by tashmcgill | May 14, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Strategy
Recently I’ve been writing about provocateurs – those who push boundaries, ask challenging questions and provoke people into change. We who would be provocateurs we must take up a new responsibility, if we wish to be more than hot air and false promises. We must be people of the Both/And instead of the Either/Or. We cannot provoke without problem-solving.
There are too many (of us) provocateurs who have got tired of the push, the argument, the uncomfortable feeling of always being ‘that person’ in the meeting. We have become frustrated, disenchanted and slowly edged further away from the core we long to engage with and influence.
Yes, I believe that provocateurs belong at the Fringe, where we are afforded the best view of both crowd and horizon. But we cannot wholly live at the edge of things; lobbing our opinion and commentary into the centre, if we lose the reality of being in community while trying to shaping it. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Apr 28, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Strategy
I was at a community gathering this last week. It’s in my nature to sit in the front rows of these things, most of the time. However, this time, drawn in by the presence of those I was sitting with and enjoying their conversation; I found myself in the back rows.
You can tell a lot about people and what’s going on in their lives by how they position themselves to the world around them.
Front Row is a mindset that gets close to the action. There’s focus (or should I say, a lack of distraction), energy, a certain wholeheartedness. These are people who embody the ‘Do All The Things’ philosophy of life. They are also, just like in rugby, the ones who take a lot of the hard hits, out there exposed in the frontlines of life. They tend to be the people who get to say things like “Did you see that?!”, because they did from right up close and personal. You’re a witness to the action, so damn close you’re a participant.
Back Row is a different experience. From the back row, you’re less of a witness and more of an observer. The further back you are, the less you feel the need to throw your energy into it. From back there, you’re aware of something coming your way but you still have time to make a move. Dodging bullets is easy from the back row. Sneaking out before the closing act, moving sideways into multiple distractions. It gets busy and noisier in the back row; with so many different voices instead of just one loud voice. Sometimes you’re in the back row without a choice. Life demands you observe for a while.
Then there’s the Middle, stuck in the middle. You notice how people straggle into the front row but they stream into the middle? The safe zone. Too far back to be pulled out by the standup comedian, far enough forward that you’re close enough to the action to ‘count’, whatever that means.
Now that’s just the real life, sitting in the front row vs the back row of your favourite artist playing live or a movie you didn’t want to see in the first place. A town hall meeting to decide on something critical or joining a jury for a two week trial.
The metaphor is simple. You choose where you sit in relation to life. If all of life is a stage and we are merely players on it, a good number of just playing the part of the audience. Even then, we could be better at it.
Are we front row to the suffering of our friends and loved ones? Front row to their triumphs and victories? Do we let others close enough to be front row cheerleaders for us?
Are we back row bandits, or worse – middle row spreaders in light of our many social afflictions? Sitting in the back row; immediately I felt the affect on me. Less expectation, less participation. But I also felt further away – my voice less easily distinguished among the others.
Are you a front row or back row thinker? Proactively engaging in philosophical debate and pushing the boundaries? Finding better answers than what has gone before or sitting back and letting someone else do all the work?
There are an awful lot of people dying of boredom and distraction in the middle-back. It almost doesn’t matter what you get front row on (well, ok, a few things you really, really should avoid) but most of us need to find something that’s worth getting close up on again. Shelving that distraction and the wonder of the back.
‘I have never regretted a front row seat to life. In fact, I find the further back I sit, the less beauty I am able to see, the poorer I am.’
by tashmcgill | Dec 30, 2013 | Church, god ideas, Spirituality
These are delicate words. Probably easy to be misconstrued. I expect they might be. Part of me wishes they will be.
I think I’d like to be unChristian. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Dec 12, 2013 | Culture & Ideas, Mind
It’s possible, you know, to get stuck in a moment. To get stuck in a feeling. Reliving the words someone has spoken to you or about it. Reliving the experience you’ve just had. Constantly re-imagining how it may have gone differently, worked towards a different outcome.
It’s possible to just get stuck by running a thought to it’s final destination and not knowing where to go next. Or to forget to change the tape in your head that labels you ‘failure’, ‘loser’, ‘not good enough’, ‘unloved’ … or conversely, ‘hero’, ‘person everything relies on’, ‘fix-it man’.
Stuckness has a lot of layers. At first it can seem like you’re trapped, closed in, prohibited from moving. But the truth is, you’re not entirely prohibited from moving, you’re just unable to move in certain ways. Or, stuck in certain patterns of moving that you can’t change without some external force or intervention.
Internal self-talk is one of these moments. Whether the tapes playing in your head are on just one theme or 12 different ones on repeat, often you can’t change the tapes without further input and help.
Same with rebound relationships and holding a grudge. You know it’s not a good idea, that it can’t get you closer to the end goal. But like a soccer ball covered in glue, these emotional habits can be so sticky that once you make contact again, you can’t let it go.
Then there is stuckness that is good. It’s the kind of stuckness you get to when you’ve been waiting for a while. It’s the kind of stuckness that slowly enables you to open your eyes and see what’s really around you. Spend enough time being stuck and soon, pathways and possibilities for becoming unstuck might appear where they weren’t obvious before. Being stuck gives you time to really observe your surroundings.
Being stuck is a great time to acknowledge how you got to where you are.
Sometimes, when heartbreak comes along, our natural tendency is to find someone to soothe the wound, to heal the break, to make us feel loved again.. but in these times, it can be better to be stuck for a while and get to know ourselves again.
Being stuck is actually, more often than not, a good thing. It’s an opportunity to call on those we trust and rely on to intervene in our situation.
A little unsticking strategy will always require a little effort and patience.
Not unlike writers’ block, a little waiting time is sometimes necessary for the right ideas and new opportunities to shake themselves loose. In the same way the gate and fencepost swell with summer heat and moisture, requiring effort and patience to open. Long walks in sunlit valleys lie beyond that fencepost, but not without time and work.
The trouble is, being stuck can feel like going nowhere, but a lot of the time, being stuck is just the break your sub-conscious needed to figure out what’s next and how to navigate it.
It’s like taking the precious seeds we carry, our hopes and dreams and then burying them down in earth, waiting and hoping for it to come back to life. It’ll take 6 weeks before that seed takes on a life of it’s own above the surface of the soil. It might even take longer. But Stuckness says, embrace the darkness and damp of the soil. Learn to be patient in the absence of light. Learn (and trust) that your time is coming.
That seed will likely sprout and look nothing like the seed’s skin it shed to become a plant, vegetable or flower. But it was never stuck. It was just the unseen growth that happens when it feels like you’re standing still.
by tashmcgill | Feb 7, 2013 | Culture & Ideas, Friendship
“Welcome to the age of self-management, it’s all on you from here.” It was said with a smile, but in a tone that makes the blood run cold. More truth held in the six words at the end of that sentence than I’d heard for quite some time. I was being given a choice about how to respond.
The infallible truth is, my life is a direct result of my choices and actions. Both poor and good choices construct a set of circumstances that I, and I alone, must take responsibility for. Regardless of how we interact with other individuals and how their choices may impact on us, our choices to respond to those circumstances lands the responsibility firmly in our own hands. Your life isn’t what happens to you, it’s how you respond. (more…)
