good local music store. On one visit, I discovered five new artists to add to my iPods (yes, that's plural).

Do you listen to music? Consider listening to more music. There's some evidence it's as good for your brain as it is for your soul. Your whole brain lights up to listen to music, creating lots of positive activity. Music can persuade you to make the subtle alterations in heart beat and breathing that support a whole range of behavioural variations. Some takes you into a wonderfully focused trance; some sets you free to wander; and some insists on your full attention.

As I write this, a young woman is singing pop songs that have that mixture of intelligence and bounce associated with a well-spent youth. I can let this music sneak around the edges of my awareness, adding just a touch of bounce to my fingers on the keyboard.

Later this morning, my son will pull himself out of bed and go to his computer. He has a wonderfully eclectic collection of music. If he puts on Blood, Sweat and Tears, I will settle comfortably into the rhythm and probably start to hum. If he puts on some jazz fusion, my teeth will be set ever so slightly on edge. For me, some jazz insists on attention: it catches at the edges of my awareness and says: "Listen."

At the gym, I am a paradoxical listener. The harder I want to work out, the more mellow the music I choose: a little Jack Johnson tricks my heart into pumping a little more slowly and relaxes all the muscles that are not actually being worked in an activity. Music with more drive requires less of me.

If you were making a movie as you are making this day, what soundtrack would you choose?

The moment before you jump

2008-05-15T12:36:00.002-04:00

There's a moment before you jump, a moment of preparation when your muscles contract and your body pulls into position. A moment when the jump exists somewhere between your mind and your muscles. Nothing has happened yet; but it would take more energy to stop it from happening than it would to simply

jump.

And why would you want to jump? Why would you want a burst of acceleration and movement to move you from where you are now, through the air, to land back here again or to move forward?

Would jump because it feels good? Would you jump because you crave that moment when you defy gravity? Would you jump because a large object is on a crash course with you?

Once your muscles are coiled and ready, it will be easier to jump than to stop yourself.

this is how spring flies by

2008-05-09T21:04:00.002-04:00

It's been a full week since my last post, a week of teaching and meetings and working on new programs. A good week. We often say that - it's been a good week since. . . and that means that in some way the time that has passed seems substantial.

When do you know that the work week has been a good week? For most of us "week" signifies a unit of work as much as a unit of time. Week-days are the days when we work and week-ends are somehow time taken out of the week so that we can have time away from work. Many of those who work weekends find, as I find, that the week is all work. It's hard to step away from work on a week day.

The reward for time off during the week is the delicious sense of playing hooky - of being out of school while others toil at desks.

In spring, a good week is a paradox: long days make it easier to work long days and yet the days also feel longer because we sense that we should be free to escape work so that we can get out into the sunshine. Warmth in spring feels like a nutrient - as necessary as air or food to our thriving. The stakes for work are raised when play calls so loudly.

This is Friday. I hope your week was good.

Beginning again

2008-05-02T21:06:00.002-04:00

I wonder why we talk about starting over as if it means we have somehow wasted time or effort. Speakers and performers know that the beginning and ending of a performance are the most memorable. If you can arrange to start more than once, you get a second chance to make a first impression.

If you are starting again on a different kind of activity, it's possible that starting again means that the task has a second chance to make a great first impression on you. Starting again can be fresh, energizing, and shiny new.

Tomorrow, we will start again: it is the third weekend of a three weekend course. Saturday mornings are full of anticipation. It is a little like waiting for the start of a race. The fact that we are starting over with friends makes it a better start.

It's spring. It's raining. Lots of things are starting again. Enjoy.

Just for the fun

2008-05-01T17:10:00.003-04:00

I am on my way to a Toronto FC soccer game tonight because I was lucky enough to be given a ticket. The games are sold out - every game, all season.

How did that happen? The team didn't make 500 until this season. They were not contenders.

It happened for two reasons: fans came prepared to have fun and the people selling to fans decided to put intention and influence behind creating fun for the fans. None of these people can influence the outcome of a single game: collectively, they have turned Toronto FC into a club whose fans are a force to be reckoned with.

Think about it. Influence the part you can influence. Create an atmosphere where everybody intends to have fun. Sell all the tickets - early.

Update on personal change

2008-04-28T11:42:00.002-04:00

Regular readers might remember that I joined a gym in November 2007. I had belonged to a gym very briefly more than twenty years ago. I used that membership to ride an exercise bike and do sit ups and it ended when my first son was born.

