by tashmcgill | Dec 6, 2015 | Culture & Ideas, Strategy
As I wrote last week, there’s a post-it note on my desk with the quote,
“Everything I’ve ever let go of has clawmarks in it.” David Foster Wallace.
Letting go of anything means change. Change is constant and uncomfortable. Very few human beings are wired to thrive on the thrill of the unknown. Most of us believe forewarned is forearmed and that minimising change is the utopian dream. We crave stability, without realising that stasis is the first stage before death.
While I echo Wallace’s sentiment, I can’t support his implied proposition – that to fight and cling is somehow noble. But Wallace committed suicide in 2008, having lived much of his adult life with depression and under medication in order to be able to work. I think Wallace’s fight to hold on and to resist change ultimately contributed to the ongoing breakdown of his life. You see, what we invest our energy into grows.
Change that we resist is usually an external pressure or energy; something that comes upon us. When you resist external force with internal force, the energy evaporates in the combustion of that reaction, but the energy is also lost. No one party gains from the other.
Over time, a resistance or refusal to respond to change depletes your energy and resource.
I experienced this a number of times in my early working life. The loss of a project, the change in a plan, the loss of a job. I clung and fought but each battle became harder to fight and each victory less sweet, such was the price of the battle.
So now, instead of fighting to resist change – I’m learning to surrender to it.
It may feel uncomfortable because in the Western world, our idea of surrender is most often associated with loss. We only surrender when we are in a losing position. But in Sanskrit, the word ‘surrender’ is translated to ‘give yourself wholeheartedly to something, to embrace the flow of your life.’
This idea of surrender is about where you put your energy and what you resist instead of embracing, what you embrace instead of resisting. A negative attitude towards change is a toxic learning environment. Learning should always be a by-product of change. A negative attitude towards change alienates and disengages you from those who would help you navigate it.
Surrender is powerful because it reframes our thinking away from bad conflict habits.
Surrender is powerful because you cannot embrace again without first letting go.
Surrender is powerful because it truly is the path of least resistance. Resistance is the enemy of hope in the face of change. We get to keep our energy for other battles.
Surrender is powerful because it focuses us on the posture we taking in learning, the resilience required to live with inevitable disappointment and the power of humility.
It is in surrender that you are embracing humility. Knowing yourself truly; good, bad and ugly. Confronting the secret and alone parts of yourself that are still laced with fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of being unsuccessful, fear of being unloved, fear of being wrong.
When I was confronted with the biggest change I’ve known as an adult; I fought it with all my might. I rallied in every conversation, I maintained an excruciating level of intensity because losing this project was not an option for me. I fought myself, my mentors, I fought with my friends and then I lost it anyway. I entered the dark shadow cave; confronted with loss and with blame. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t held onto what I had clung so tightly too in the past. Letting go felt like failure, but later I realised not letting go fast enough meant I had no time or capacity to embrace the lessons right in front of me. Change came and continued out without me, because I wouldn’t allow myself to get on board the train.
No matter what kind of change you’re undergoing, major or minor – we yearn for peace. We find it in surrender. Surrender to knowing that while we may not see the end result of change; change is assured. Change in of itself is not scary. Change can open new doors of discovery. Change can also be very, very wrong. But like a tsunami wave, it will not be stopped once started. Accepting change is a doorway to peace. Surrendering to the flow of your life is peace entering in.
Surrendering to change pushes us into the unknown, which is where we must be if we are to learn something new and to learn something new, we must ask the right questions.
- what will I learn
- how can I learn best from this
- how will I respond
- how will I help others
Surrender is the art form of leaning in, a gateway to vulnerability. As the world responds to us, change is quickened. As change is quickened, we are more truly ourselves. The more change we embrace, the more we have the opportunity to embrace the lessons that come with it.
by tashmcgill | Dec 2, 2015 | Culture & Ideas, Spirituality
The Advent season starts for each of us, alone. No matter that by Christmas Day, most of us will find our way to be connected with some others – family, friends or communities. But it starts with people alone.
Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, is carrying a child in her old age while her husband is struck silent. Elizabeth is very much alone.
Mary, the teenage girl engaged to Joseph is visited by the angel Gabriel while she sleeps. She is alone, left to wonder if she is going mad and what will become of her.
Joseph is also alone when visited by the angel, who assures him he should still take Mary as his wife. Joseph had been secretly planning to break off their betrothal; in secret and alone.
Eventually Mary gives birth alone in a stable, no mention of midwives, mothers or sisters to accompany her on this journey. Mary, the mother of God spends much of the Christmas story alone, if not lonely.
