October | 2012 | The Direction of Intention

Eat At Tina’s Kitchen

Posted on October 21, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

591. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I am having a twilight zone moment. I’m sitting in the reception area of Doctor Knapp’s office staring at a very large aquarium filled with vibrant green plastic seaweed, colorful plastic shells, fake corral, a bubbling aerator, and several tropical fish swimming. It’s all so clean and well constructed, designed and contained. It is meant to be peaceful and calming for nervous patients and in another context I might see it as it is intended. However, I just spent the last two weeks diving off the coast of Belize on one of the world’s great barrier reefs. The only real things in the tank are the fish; everything else is plastic, constructed. I’m watching the fish swim within the limits of their container. They circle; they touch the top and dive to the bottom, again and again and again.

Because my mind can’t see a doughnut without equating it metaphorically I am staring at the aquarium as if was a symbol of contemporary life in America. I am horrified. The colorful magazines on the table next to me declare that, Jen is being unfaithful, Christian has a broken heart, there is a lovechild, a shocking divorce, a deathbed confession! The receptionist is sitting behind a counter, wearing a headset, answering calls as she simultaneously asks a patient 101 questions about insurance coverage; the patient is wracking her brain trying to remember the minutia of her coverage. How many parts of Medicare are there and have you already fallen through the doughnut hole?

There is an elderly couple sitting behind me and they are talking about the episode of a television show they watched last night. They are deeply concerned about the safety of one of the characters. Their conversation for a moment became heated as they argued about whether the character should have opened the door or not. “That was stupid!” the man exclaimed. “No! He had to do it!” she retorted. He crossed his arms not liking to be challenged on his perception of a character in imaginary circumstances. I suppress the urge to flee.

As I look around the office I realize that, other than the people and the fish, everything is constructed, designed, assembled, and fabricated. There is a wall of charts, rows of chairs (not too comfortable), art on the wall meant to compliment the color scheme but otherwise says nothing (or, perhaps, that is exactly what it says about us), textured wallpaper that is not vibrant nor listless; people walking within the limits of their container, testing the top, diving to touch bottom, and circling again and again and again.

I know this moment will pass. I am suffering from travel re-entry and am prone to twilight zone moments. Last week I entered a shack, sat on a plastic chair and watched as Tina made for me rice, beans, and a fish just pulled from the river. Tina’s kitchen was also constructed but it wasn’t hiding anything, it was a human place, functional and gritty and barely qualified as a structure. Her 6-year old daughter, Darcy, strummed a guitar that only had two strings and sang songs. No one tried to shoo her away or was concerned about decorum. We laughed, clapped and were grateful for the breeze off the ocean that cut the heat. There was no need to talk about imaginary conflicts because life in Tina’s Kitchen was real and so was our conversation. The culture of comfort had not yet seeped into her village; insurance was the relationship she had with her neighbors and the hard lives of the people in her world were far more tangible and compelling than anything screaming from a magazine. She had no time for Jen’s faithlessness or Christian’s broken heart. Her world might have looked poor but I could see no glass containing her and all of the plants were refreshingly rooted and real.

Filed under: Perspective, Truly Powerful People | 4 Comments »

Dance For The Crows

Posted on October 20, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

590. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

The first real storm of the season blew in last night. It is raining hard, scouring the leaves from the trees. My nemesis crows are clutching onto branches, bobbing up and down in the wind, miserable with water running from their beaks. I am warm and dry inside and stand next to the sliding glass door so they can see me. Days like today are the only time I have the upper hand with the crows. And, since I just used the word “hand” I show the crows my opposable thumbs; I can open doors, steer a car, or hold a hand! HA! I take great petty delight in rubbing in my advantages, especially since my advantages are imagined and most especially since now I am currently safe beneath a roof and secure behind a closed door; they can’t dive bomb me here. Next season there will be hell to pay but I’m not worried about that now. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

The truth is that I love the crows. I love our game most of the time. It brings out the 3rd grader in me. They fire my imagination. That I am standing in front of a glass door dancing for the crows so they can see that I am warm while they are wet is a miracle of delusion. For all I know, the crows ride the bobbing branches like a rollercoaster, love the new rain like I love a warm ocean, and are looking at me thinking, “Look at that poor sad feather-less creature.” To the crows, I am an animal behind glass; they are at the people zoo all of the time.