Since then, my exercise has involved running a household - which can provide a surprising amount of lifting, stair climbing, and walking. Still, it is not the same as forming an intention to exercise regularly and carry it out. Some of you are probably wondering if my gym membership has quietly gone the way of many good intentions. . .

Not yet. In fact, as I sit here, I am impatient to get to the gym. I go four or five times most weeks. When I have missed a day or two, I am stiff and wired up and ready for exercise. I go because I like the way I feel while I am there, and I like the way I feel as a result of being there.

I do not go because I should go. Once a month, I meet with a personal trainer because I like to have some external check on what I do, not because I have goals to meet. When I joined the gym, I had two goals. The first was to be able to carry my laptop and books around the college. That was successful: I did not resort to putting my bags on wheels even during the final weeks of semester when I was weighed down with marking.

The second goal was to be able to occasionally run with the people close to me who enjoy running. I am still working on ecology checks for that goal. According to my elliptical machine, I can now do 5 km in about 22 minutes - which would meet my goal if I could take the elliptical machine out running with me. I have been less successful with the treadmill. I don't like the treadmill. Mostly, that means I choose not to work out on the treadmill and have no idea if my circuit training and elliptical will mean I can run once in a while. I will keep you posted as the weather facilitates running.

I do not know why other people are working out at the gym. I put on my headphones and spend time with my musical workout buddy. Most of the music is mellow, designed to moderate my heartbeat as I workout at higher resistances. I work out on the circuit and zone out on the elliptical and relax as my muscles work. It feels great. I have no worries at the gym.

In short, I am still working out because working out still feels like recess to me. I have neither lost nor gained weight through the cold, dark, stressful months of winter. I am stronger now. I sleep better. I carry my own stuff. It's all good.

Winter is finished

2008-04-19T14:56:00.002-04:00

It's finally warm enough to go outside without a coat! That means even if it gets cold and (knock on wood) even if it snows briefly, winter is finished and summer is only a heartbeat away.

Chris and I finished our workshop at ProjectWorld on Friday (great people, interesting event) and walked down to Harbourfront for a drink on the patio overlooking the water. It was a perfect ending to a workshop on resilience - the lake and the sunshine are resources that allow us to bounce back and move forward.

Today is beautiful. Really notice - the car is warm when you climb into it; the grass is getting green; the tulips and daffodils are pushing their way towards the sky; there are people outside and they are smiling - and wearing shorts. Smile. Relax.

Be aware that you are gathering what you need to develop bounce.

How did you get to the edge?

2008-04-11T19:03:00.002-04:00

Maybe you recognize yourself in this scenario. You wake up. You think about the day ahead. You realize that if everything goes at least 95% right, you will be okay. You will manage.

If something dips below the 95% okay, you will be doomed.

When there is almost no ground to stand on between two extremes, you know you have found the edge.

Think about a time you found that edge, a day when you were almost overwhelmed by everything you had to do. Then look back. How did you get to that edge? Where did the rest of the ground go?

The hypnotic contract

2008-04-08T16:15:00.003-04:00

Under what conditions would you allow someone else to tell you what to think?

If you have watched a stage hypnotist, you have seen what looks like one person exercising remarkable control over the thoughts and actions of another. It is fascinating, in part, because we have all seen it happen in real life. Suddenly someone we know seems to be relying on someone else to do the thinking. Even if the influence is good, it is a little frightening.

The secret is that there are no magic words. In order to lead someone into hypnosis, that person has to be willing to go there. Often the people you see on stage are more than willing. For whatever reasons, they are enthusiastic about giving up self control and allowing someone else to take charge. They know that there are limits to what can happen on stage and they are only agreeing to give up control within those limits.

What you see in hypnosis is an agreement between two people. Like all agreements between human beings, it stretches as far as it stretches and no further.

We all let ourselves get talked into things that are not in our best interest. We all do things to ourselves that we would not do to our friends. We all fool ourselves, from time to time. We can be manipulated because we are not always smart or kind - to ourselves. This does not require hypnosis.

To understand hypnosis, we begin by understanding the nature of the agreement between hypnotist and the person hypnotized (not the 'subject' since that implies someone is being acted on instead of acting with). As we understand how to create agreement by setting limits to agreement, we pick up immensely practical understanding about how influence works outside of hypnosis.

We also begin to understand how someone else can be a necessary guide if we are to relax and reach deep inside to find out what we are made of.

Think about integrity

2008-04-06T21:41:00.002-04:00

integrity
/integriti/

• noun 1 the quality of being honest and morally upright. 2 the state of being whole or unified. 3 soundness of construction.

