by tashmcgill | Aug 28, 2017 | Strategy
I have always cared about helping people change the way they think. It’s like a scientist setting off a chemical reaction – the beauty of what emerges is both planned and organic. At best, changing the way you think is a chain reaction that enables you to see and engage with the world differently, to wrestle and live differently and to find your way to a more authentic self. Living into that authentic self matters, because the world needs you and I, to be our fullest expression. We each have something to offer the world and each other.
Often it is through pain or unexpected circumstances, transition and brokenness that we find the path to growth. These are the moments we become resilient as much as learn resilience. There are plenty of tools to help through that process, that I have used myself in the quest for wisdom. Books, therapists, mentors, guides. Exercise and meditation.
But it’s the moments when I find myself needing to take a deep breath that I need something small, digestible but hopeful and pragmatic to center me again. Just to help me re-engage my mind and be thoughtful for a minute. But it has to be gritty and real. There’s no room for trite in my life and probably not in yours. We’ve seen and experienced too much, right?
And that’s where this project was born. I was looking for something that I could read for 2 minutes in the morning or in a coffee break that would help me continue to keep growing but that really spoke to me.
A long time ago, I was a minister. That was my job, curating experiences and opportunities for people to engage spiritually, intellectually and emotionally with the world around them. While it’s no longer my job, it is still my vocation – to care for people, the whole of them. The all of your messy, chaotic and beautiful self.
So here’s my offering – a short journey for 30 days into Thoughtful, from September 1 – September 30th, 2017.
I’ll send you an email with a reflection from my private journals, this blog and lessons I’ve learned from wise advisors and mentors on the way. And if it helps you, then share it. You can read more about Thoughtful here or subscribe below.
Please share this with others who may also be encouraged or find it useful.
by tashmcgill | Jul 24, 2017 | Strategy
I first knew I wanted to be a writer the moment I defined my life purpose; to help people think differently by communicating and sharing different ideas about how to live. Recently that’s evolved to the idea of living by design.
Writing is bigger than words on paper or screen. It’s designing a story. Creating the narrative, understanding the players. It’s also taking into account the ideas of others and changing variables that affect the outcome. It’s the same skill set that enables me to facilitate a room full of senior corporate stakeholders and wrangle 4000 teenagers at a time. Listening, understanding, reflecting the emerging story I hear and designing a way forward through creating, evolving, testing and shaping the story based on the outcome.
What’s the outcome you are living towards?
There is a difference between author and writer. People frequently use the metaphor of ‘author’ to talk about how we create and shape our own paths. It’s a powerful idea to think we take our future and our narrative into our hands as simply as pen stroke to page or keystroke to screen. I have a few ideas about this difference and the use of the metaphor.
A writer is skilled at understanding, translating and then communicating the thoughts and ideas of others into meaningful narrative or work. This is the work of design, the link between story and strategy.
An author is one who creates and develops the idea, the plot or the content of the work towards a pre-determined outcome. There is a role for authorship in our lives, as we determine unique outcomes but I’m not sure it’s enough. Moving towards the outcomes you desire requires a proactive writing of your story, or what I call life by design. Adapting to the context, circumstances and characters that exist outside of my control. I’m engaged in authorship but I am not an author. I’m writing my story and designing my life as the variables move around me.
With all that in mind, I’ve been thinking on the following points
- We develop authorship over time
The ability to create, develop and communicate (or execute) unique ideas and futures of our own is something we learn. The societal framework we live in across the developing and developed world is a series of pre-determined paths. Those who choose to create their own paths inevitably experience a learning encounter or drastic change that precipitates new solutions or pathways. Therefore, authorship is a choice and not a necessity.
- If we choose authorship, we must be collaborative
We are creatures wired for relationship at an individual and collective level. Our lives are not as singular in focus as the plot of a novel or the arc of a TV series, not as concrete or resolved as the script of a movie. We interact with hundreds of individual ideas in a day and have to live amongst our own needs and desires as well as the desires of others. Therefore, authorship of our personal stories must include those we live in relationship with – an intersection of unique storylines.