I remember the day years ago, deeply angry at some perceived offense, when I realized that I was the only person in the story that was suffering. I was creating the angst, interpreting the story, invested in the drama. No one else in the story was in pain because no one else was telling a story of pain. I was. The fear was in my body, the tension was in my body, and the story that was driving the fear and the tension was in my mind. No one else was responsible for how I felt or what I perceived. That was all mine. I could choose to continue my suffering or I could choose something else. I was free to choose. And the moment I had that revelation, the drama dissipated. Drama and victimhood are misty fog that burns off in the light of choice.

The freedom choice brings allows for magnificent delusion; stories, when conscious, afford a playground of possibility. Today, I taunt the crows and pretend that they burn at my advantage, staring back at me with gritted beaks just waiting for the spring day when I will take a walk and expose my human head like a target for their aerial attacks. “Retribution will be sweet,” they think as the cold winter rain dribbles down their feathers, watching me wiggle and laugh behind the glass. I dance now so that I will deserve every sneak attack that comes my way when the seasons change and tilt the advantage in the crow’s favor. In the mean time, I will make some hot chocolate and be careful to sip it slowly, moaning with pleasure just to make those villainous crows bristle (didn’t you know that crows love chocolate).

Filed under: Story, Truly Powerful People | 3 Comments »

What’s The Motivation?

Posted on October 19, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

589. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Apples are not oranges and this would seem…well, obvious. But, it is not. The apples-oranges confusion is at the core (forgive the pun) of many of our most persistent challenges. For instance, we are in an endless political season and I’ve heard again and again that we need a government that runs like a business. We want efficiency, less bureaucracy, clearer process and better use of technology; if only the government ran like Netflix….

Yes. And, government is not business. The motives of government are not the same as the motives of business; to apply the language of business as the test of governance is to confuse the motives. It is to confuse the word “consumer” with the word “citizen.” One is driven by self-interest; the other is concerned with communal-interest. If government ran like a business we’d all get a pink slip and have to find another country to employ us; I understand the government is downsizing. Anyway, I like choosing the location of my cubicle and if government ran like a business I’d have to live with my assigned space. And, of course, there is this thing called democracy and I’ve yet to find a business that (honestly) embraces the notion of the voice of the people. Apples and oranges.

Education is not business. The motives of education are fundamentally different than the motives of business yet we are now applying the language of business to how we teach and learn. Children are not products and despite our wish to label them as such, there is nothing standard about children or the circumstances of the schools. Is it really the aim of our education system to produce better workers? Are we truly in that much of an imagination deficit? It is another form of the consumer-citizen confusion and this apples-oranges mess is not only limiting the possibilities we entertain it is stunting our growth.

We’ve tangled the motives. Clarity is not in the actions taken; clarity is in the intention beneath the actions taken. Why do we do what we do? We do not treat our families the same way we treat our co-workers because the context is different, the motives behind our relationships are different and yet we regularly cross wires with our institutions: the motives of health care are not business motives, the motives of prisons are not business motives, so what in us is so willing to confuse them? People are not bottom lines nor are they consumable.

Ask yourself: What’s the motivation? What’s beneath the action? Governing is a different animal than Google. Business best practices do not generate dreams; people do.

Filed under: Rants, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Exit The Grey

Posted on October 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

588. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

There are many upsides to modern air travel. Namely, you can get someplace really fast. No more wagon trains, no more pony rides across the prairie. No more months or even days of going only as fast as the wheel can roll.