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary

I like to think that the common elements in different definitions of integrity is the ability to withstand external pressure and keep it together.

People who are fundamentally honest keep it together because all the different parts of their lives fit into one pattern of truth. People who are fundamentally reliable keep themselves together by maintaining a pattern of relationships that stabilizes their sense of who they are and what they want most. People of integrity have stability.

People of integrity also have flexibility. Because they know their own minds, they are not afraid to look at other points of view. Because they know their own direction, they can find more than one way to get where they are going. Integrity allows people to move and change and yet to know themselves to be essentially whole and 'of sound construction.'

Your integrity is important to you. It gives you the strength and flexibility to keep yourself together as you take action in the world. The integrity of others is important to you. It allows you to predict how they will act and react. It allows you to work with them.

What do you do differently when something is important to you?

What are you doing to support integrity in yourself and others?

5 ways to not see

2008-04-05T16:44:00.003-04:00

Have you ever been looking at something that is absolutely clear an present and been frustrated that someone else could not see it? Did you assume that the problem was really that they were choosing not to see?

It's easy for us to assume that what we see should be visible to other people. It's easy, and usually at least a little wrong and not at all useful. There are at least 5 ways that people cannot see what seems to you to be right in front of them.

The first way is that you are wrong. What you are seeing is not actually there. You have a "vision" that is clear within your brain but not clearly present in the physical world.

The second way is that they are "blind" - actually or metaphorically. They do not have the neurological equipment to register the presence of what you are seeing.

The third way is related to the first two. Everyone has a physiological blind spot - a part of our field of vision where no information gets recorded. We do not notice our own blindspots because our brains cleverly decide what should be there and paint us what looks like one seamless picture.

The fourth way is that the people are not looking right in front of them - they are twisting and turning and gazing off into the distance. They do not see what you see because they are not looking at it, even though it seems obvious that they have access to it.

The fifth way is that what you are looking at means something different to them - or means nothing at all to them. This is the case with people who are born blind and regain their physical vision. They can register visual information but they cannot make meaning out of what they see. Click here for a recent study of one of these cases.

The next time someone cannot see your point, find out why. Do you need to help them move their attention so that what you see registers with them? Or do you have to establish connections with patterns that already have meaning for them? Maybe they will never see it at all - because they are blind or because what you are seeing is more vision than reality.

None of these means that either you or the other person are bad or weak or hostile. Understanding that gives you hope that you can maintain the relationship and move forward. Even when you see differently.

Don't make your case: tell your story instead

2008-04-04T10:28:00.001-04:00

What if these were the most powerful words in the world:
"Let me tell you a story."

These are the most powerful words in the world. When we put a message into the form of a story, we make it tangible, emotional, and shared. Arguments divide: stories connect.

All stories are optimistic. When we tell war stories, we show that we have learned and that it is possible to survive struggles and move forward. Stories build resilience in difficult times and offer patterns of success when times are good.

Our stories have meaning that shifts a little as we tell them to different people. Stories are not patterns set in stone: they are a dynamic representation of a link between teller and listener. What the story means is what the listener thinks it means. The strategies, goals, and beliefs conveyed through stories are actively owned and actively shared.

Stories allow us to express conflict (within the story) without engaging in conflict (with our listeners). They allow us to build patterns of behaviour and belief that move us forward and ensure that we have company when we get where we are going.

Stories really do change the world.

Think about it. Visit my storytelling page at www.squidoo.com/changeyourstory.

Spring sweaters

2008-04-03T13:32:00.002-04:00

There are probably parts of the world where spring means you no longer need sweaters. Not here. Here, spring means wearing a sweater without adding three more layers. Somehow, pulling on a sweater and feeling warm enough lets us know that the world outside is a friendlier place.

My flowers are tougher than I am. There are bunches of tiny purple crocuses (croci?) under my living room window. The little white snowdrops are out, too. They are instantly present and in bloom when the snow melts above them. How do they know it's spring while they are still snow-covered?

How do you know it's spring? How do you know it is time to climb out from under winter and face the world, fresh and lively and hopeful?

Maybe you are ready the way the flowers are ready. You have been biding your time, all the while growing fresh shoots and new beginnings. Maybe you need a little help; you are ready to change your colours if not to give up sweaters altogether.

We talk all the time as though change is hard. Some changes are.

Some changes are as fresh and natural as the snowdrop crocus waiting under the snow.

What's the difference between work and play?