- We are authors of an evolving narrative
Our world view craves systematic thinking and process. Anything that simplifies data and our ability to rely on programmed responses (you can read more about categorization here) is a natural fallback. Therefore the challenge of authorship is how to deal with a changing context and the variable data we have to process. In the truest sense, an author has absolute power over context, character and circumstance. We can wind our plot towards the pre-determined outcome. That’s the truest problem with the metaphor because real-life authorship is a constant re-writing of the story with uncontrollable context, characters and circumstance.
It’s this evolving narrative that makes the practice of writing or designing our story even more powerful than the metaphor of authorship. Design works with variables and evolving contexts to help us continue moving towards the outcome. But it also gives us permission to change the outcome over time and redirect our energies and strategies should our context change.
Writing or designing an evolving story might look like the art of nudging, to see where your organic growth takes you. Or if your current context is painful, you might like this reflection on being in the graft. Maybe you are at the very beginning of recognising the life you’re meant to live. Your story is in infancy. Welcome aboard!
A few reflection questions to consider as you engage in life by design:
We develop authorship over time > Where or what are the learning encounters or drastic changes giving you opportunity to develop your own authorship or begin designing/re-designing your life?
If we choose authorship, we must be collaborative > Who are your collaborators? They might be authors, teachers, spiritual leaders or family/friends. They should definitely include people you share physical space (face time) and aspects of daily life with. How might you invite them into collaboration?
We are authors of an evolving narrative > What are the variable contexts, characters and circumstances in your narrative? Which of them cause you anxiety or pain and which bring you joy? How might you engage differently to empower or disempower those variables in your life?
by tashmcgill | Mar 10, 2017 | Poems, Prose & Poetry
Someone once said to me that poems ought not to need explanation, but some do. I differ in opinion because it suits me. This is a poem about Love and Love is not.
–
Before I knew anything hard or cruel
like the world is
I believed in fairy tales
with one dubious eye open – but even then
never wanted one
never thought Love would look a certain height or weight
or would gaze at me through eyes a certain colour
with skin a certain hue
I only hoped Love would be nothing
like I had seen in a movie or read in a book.
I hoped Love would be an new idea.
–
I hoped Love would be an anchor,
as steady as concrete or steel
and at the same time warm,
I wanted a paradox of my own to explore.
I hoped Love would feel strong
and sound like a cheerleader
believing each of my
mad, genius, over-sized and wonderful ideas
was in fact, wonderful.
I wanted to Love to find me wonderful, an endless curiosity.
An unending conversation.
–
Later the hard nature
of the world taught me
how I did not know
could not know
the touch or voice of Love,
the sound or the feel of it.
I spent long hours talking to
the stars and the moon instead
to the curve of the earth and rippling sea
cheeks made damp by
my own ocean of salt water
my days poured out like sand
a broken hour glass
I spoke aloud and asked
how I could not know the
sound of Love’s voice
after listening so long
unless I had never heard Love at all.
–
Before the Universe answered
in that long silent pause of breath that is
light reaching between two stars within my sight –
that long of a breath I was left waiting.
The Universe still did not answer me
but a feather fell at my feet saying
‘Love is itself, warm and waiting
stretched from the stars to the moon.’
But this truth I refused, my body shaking.
–
I climbed to my high place
stared out into the sea
in my smallest voice
whispered to the Silent in my silence.
…….
It occurred to me perhaps
I knew what Love should be
because I knew so well
what Love was not.
I said to the Love strung between
the stars and the moon and the sea
‘Let it be kind, strong and generous
when Love comes to me.’
–
I met Love on a Thursday
but we did not recognise each other.
I was following feathers and
by the time I did see Love in
kindness, strength and generosity
I had learned that when Love is strong,
Love will probably be stubborn and
not all kindness is admirable but
there are other things that Love is.
Even kindness takes some getting used to.
Love was busy telling me
what Love is and is not
and Love didn’t want me.
I leaned in and learned the lesson anyway
what is was to listen and talk to Love
and then I returned to my high place
as close to the moon as I could stand
far above the sea, and said to the Universe
Now that I know what Love feels like,
sounds like and looks like –
I think I must talk to Love no more.
It occurred to me that silent or speaking,
telling me what is and what is not,
Love and the Universe are much the same.
And the Universe was still silent.