Although the traditional Christmas story ends with Mary, Joseph, Jesus and a motley crew of shepherds, wise men and innkeepers gathered together in a stable; for each person the journey starts alone. Nativity scenes paint a picture of otherworldly peace and calm, but the story itself is actually full of human anguish, anxiety, fear, rejection, anger and loneliness.
It is the same for us. Whatever our thoughts or beliefs around the Christmas season or story are; we begin the season alone.
This aloneness is an extraordinary opportunity.
When we are alone, we are left with no choice but to be confronted with ourselves. Our fears, hopes. Our sense of hopelessness. Whether it’s the pressure of unreasonable expectations created by us or other; perhaps it is the secret list of disappointments, perhaps it is our aloneness that confronts us when we are alone. But the story starts in Alone.
That’s where Hope emerges from too.
Why remember Advent?
It’s healthy and good to give pause at this time of year. No matter where you are, the season is changing from hot to cold or cold to warm. Business calendars roll over and many of us find ourselves pondering family, lovers, friends and community. We ponder our sense of togetherness and our sense of aloneness. We wonder what the New Year will bring. We try and navigate a season that is increasingly complex – multiple families, multiple faiths.
The Advent season follows four themes – Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. These eternal ideas are human ideas, not restricted to religion alone. Yet, Advent seems a useful time to refocus on them. Hope emerges from our sense of frailty and our imagination. Peace is a life-long human pursuit and we are living in times of highly publicised civil wars. There is much to be said for meditating on these themes and bringing deeper meaning to our day-to-day existence.
So this week, take a moment and be alone.
What do you see in the mirror?
What are you pregnant with? What rumbles inside you and will not let you go?
What are you reaching into – what newness?
What are you afraid of? What is lonely? What is crowded? What is finished?
Advent is about expectation. The expectation of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love arriving. Interrupting, expanding and challenging the day-to-day human experience.
by tashmcgill | Dec 1, 2015 | Community, Culture & Ideas, Friendship, Relationships
A year ago and a week ago, I passed under this bridge in a traffic jam, stuck again on Interstate 65. This piece of highway is a constant in my life as I travel between places and people I know.
I was stuck metaphorically too, stuck in a dream of a dream. The bridge is just a symbol, a lot of water has passed under this bridge since then. 372 days that see me further from one dream but closer to another. I don’t know what that dream is, but it must be a dream because it’s not yet real.
I think I must have grown up some but there’s a post-it note stuck to my computer screen that says “Everything I ever let go of had claw marks in it”, and it’s certainly true for me. I can feel the tingling in my fingertips. How much I want to hold to something, for something to be as permanent or certain as this bridge. I want to held on to; to be permanent and certain myself.
I’ve been learning you can’t hold on to what’s not real or permanent. You can’t hold on to what’s not holding you. Lorem Ipsum has no permanent home, just like a pipiwhararoa it flies from nest to nest looking for a place to call its own. No one holds on to Lorem Ipsum either.
Lorem Ipsum.
You probably recognize the phrase. If you’ve ever worked in design, printing, had to produce marketing materials or a website there’s a good chance you’ve seen this text. It’s ancient Latin from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book on the theory of ethics was popular with emerging humanist thinkers during the Renaissance so as printing technology emerged during this era, it’s no surprise that a collection of paragraphs from this text was used as dummy text to review typefaces.
Placeholder text is designed to look close enough to the real thing that it becomes invisible to the viewer. Originally so that a printer and publisher might agree the layout of the text or the choice of typeface on a page. Now, Lorem Ipsum is often used to fill out the design frames and suggest where text is required in marketing collateral and digital publishing.
A placeholder is used to fill space but leave no lasting impression. It looks and feels real but carries no meaning. It is yet it does not endure. Lorem Ipsum has survived for 5 centuries now only ever being useful for a moment, to fill the space before it is replaced.
I am not Lorem Ipsum, neither are you.
It’s a shame that some things you only learn after the fact. You learn the rock is slippery as soon as your foot starts sliding. You realise you’ve been Lorem Ipsum when someone starts seeing straight past you. You realise you’ve had all the good intentions in the world, but your friendship has carried no meaning, your words have floated off like feathers in the sky. When Lorem Ipsum is replaced with words you attribute meaning to – you no longer need the Lorem Ipsum.
I love words. And these words meant something to Cicero, to the great Renaissance philosophers and ethicists. Sentences constructed with intention just like I have been made with a meaning greater than the sum of my syllables – Lorem Ipsum is the real thing, not a dream. You have forgotten that I once, had meaning too.