2008-04-01T14:39:00.002-04:00

I had one of those conversations today when someone (a young someone) told me that what he wanted was to make enough money in a short time so that he would not have to work any more.

Do you remember summers when you were a kid? I do. Long, long, endless days. Sometimes in the rosy glow we often put on childhood. Often long, endlessly dull days, waiting for something to happen, something to do.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

All play and no work makes Jack a dull boy.

That's one way that work and play are similar.

If you are lucky, there are more ways. Better ways.

Think of a time you came out of a long meeting so wrapped up in thoughts and actions that you dove in at your computer and did not come up for air for several hours. Think of a time when you were so connected with work and work people that the end of the day came before you were ready for it. Think of a time when you worked until you were exhausted, and it felt really good.

If you cannot think of times like these, then your work is not play.

If you can think of times like these, then you have been a little bit lucky and a little bit wise. You have found a way to blur the line between work and play.

What's up with Macbeth and young men?

2008-03-27T12:42:00.002-04:00

I was at McMaster last night for a performance of Macbeth. My son was acting, so I am not an impartial reviewer. He has always found me a tough but friendly critic. Last night, I enjoyed watching the way these young minds, mostly men, were interacting with the text.

Power is intriguing - always. Power and violence are especially intriguing to young men. Throughout their lives, as they remember them, someone else has had the power. They might have had strength or agility or intelligence, but they have never had power - not the kind of power that exists beyond a very small circle. Now, as they prepare to leave university and enter the world, they look up (especially the young men) and notice that they will one day look very much like the people in power. They will have power.

It is not an easy thought. To have power is to become one of "them." To live without power is to be vulnerable and, more importantly, to fail to live up to the potential they know is in them. How can they move forward until they know if they are moving into positions of power or away from them?

And so, they engage with power in the form of a play. Other people have written about power and sex and the human desire to believe we can take what we want without remorse or consequence. No one has done it better than Shakespeare. These are smart young people. They are honing their minds on the best. They are sharpening their edges.

They do not do it for pleasure. Like most of their audience, they do not enjoy the tragedy of blood that is Macbeth. They perform it to find out what it feels like to step into the shoes of power. They test their own responses, knowing that power is in them and wondering what it will feel like when it makes its way out into the world. They act - they act as if. They pay attention to the parts of themselves that scare them.

Sometimes we older folks sit in the audience and forget the point of the exercise. We think it is about entertainment or discipline. We think Macbeth and his lady are monsters. We know that we have not sought power, most of us - not the power of violence and not any other power either. We do not listen to witches. We miss the point.

The point is not to reject violence or power: the point is to sharpen the edge.

Two ways to be wrong about hypnosis

2008-03-26T18:21:00.003-04:00

People are either intrigued or vaguely put off when they find out that I run courses in hypnosis. Much of the emotion comes from misconceptions about what hypnosis is and when it is useful.

Some people think hypnosis can be used to get people to do things they are not otherwise ready or willing to do. This is true in some ways. Mostly it is untrue. There's just not much evidence that neat hypnotic language patterns sneak in and influence people to do stuff that someone else wants them to do. There's not much evidence that anyone is always good at influence.

Other people think that hypnosis is nonsense. It is mostly about getting people to make fools of themselves on a stage. This belief usually includes a reluctance to consider unconscious processes or to consider that people make choices based on anything other than logic (or it's opposite). This is also not true. There is lots of evidence that there is a relationship between what we know (our conscious awareness) and what causes us to know (the unconscious processes that tell us what we think and what words to choose). There is lots of evidence that we do not always know ourselves and so it is possible that we are more or different than we think we are.

So, what is hypnosis? There is no absolute definition so I am going to make one up: hypnosis is the ability to create a special relationship between conscious awareness and unconscious process so that you can do more of what you really want to do. It is often facilitated by a hypnotist - an outside presence that guides the process of letting everything slip away except the awareness associated with one particular intention. It occurs naturally in people who focus their thoughts in order to focus their actions.

Hypnosis is useful when someone is ready to consciously take steps to achieve something that seems, for whatever reasons, to require more steps or decisions or strengths than that person believes himself/herself able to manage. It is a way of reaching deep inside oneself to discover that one has more abilities, more knowledge, and more will power than one thought. As a hypnotist, you develop the ability to help people pull themselves together, relax, and get results.

Does this mean that hypnosis is never manipulative? We all like to be manipulated sometimes, by people we trust. We all trust the wrong people sometimes, and we all try things that do not work out as we expect. Life is like that. Hypnosis is subject to the same conditions as all other relationships between the choices we make consciously and the conditions that produce them.