–
by tashmcgill | Oct 28, 2016 | Prose & Poetry
The Writer
I would write you a letter, with ink and pen on thick paper that feels good in your hands. I’d like to leave the weight of my words with you, a deep impression on the page. I’d like to know you received it, took it into your hands, ran your fingers over the postage and came to understand I’m telling you the story so far, as far as I know it.
These words would be fragile and soft but in reading them, you’d forget being lost and make your way home. I’d make a roadmap of words from here to tomorrow, to guide us til we arrive. You homeward bound and me, reaching for you. Laid out in lines on a page full of humour, sorrow and life.
Each story we know, every secret and joke written in ink for keeping. I’ve come to believe life is a series of chapters you can read out of order because nothing will make sense until the end. As I’m sitting out in the moonlight and waiting for you to come home now, I’m waiting for the right words too.
I know some things will be fine by the end of the book. But some won’t and I’m searching for words to tell you in advance how sorry I am for the small things I’ve ruined by asking too much or when I couldn’t give you enough. I’m grieving for what is lost, what is left in my hands, what we counted on and what I’ve kept to myself when I could’ve opened my heart.
The Beloved
In the beginning there are words. Words that in their being brought earth, stars and all creation into being with them. Words shaped land and ocean, sky and heavens, placed stars into atmosphere and drew water out of springs in the earth to water the ground. The ground that would bloom into life, and the walking, breathing life that lived upon the earth to eat from the blossoming of the earth. All this came from words.
At the end there are always words. They are heavy with sadness and loss, trying to bring meaning to repeated breath and motion that make what we call life. Words that make small triumphs from failures and can change the purpose of a life from smallness to greatness in death.
Words are powerful here too. When the silence becomes an ache, the ache an emptiness and the emptiness cannot be filled, words anchor, restore, comfort and sustain until the last word of farewell is spoken. Hope remains and life endures in the breath and phrases we use to define the ones we lose.
You, I do not intend to lose. My words are constant and true. Trust in their steady and enduring light. I will write you a map home, your words like fire dust in my sight. I hear you calling.
The Writer Lost
Don’t ask for my body without my mind. Ask me for a kiss of syllables, consonants and round, deep vowels. I will slowly form phrases from the infinite depth of my heart which cannot find sharper or truer gift to give you. Words are less fleeting than feeling and hold their shape in the invisible ether. You cannot make dull mean sharp no matter whether you write it on paper or say it aloud.
My words contain everything of myself. Why do I find a deep sense of home in listening to words that roll from your tongue in apathy to my need of them? Our words together seem like a dance where one is never certain of the other. The orchestra slips ahead, like salmon darting upstream, always dragging us behind, always lost in thinking of a lyric for the bars that we pass by.
My words speak my heart aloud and fly up into the air, resting on shadows and clouds, sliding down raindrops back into puddles at my feet. Sometimes I do not recognise my heart as it comes broken back to me, yet drawn to these fragments I piece together a strange jigsaw puzzle of a poem.
Some words hesitate me for hours, fixing me in place until proven true or untrue. ‘Beautiful’ can trip me up for hours, words like ‘father’ bog me in delay. Others are deep, sapphire pools of the ocean and entice me to play. I am playing, waiting, delaying but really now – I have become lost and have need of a new map.
I will send out my words like the breath of the wind and even lighter, in every atom of the air. They sit like art upon the page, they will fly soaring when spoken. Can you hear me calling to you now? I fear forgetting the timbre of your voice cutting shapes into the night with your words.
Mine are arrows that fly from my heart to yours, along an invisible string that binds itself tightly to you. Yours are cool water when thirsty and lamplight in the desert. Hard to find when travelling.
This is a conversation in stilted exchanges – the way we used to communicate in letters, telegraphs, postcards and emails, between one who is lost and searching for the other and one who is calling the other home. Allegory is a powerful way of using story to illustrate ideas about true things and there are many true things in this exchange. At times, I find myself the Writer, at other times I relate to the Beloved.
by tashmcgill | Jun 2, 2016 | Monologues, Poems
If you want to build resilience into your character, visit a bar. Put on your favourite clothes, wear your best scent. Promise yourself to be exactly who you are in every moment, because there are things that sometimes happen in a bar that can make you strong. They won’t feel good but they will stretch you, assure you, reaffirm you. You will feel your heart swell and your spine grow tall like an oak tree. Visit a bar and listen, learn the difference between what people say and what they mean. Hold nothing tightly but yourself and remember always to rise.