And, no more transition time. The downside is the same as the upside: you get places really fast. You enter into a grey space called an “airport” and exit from a similar grey space into an entirely different location. Yesterday I began the day walking on the beach while the sun rose over the coast of Belize. I waded into the warm ocean waters of the Caribbean. I swam. And then I packed my bag. 12 hours later I stepped out of the grey Seattle airport into the freezing rain.

My mind can make sense of this rapid change of environment but my body struggles to comprehend it. How can I be in warm summer in the morning and freezing winter by midnight? Enter the grey and things can change very fast. It is a metaphor for our time. While in Belize Lora turned 59, she looked at me and said, “How did that happen?” I thought, “We are always in the grey.” One day you are twenty, you enter the cubicle and emerge 60 on the other side. Whoosh!

I was amused in Houston to hear my fellow travelers huff and gruff about how long their flights were going to take. Another 3 hours! Tom told me that once he flew across the country looking down at the immense expanse that his ancestors crossed in a wagon. He said, “I don’t have that in me. They were made of much sturdier stuff.” When you left your family, it was a good bet that you would never again see them. The word “distance” had an entirely different meaning than it does now. The word “dream” rarely came with an expectation of immediacy.

While away I turned off my phone. We were in a place with a sketchy internet connection so after a day I recognized the boon and stopped trying to be connected. I created distance. All my abstractions fell away, the pace of my expectation slowed to a more human rate, and my dreams took a lung full of air and sighed. “What shall we do now,” I asked. “Just this.”

Filed under: Perspective, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Right Now Means Not Yet

Posted on October 17, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

587. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Language is beautiful and never precise. I can only assume that when I use a word or phrase that you, as the hearer, interpret the meaning as I intended. And I’m convinced that is hardly ever the case; I say one thing and you hear another. We think a single word has a singular shared meaning; we may bob our heads in agreement; the best we can do is approximate.

I often hear the word, “love” used to mean the word, “need.” We toss about words like, “data” or “statistic” as if they were absolute and unassailable. Data is collected by and for humans so it is subject to interpretation; it was gathered with a point of view in mind. Say the word “turquoise” to me and my associations will be personal, precise, tactile, and loaded with sensual experiences that you can’t possibly intend. In the airport yesterday I heard someone say, “Turquoise is common.” And I thought, “Oh, how sad. Turquoise is the color of desire, it radiates against the red earth and tanned skin; it floods me with memories of Santa Fe.” There is no way I can reduce any color or stone to something common. Or, perhaps I misunderstood their use of the word, “common.” It’s possible.

Luckie-the-dive-master told me that, in Belize, when you say, “Right now,” you mean “not yet.” I laughed because Luckie has one of those smiles that leads you to think he is pulling your leg – and he often is – but this time he was telling me the truth. I listened to the guys on the dive boat say, “Right now!,” I heard people in the village say, “Right now!” and no one moved. It made me nervous because their “not yet” was my “right now” and I jumped to help every time. Luckie’s wife is Canadian; early in their relationship they got into a fight because she was helping him fix a motorbike; he’d say, “Right now” and she’s rev the motor. “No!” he screamed, “Right now!” and she’d rev the motor again. “No!” he screamed, “I said right now.” They were deep into the battle when they realized that they were using the same words for two diametrically opposed meanings.

I asked Luckie, “If ‘right now’ means ‘not yet’, what do Belizian’s say for ‘now?’” He looked at me with his grin of mischief and, as if I was an idiot, he said, “We say ‘now.’ I laughed and he shrugged his shoulders, saying, “Now means now, right now means not yet. It’s simple.”

Language is beautiful.

Filed under: Language, Truly Powerful People | 3 Comments »

“When You Are Falling, Dive!”