Lorem Ipsum in the Debris.
I do believe some relationships are seasonal. And especially friendship can be deceptive, appearing mutual when both parties have different expectations and agendas. My shared stories and experiences create a narrative that we all own, my stories shared become your own and vice versa. We give meaning to each other but only if we mean it.
But no person should ever be Lorem Ipsum for another. We must be able to look each other in the eye and keep our promises – I see you, you can see me. If we treat each other like placeholders til something better comes along – we strip meaning from beauty and destroy our shared narratives. We destroy each other and ourselves.
Yes, we do this from time to time – we fill our world with those who are available to us although they do not always fulfil us. We allow ourselves to feel useful and meaningful. Of course, we do this because loneliness is a hungry wolf at the door. But once we start to feed the wolf on hollow bread, we cannot keep him from the door. Resist. Resist. Commit yourself to the meaning of those you share your stories with. And therefore choose carefully whom you love.
There is a shallow darkness in anyone that can live in such a way, to not know the ancient, wise, tenacious gift they hold in the palm of their hand. It implies an unknowing of themselves, because authenticity demands authenticity.
The storm change comes along and swept up in the river swell you become the debris on the bank. The difference between a seasonal transition in relationships and being Lorem Ipsum, is acknowledgement of the season change, thank you and goodbye. Without it, gasping for air and wondering how you missed the signs, you shirk off your sinking expectations and swim for shore.
Of course, you can choose not to become the debris. We all get caught out from time to time; not realising that while we laid out our words in perfect syntax, our Latin went unrecognised by the other. For being fooled into thinking my narrative was true, I have learned even more what authenticity looks like. I’ve realised even though people can hurt you by treating you like a spacefiller – I can free myself in a minute by letting go.
Choose not to hold on to people who don’t want to hold you back. Workplace comraderie, friendship on any scale, lovers, distant family – choose not to hold on to anything but the present moment and those who are willing to hold you. Even then, choose wisely from those who would hold your precious meaning in their hands. Letting go can feel like losing something until you remember the best thing you had in that friendship was what you made it, with your heart, your compassion, your love and soul. Even your hopes and expectations of the other were a good kind of dream. So you walk away losing nothing, because you still have yourself. You are the carrier of your meaning.
You have your purpose, becoming clearer in the days and by dream at night, a new old kind of dream. Instead of fighting the current below the bridge, you are now given the chance to cross it; a change in every direction – first up, then East instead of South and with a much larger view to the world. Remember your meaning.
You are a gift to the world, often unopened by many who drift by you but still valuable. An ancient treasure hidden in a field, a pearl inside a gnarly shell, a fragment of beauty that does not fade, an eternal force more precious than rubies. Your meaning is not taken from you by those who do not comprehend you. Perhaps they have not imagined you yet but still you are.
Cicero’s Lorem Ipsum (a fragment).
“But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?”
“On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”
by tashmcgill | Nov 30, 2015 | Community, Friendship, Relationships
You love fewer people than you think you do. And, if you need permission to care less diligently about some, in order to love others better – this is it. Feel free to hit delete.
I mean, of course, you’re kind and warm, welcoming and enthusiastic about lots of people when you encounter them in the street or with mutual friends. You’re never not gracious and friendly; making small talk while circulating the room. You listen to stories and remember to think good thoughts for those who are suffering and say a prayer if you are so inclined.
So, yes – you do care about people, in a general way of speaking. You care, in a general, non-practitioner sense. You care with the capacity that you have. You pay attention to your Facebook news feed. But you do not really love that many specific people.
Read that sentence twice. Follow the emphasis.
You do not really love that many specific, individual people.
You do not really love that many specific, individual people.
And that’s ok. In fact, it’s probably good for you. Indeed, I’m giving you permission, I’m asking you to consider loving fewer people, better. Let Love take on a heavier, more intentional meaning than when you talk about ice-cream or potato chips.
Our world is saturated with connection that lacks intimacy. Week after week, people tell me how brave and vulnerable I must be to write how I do on this blog or in social media. I share my reflections on an inner life and strangers halfway around the world are moved. I am moved because they are. I feel a sense of purpose in creating meaning for others. But I am not the meaning.
You see, I care about the people who read and engage with my words. I care that they are well, moving towards wholeness, being themselves, discovering bravery in intimacy and courage to use their own voices. I care, but I do not love you.
That’s ok. You shouldn’t need me to love you and you probably don’t. But some of us – the only care we receive is what comes back through those social media filters.