Hypnosis is not the magical ability to control others. And if it is nonsense, it is the best and most useful kind of nonsense - the kind that strips away pretense and presents us to ourselves.

Puzzle out the best connections

2008-03-25T15:53:00.002-04:00

Most people enjoy puzzles - at least the ones that they solve. Put a jigsaw puzzle on a table and most of the people who walk by will find themselves drawn to adding at least one piece to the puzzle. Every newspapers carries crosswords and sudoku puzzles. Puzzles are a way of problem-solving for fun.

Another way of problem-solving for fun is to make connections between what you want and the best interests of the people around you. The challenge is not to manipulate others into giving you what you want. The challenge is to find the places where your puzzle and their puzzles overlap - the pieces that belong to all the puzzles. Those are the pieces that create great relationships - and great results.

How do you know there is overlap? The joy of jigsaws and crossword puzzles is that we know there is a solution. The same thing is true of riddles: we know we can solve them because we know they have a solution. Can we know that there will be overlap between what we want and what somebody else needs or wants?

I believe we can. Partly, we can be sure because the human condition is one of change and even if overlap doesn't exist when we start, the act of looking for it is likely to bring it into being. Partly, we can be sure because being sure is useful. We may not always be right, but the belief itself generates good things.

So what do you have to lose? Start with the presupposition that every connection you make tomorrow can be good for you and good for the people with whom you are connecting. Then go ahead and get what you want - and move them closer to what they want, too.

The most important sales tip

2008-03-24T18:36:00.002-04:00

Sales is both an art and a science: there are lots of process-driven, metric-driven practices for measuring success in sales. If any of them worked perfectly, there would be fewer of them.

No one can say for sure that you will or will not make a sale on any given day. Occasionally, I buy something because I need it NOW. On those occasions, relationships don't matter as much as the availability of the product at a price I am willing to pay.

Most of the time, relationship is the only thing that matters. Without some kind of positive connection, I will not be around long enough to know whether or not your product is worth buying. When you connect with me - when you show a) that you are interested in connecting with me and b) that you are at least partly capable of understanding my priorities, then I am willing to think about whether I trust you enough to do business. If I trust you enough, we can talk about the product.

Of course, if the relationship is truly engaging, the sale will be made if I am qualified and you have a product I want. There will not be any need for dazzling gimmicks or giveaways. I will buy at a price that gives you a reasonable profit so that we can do business together.

If you want to sell to me, connect with me.

It's not easy but it's pretty simple.

Past Performance is No Guarantee

2008-03-22T18:28:00.002-04:00

A friend recently asked me to remember what it was like to be on a winning team. Fair enough. I did win a provincial championship one year (playing soccer). It's reasonable to assume that I was playing on a great team, a winning team.

Except that I wasn't. We won sometimes. We lost quite often. We were interested in all the things that interest teenage girls. Sometimes that included soccer. We were not high performing.

But.

We won.

One of the reasons we enjoy sports is that the high performing teams are sometimes out-performed by teams that have just enough heart and just enough luck to win a few games. They frustrate the high performing teams but they give the rest of us a special kind of excitement.

I coached a house league team of thirteen year old boys one year. They lost a lot of games. One father who spoke almost no English cornered me after a game we lost 9-1. He kept saying over and over "this not good." No kidding.

But.

Everyone gets a shot in the playoffs and somehow we outplayed ourselves - and matched the other team. We won the game in penalty shots. We won the semi-final in penalty shots, too.

We did not win the cup: mostly, I think, because we were overwhelmed by the excitement of sneaking past everyone else and making it into the final.

Some of you, like me, are celebrating Easter this weekend. The Easter story is about sneaking past everyone's expectations and winning despite the odds.

Sometimes we surprise other people. Sometimes we surprise ourselves.

Past performance not withstanding.

Double edged swords and other blessings

2008-03-17T20:08:00.002-04:00

I'm currently doing a lot of work on resilience - more than I would like in some ways. Working on resilience means beginning with the presupposition that stuff is going to go wrong. Or recognizing that stuff is going wrong. Either way, resilience is not entirely a desirable gift.

Unless you do not have enough of it. We've all been there. The days when we get knocked down and we have no idea how to get up again. The days when we look up and realize we have no idea where we are or where we were going. Those days.