Posted on October 16, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

586. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Today the dragonfly is once again on my mind. Earlier this summer I wrote about dragonflies and they have been hanging around in my thoughts since a hot day in August when I waded into a lake in New Hampshire and a cobalt and purple dragonfly landed on my shoulder. I was going to take a swim but recognized that I was having a sweet visitation so I thought I’d wait until the dragonfly left me. And the dragonfly stayed. For a long time it rode on my shoulder. I slowly waded parallel to the shore and for almost a mile the dragonfly sat on my shoulder. A few weeks ago I kneeled on the grass of Jill’s front yard and saw fiery orange dragonflies skitter just above the green; those playful amorous dragonflies were invisible from human height. When I kneeled and put my ear on the grass I saw an entire festival of dragonfly play.

I love symbol and metaphor so later I researched (again) the dragonfly as a symbol and what it portends. I learned that dragonflies come to you to help you break the illusions that prevent growth and maturity. They bring visions of power; they are swift fliers so are symbols of whirlwinds of activity. Dragonflies also foretell a time of change. In other words, when a dragonfly lands on your shoulder it is a good idea to put on your seatbelt. When an invisible community of dragonflies becomes visible, put on your hard helmet.

This summer was definitely a time for breaking my illusions, challenging my patterns and looking at my assumptions. The breaking continues: if my life came with a windshield I would have already gone through it. Airbags were not an option when my model came into the world and the seatbelt was less than useful. I read that dragonfly medicine works in a two-year cycle so the games have just begun. Since I am already in flight I will keep my helmet on for a while. I am investing in some large safety goggles. I am learning to keep my arms at my side for less wind resistance. Soon I expect that I will develop a cool set of wings. I wonder what color I will be when I have fully become a dragonfly? I prefer the cobalt and purple but the fiery orange was hot and might better serve my new style.

As an older artist friend once told me, the edges never stop coming; if we are alive we just get better and better at running toward them. We develop an unwavering faith in the leap, the fall, and the landing. I am going to like life as a dragonfly and will not spend much of my time reminiscing about my human shape. And, I am certain that I will spend much of my time seeking shoulders upon which to land. I will delight in being a colorful symbol for imminent change.

Filed under: Edges, The Direction of Intention, Transcendence | 1 Comment »

Choose To Be Powerful

Posted on October 15, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

585. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

[continued for 584]

This is what I wrote in my journal about strings to pluck when telling the students the Polar Bear King story. These were my 3 lessons about power as told through the story:

1. Power is something you can learn. And, because it is something you learn it is something anyone can create. Power is not something that happens to you; you choose it. You create it.

2. You can only create power with others. No one is powerful alone. Personal power comes from how you are with others. How are you within your circumstance?

3. It matters how you enter a space, just as it matters how you enter you life each day. You have the capacity to intend. How you come in, why you come in, determines what you do within the space. So, for instance, if you enter the classroom expecting the teacher to control you then you have already given away your power; you will wrangle for control all day and only feel the illusion of power when you think you have won control. The first confusion is to mistake control for power. Power is not control, control over others is not power. Enter the space in control of yourself. Decide to enter your day, each and every day, as a powerful person.

It’s so simple.

Filed under: Education, Power, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Create A Receiving Space

Posted on October 14, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

584. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

A week ago I went to several classrooms and told the Polar Bear King story. I intended to do an experiment: tell the story but approach it from many different access points, perhaps tell it through movement, engage the kids in a poetry exploration, etc. I bailed on my intention and simply told the story – or in most cases, only told a part of the story. I left the kids hanging, wondering what would happen next. In the morning, prior to going into the schools, I sorted my thoughts; I wrote what was important and why I wanted to tell this particular story. Here’s what I wrote in my journal:

“Long ago people knew that things like reading and writing and arithmetic were important things to learn but they knew something that we’ve forgotten: if the next generation does not know how to be powerful (personally and collectively), if each child does not know the difference between power and control, then all the other stuff is meaningless.