I can only truly love maybe 20 people or so. There are another 30 or so I love very much. There are another 30 – 40 beyond that I would feel their absence keenly from my world and be rocked by their tragedies. But I am an anomaly and almost none of those people experience my love through social media.
Most people only have room for 6 – 8 significant intimate connections outside their immediate family. That’s how many people you can truly love, engage and maintain intimacy with. I have a small family, I figure I get some extra numbers. I’m an extrovert, a writer and speaker. Part of my job is to connect with people. It’s almost effortless to collect people along the way and genuinely care about those interactions and outcomes. In the moment, when you’re there. And conceptually, afterward – even for a long time.
Anyone who lives in the present moment will find themselves well-connected to all manner of people; because we are able to give and receive in the moment of ourselves and others.
That’s life-giving, fulfilling and beautiful. It is the nature of Love when we are swept up in its outpouring to engage with others. It may be intimate for a moment but it is not lifelong.
With the exception of marriage (I still believe), our relationships are permitted to be seasonal. Not every fleeting connection was meant to last forever, but nowadays we accumulate relationships the same way people collect baseball cards. There’s always room for one more and always a new player joining the team. How are we ever meant to figure out the rules of engagement for every connection we make? How are we ever to find the time or the energy for all these connections.
Don’t get me wrong. Caring for people is great. Whenever you are able, care for someone. Caring is good and creates emotional connection, but Love will demand action too. We need to pare back our tribes so we can really care. To go deep again, not wide.
Love turns up in the middle of the night to a three word text message. Love is often invisible on Facebook, as a friend of mine reminded me. Caring for someone can happen in a moment; Love that follows through every promise grows over time. It’s a different kind of investment. You will learn this in the cruelest way when you realise someone you thought loved you, only cared. Then you will know what it is; to need to know the difference in how you love and how you are loved.
Loving some people and caring for others is kinda healthy. The ability to make connections deeper than Sunday coffee conversations and the ability to prioritize where you invest. More than checking Facebook status updates.
The trouble with navigating relationships in a world dominated by constant connection with people through social media, text and email – is that sometimes the ones you truly love are not the ones that dominate your time or your filters. Sometimes people get waylaid in their expectations and they want more Love than Care.
They forget that a Facebook or Instagram like
is not as weighty as a text message
which is not as weighty as an email
which is not as weighty as a phone call
and is not as weighty as your physical presence
when it comes to Love
because Love will always come with action.
Caring is enough, if caring is what I have to offer. But caring cannot get in the way of Love.
Hit Delete.
Facebook is an audience. A collection of people whom we’ve connected with. But my people, the people I love find themselves around my fireplace. The people I love eat my food. Still, the pressure builds to stay on top of triumph and tragedy through words and pictures on a dozen different channels. We love knowledge and some (most) are naturally curious. We love to discover what’s hidden or unknown. But a hundred connections that love real love and intimacy will never equate to the truth and power of being really known by a friend you love. Who hopefully loves you back. Those are sacred spaces, so you can’t have them or share them with all those people. No one has enough spirit for that. Except maybe Oprah. And even then, not even Oprah. She knows.
The power of real intimacy with a real person in comparison to the influence and energy of an audience. Neither is better, but they have different purposes and meaning in our lives.
So maybe you need permission to let some people go. To hit delete from your Facebook friends list, or eliminate the noise from people you care about to focus on the people you love. Delete pointless contacts from your phone. If you’ll never call them, don’t keep their number. Filter out the needless information and curiosities that fill up your day/mind/thoughts and open your spirit again to deep Love. If you are really brave, filter your little black book of calendar engagements too.
Delete me, if you need to. I get it. I care about you too and I want you to do a better job of loving the ones you Love. I want the same thing. You’ve got permission to gather yourself back from the hundreds of little connections draining your battery and making obstacles for true love.
by tashmcgill | Nov 10, 2015 | Culture & Ideas
I think they should tell you, coming out of the womb, that nothing will turn out like you expect. To avoid expectations at all cost. Expectations are the most dangerous indulgence of the human existence. In every facet of our lives, expectations have the ability to cripple, blind and curtail us. Expectations box us in and limit our horizons. There is a difference between hopefulness and expectation. Expectation is mostly commonly associated with a specific outcome. We expect the way things will go or ought to go for us.
We grow up surrounded by suggestion of what is normal, what is common, what is expected of us. We’re instructed in the principles of good behaviour and reprimanded based on how we meet others’ expectations of us. We create expectations of others.
Our greatest hurts will come from our unmet expectations; our relationships will break down when we cannot communicate, re-create or do away with our expectations of each other. Expectations become prescriptions.
Expectations prohibit creativity and innovation because they force us into pre-established paths and ways of doing things. Expectations push us towards norms which perpetuate cycles. And life goes on and on in this way.
Until something breaks. Until expectations fail to be met and you must hit the reset button.
I always thought I’d seen too many friends hit quarter and mid-life crises purely for the sake of some overwrought expectations; ideas about who and how they should be. So I made a plan; to not over-engineer my game plan. I simply thought ‘strategize for the half you’re in, see where you get to and then plan again.’
Can you see it there? Hidden in my plan to avoid creating expectations for myself, was an expectation. An expectation that there would be a second half for me. At some point, I’d find my half-time or a natural reset button.
I thought it would be family; in the traditional sense of a partner creating a natural segue into the second half. I have never been able to conceive of what my life might be with a partner. I am selfish but not selfish enough to assume that I could create a life or a dream big enough for two or two plus two – however many kids might come along. So I resisted making the mistake of trying to find someone who merely fit into the plan I had already made. I only ever planned a couple of years in advance, always thinking I would meet someone significant and we’d design the rest together.
I like the idea of co-creation; a mutually agreed collaboration of the future. A reset button for the second half of the game.
Now I’m at the halfway point – in time, at least. If I live as long again as what I’ve lived to date – that will be a long life. Perhaps too long. Not because I’m old, but really because I don’t want to live lonely too long. I have enough tolerance for platonic and familial love for another 20 years or so. Beyond that, I’m not convinced. So I face designing the second half now. Determining what strategies will reap the richest, deepest rewards and leave a legacy worth holding on to for someone, before I die.
The trouble with expectations is that they hide in plain sight until you trip on them. You can be doing just fine until you hit the one pothole you’ve missed every other time and you find yourself flying through the air, headfirst over your handlebars. You have to be grateful for it; each time you have to pick yourself up from one of those rough landings; it’s one more freedom to afford yourself. One more prescription you are no longer bound to. These prescriptions do not determine whether you were a failure or a success, as if those concepts have any bearing on what it means to be a human being. These prescriptions are social controls. Who cares if you never see the Eiffel Tower if you never really had any desire to go to France in the first place?
Freedom from prescription is essential. Examine every corner of your life for the hidden expectations (your own or others) that you are trying to meet. From how you raise your kids or manage your time or even what you share or do not share with the world.
As I think about the next chapter of my life; I don’t want to spend a minute of my energy or spirit in meeting expectations or prescriptions. I don’t want to risk not living every minute of the second half. I’m in brand new territory, undreamed-of country. It’s a time for invention and creativity. I want to live in such a way that I am fully alive and engaged with my greatest strengths. Devoting as much as I have into things that matter most for my legacy, not the legacy others would write or choose for me. I think as a woman, I’ve been even more susceptible to believing I have to take these expectations supposed on me by others and figure out how to make them work.
I don’t really care about money beyond what I need to live and spend time with those I love. I don’t want to spend a lifetime chasing a pay packet for something I don’t believe it; despite the expectations of what someone of my age and skill should earn. I want to continue to do all the things that take my fancy and come across my path. Naturally, I want the freedom to ask any question of spirituality, science or philosophy and mostly; I want permission to never be done – until my last breath. If I am incomplete til that moment, I will be delighted to know I left the world still learning.
What does the second half of the game look like? Less chasing the ball and much more running with it. If there is anything I’ve learned from the first half of the game; it’s that anything can happen. You’re just more prone to miss those opportunities if you’re still stuck on how you expected to turn out.
So what if your body isn’t how you thought it would be or your career isn’t what you planned. Who cares if you didn’t buy a house before property prices went up. A thousand tiny thoughts we have each day that push our lives into boxes we never intentionally set out to live in – that’s the claustrophic nature of expectations. Be free to not be Instagrammable or Pinterestable. Be free not to be Paleo or vegetarian. Be free to give things up or not – but do nothing because it’s expected of you unless you have set your own mind to it also. There are plenty of things in this category. Exercise for starters. Sex for seconds. Hospitality for thirds. Caring for your spirit and faith. Figure out to make these things a healthy part of your game plan.
For me, the second half of the game is freedom. The freedom to know myself and not just the shallow self others have tried to make me. Freedom from all the definitions that have been put against my name. Freedom to be my True Self. It feels almost as if I’ve spent the first half of my life learning just enough to really get me started – but it’s already half-time. I’ve spent the last moments of the first half dismantling the playbook I thought I had to follow. The good news is, I think you get twice, if not three times as much out of the second half.