On those days, we scrape together whatever resilience we can find - sometimes without worrying much about whether it's enough or where it came from. We take one step, hoping it's the right direction. We look in the mirror and muster some curiosity about what we see there.

It can seem that building resilience is like asking for trouble. It can seem like a good plan will get us by without the need for so much resilience. It can seem like we can cut corners.

We cannot cut corners on building our resilience. Life happens - to everyone - on a regular basis. You cannot predict exactly which obstacles, interruptions and distractions you will face. You can predict that something predictable or something unpredictable will arise and get in your way. You can predict that you will need resilience.

Fortunately, building it feels good. It is not like building resistance (which means hurting a little at a time so you will be prepared for the big hurts). Building resilience means finding a base and then bouncing on it.

Resilience means having bounce. And bounce is fun.

Tulips on my desk

2008-03-16T15:52:00.002-04:00

In the midst of an endless to-do list (even on Sunday afternoon), I stopped at the garden centre and bought two pots of tulips and one of hyacinth. Some of the tulips are just starting to bloom.

I replaced the dried flowers in the vases in my living room with pussy willows and lavender and roses. They sit under a print of one of our favourite parts of the north shore of Prince Edward Island.

Hurry up please. It's time.

It's time for spring. It's time for maple sugar and pussy willows and puddle-stomping. It's time for mucky yards and raindrops and grey skies and blue skies. It's time for knowing that life shoots up in us at the least likely moments.

Hurry up please. It's time.

It's time for vibrant signs that we do not need a new beginning - because what we want has been biding its time and waiting for us and with us.

Hurry up please. It's time.

How many people do you really like?

2008-03-14T15:47:00.002-04:00

A young man accused me last week (in writing, not in person) of mistaking him for being more intellectual than he is. Than he thinks he is. I am unshaken in my belief that he is clever and enthusiastic and funny and capable. He will find as he gets older that he is not only not smarter than lots of the people he would dismiss today, he is also smarter than he thinks he is.

It is rare for me to meet anyone who is open to learning and not like them.

When was the last time you looked around and noticed how many people you really like? It goes against our hard-wiring: we are more easily able to notice the people who hurt us, the people who endanger us, the people who make us afraid. We like the people we like without thinking about it. Sometimes we like them without thinking about them.

Think about them. Let yourself notice that even though nobody is perfect and there are things you would change, you like lots of people. Just as they are. Just as you are.

What we can't see

2008-03-13T22:32:00.003-04:00

I was thinking about seeing and believing this week. It's funny how the concept sticks, even in a world where seeing should not mean believing. Much of what we see - at least what we see on screens - is fabricated. It's an elaborate game of make-believe, often even when it pretends to be true.

It's not so much that we believe what we see as it is that we find it hard to trust what we cannot see. And there are at least three categories of things we cannot see. The first is easy: things we cannot see because they have no tangible presence in a physical world. This category includes abstractions - like love or justice - and it also includes everything that is not real or present at a given moment.

The second category is more difficult. I was reminded of it this morning listening to a brain scientist describe her experience of a stroke. She said she remembers looking at a business card and seeing only pixels: her eyes picked up the information but her mind refused to make sense of it. When the information in front of our eyes does not connect with the rest of our experience, we simply cannot see it.

The third category is outside our awareness but not mysterious. We all have blind spots: metaphorically (probably) but certainly we have real physical blind spots. We are not aware of them, because our minds fill in the information that our eyes cannot see.

If you are working with someone who cannot see something that is obvious to you, ask yourself:
1) Is what you are looking at in his/her blind spot?
2) Is what you are seeing so far outside his/her experience that he/she cannot makes sense of it?
3) Is what you are seeing not there at all (is it information that fills in your blind spot or invents enough information to allow you to connect with something else you are seeing)?

There are good reasons why two people can look at the same picture and see different things.

Essential Services

2008-03-13T06:47:00.001-04:00

I heard a news item today about a possible strike at the TTC. A local news station was doing a survey: “Should the TTC be an essential service?” The consensus seemed to be no.

It made me wonder what would make a service essential. People without cars need to get to work - often more than the people who can afford to drive cars.

I imagine most of us think that the surgeon is essential to our surgery. We probably even recognize that the nurses and technologists are essential. We want to be confident that life support machines will support our lives when needed.

We do not always remember that the janitor is also essential to a successful surgery. We remember only when we hear the statistics on how many people die after successful surgeries because hospitals are not as antiseptic as they should be. Viruses and bacteria spread quickly unless they are cleaned to death.

Who kills the germs when the janitor cannot get to work?