This story has happened more than once so I have had to learn to let it empower me but it sits in memory. Last night, two phenomenal women in their 50’s sat alongside me and asked if I was fine drinking alone. It was joy to tell them yes, I am happy to sit alone and listen, or not alone and still listen. Then I thought of a night with two other phenomenal friends, women of great beauty and I remembered why sometimes it is not so easy.
Amazing.
‘Hello,’ and you swagger into the midst
of a conversation you were not invited to,
but discretion is powerful and so
I am not rude. I give you leave to
make a case or entertain and then you say it –
‘You two are amazing girls.’
So then I had to look you in the eye and
consider what happens sometimes in a bar
and what a woman does.
I’m certain your mother loves you
but I am equally certain she did not raise you
to be defined by the weight of your purse
or the length of your stride.
Nor did mine raise me to be defined or dictated
by the weight of where your gaze rests
Or how the word beautiful drops off your tongue
I taught myself to raise my head and
keep my words inside my lips; fool, jerk, dick.
Tonight, you looked at the woman to my left
and the woman on my right and said
‘You two are amazing girls.’
Your pronunciation pointed
in any direction but mine.
So I raised my head
and brought up my pride
looked you right in the eye.
I watched you until I saw you,
and you saw me but didn’t see a thing.
You are right, these are amazing women.
Talented, compassionate and smart
You would have come to know that eventually
but it’s not what you meant when you said
Amazing.
You meant beautiful in such a way you
wanted to touch them, possess them
as you looked left and right
and over me, through me
around me as if I were nothing
and thought instead of having
power over beauty.
Did you have a mother who loved you
but couldn’t or maybe wouldn’t
teach you that where two women are amazing
the third is most likely a Queen
so that is why you didn’t know, when you met me
how you were in the presence of royalty?
I raised my head and brought up my pride
from within me; looked you right in the eye.
I watched you until I saw you, and you saw me.
And still you did not bow to me.
So let me tell you again, because it should be known,
where there are three women
sitting at a bar or on a step or anywhere
it is statistical impossibility, a scientific anomaly
if only two of three women could be called amazing
because amazing women stick together
out of necessity because there are some who
caress our skin uninvited
or interrupt with awkward conversation
when we were just now solving significant problems
and we didn’t care what you had for dinner
or to tell you of ours when
We had other amazing things to talk about
and no desire to give you power over our beauty.
But this is just a bar and
you didn’t come for serious talk
you came for a drink and a laugh
and to drink in the sights
possessing us for a moment
despite being momentarily blind
seeing two not three
women in your company; sigh
it’s not likely you will ever see,
not enough for Woman One, Two
or Three
but I’ll give you this; perhaps
with my head raised I can
offer you a new definition of amazing
(though I am certain you were raised
from the warm womb of kindness
by a woman who was also thus)
if you could somehow
raise yourself up and learn to see
then Three is the prize you seek
Three knows more than the world
and has the colour and power of a Queen
knows how grit can polish and
rolls her hips because it pleases her
and takes pleasure gladly in it
the feeding, clothing and making of love
gives out grace because she knows
she can afford the price and pays it
from a deep, old treasure chest
meets you mark for mark
in the heat of an argument
in the depth of her heart.
Your blindness is heavier than your hands
which do not, will not and can not touch me,
but I rise
shake it off and walk unburdened
by the weight of all that is amazing in me
what you could not see between my breasts
or in the sway of my warm, wide hips.
I was glad of the beauty either side of me
beauty of mind and glow of skin
I was gladly not beholden to profanity
the offence of blasphemy that you
could ignore the wonder of me.
the presence of amazing me,
so I rise
I feel delicately the absence
of perfection under your eyes
but I rise
and decide your eyes are not the seeing kind
I entertain the words I might use in response and sigh,
instead onto the higher ground,
I rise
seen or unseen,
beauty to the left and right
but mostly in the midst of me.