People taught this, and other things, through stories. They knew that to tell a story was an act of power. They would not simply begin telling a story, they would first transform their space to a place where power might be given and received. Sometimes that meant going to a special place, sometimes it meant creating a central fire or rearranging the existing space.”

Before telling the story to the classes, I asked the students to create a space – and enter the space – so that they were ready to receive a story. They knew just what to do; it is in our dna. They moved desks and chairs, they created inclusive spaces, they got under desks and tables; they made themselves comfortable. And then they listened. They gave their attention so that they might receive the story.

Each time I enter a school I think, “This is madness.” It is a forced march to content delivery, a test factory. As John would say, “We are a penny wise and a pound foolish.” Yet, in the midst of all the madness, the kids know how to create a space to receive – and their first action, in each classroom, was to blow apart the rows, get on the floor, and challenge me to bring something real to them. [to be continued]

Filed under: Education, Story, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

“FEED ME!”

Posted on October 13, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

583. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

There is a special place in my heart for momma seagulls. Each morning I see them stamping across the beach, their teenager close on their heels squawking for food. The teenager doesn’t squawk once or twice; their cry for food is incessant, unrelenting. Their squawk is high pitched and piercing. The momma gull looks as if she needs an aspirin. She looks like some momma humans I have seen in grocery stores: every fiber of her being resisting the urge to end the life that she birthed. I am undecided whether the momma gull is frantically looking for food to stop the squawk or racing to get away from their fledgling before committing a capital bird crime.

Yesterday I took a walk with Pete. He is a gifted artist though is convinced that he must know something or achieve something to be valid. He is wrestling with the artist-as-outcome demon. What must he do to allow that he is and always has been an artist? Pete is retired and has been pursued his entire life by an inner squawking that refuses to yield. It says, “FEED ME. FEED ME. FEED ME.” And, like the momma gull, he either runs to find food (art-as-product) or runs to get away from the voice.

His dilemma is common among people who finally listen to the inner voice and attempt to feed the artist that chases them. The mistake is to think that validity is something that others grant to you. This mistake will have Pete hunting for scraps to feed a bottomless pit of hunger; the squawking will never stop. There is a happy day in every seagull and artist’s life when the momma turns to the squawking teenager and roars, “FEED YOURSELF.” For the artist, the equivalent comes in the moment when they realize that the squawking will stop the moment they care more for what they think of their work than they care what others might think of their work; validity moves inside. For the artist, the squawk is to be heeded, it is literal: “FEED ME,” means to feed my ideas, my opinions, and stop giving away the worth of my artistry, the nutrient of my opinions to others.

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Look To The Little Things

Posted on October 12, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

582. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Megan-the-Brilliant and I talked late one night about the little things in life; we both agreed that they are the most significant things, those little moments that we almost always miss. She told me of being stunned into silence by the yellow leaves falling in a perfect circle beneath a tree. No other tree in the park was shedding its leaves. This single tree was ringed by a brilliant yellow circle of it’s leaves and in the morning light, it was electric. The next morning, on our way to the airport, she took me to see it. I gave her an assignment: I asked her to go to the tree the following morning, take off her shoes, and walk in the circle of leaves. I am waiting for a full report.

Sometimes the small things surprise you: you discover the circle of leaves. Sometimes you create the small things: you drive to the circle in the early morning light, take off your shoes, and walk through the brilliant leaves. I am practicing moving though my life looking for the small surprises. It makes me move slower, to expect the surprises. I am never disappointed as each day, everywhere I look, I see the little miracles, the kindnesses, the generosities, the electric trees, the mesquite smell in the air.

I am also practicing creating the small memories. Last week I stepped into the river. I climbed a fallen eagle tree and peered into an abandoned nest. I threw bark in the water to make a splash. I ate slowly my chili and smelled a warm, freshly baked cinnamon roll. I splashed paint with a little blonde miracle. I sat before a fire late into the night, drank wine and talked of small things.

Filed under: Education, Emergence, Love, Perspective, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »