Perspective | The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (443)

Posted on May 26, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

443.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Brain science tells us that memory is not the recall of an event; memory is the configuration or reconfiguration of sense elements. It is a story, perhaps familiar, but a story that we assemble according to the meaning we assign to the assembly. That’s why, over time, we reassign meaning to our memories. Old wounds become current strengths.

Because we like to believe that memory is fact, an actual event that happened just as we re-member it, we are also given to the notion that a memory is a fixed point in time. Lately I’ve been thinking about single points in time – particularly times that I was afraid or steeped in a story of betrayal or injustice. I stand in that point and for the fun of it, I take one step backwards in time. And then a step forwards. And, for a real kick, I take a step to the left or to the right. Here’s what I’ve learned: the initial point, the fear or injustice, makes no sense. From the initial single fixed point of view, the fear seemed meaningful. From any other angle, there is no sense to be made. Move past any moment and the story changes, the investment falls apart.

Deep in the woods at night when I was a boy, my brothers, father and I spent half the night stoking a large fire because a very large creature was circling our campsite. Trees rustling, branches snapping; we were terrified. Take one step forward in time. The large creature circling our camp…moo-ed. It was a wayward cow, a bovine escapee from a nearby ranch. We laughed at our assumption and told ourselves it was better to be safe than sorry.

Our fear made sense from a single point. Take a step forward and it is now a great family story. Mahatma Gandhi tells us that fear has its uses and I think that must be true. It can be fuel for action. It is certainly an opportunity for transformation when we are capable of taking a step to the left or the right. Mark Twain wrote, “Do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is certain.” Now, when I am particularly dark or afraid, I think, “Why wait until later! Step left. Step right. What do you see now?”

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Truly Powerful People (439)

Posted on May 22, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

439.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Debra decided to be miserable. There was water damage in her apartment and the when the landlord identified the source he found the extent of the damage was much worse than he expected. The repair was nothing short of reconstruction. The work was scheduled to take 45 days. She told me, “I’m going to hate every moment of it. If I can’t control my space I go nuts. I’ll just hate it.” Assigning two “hates” to a single circumstance left no room for doubt: Debra was going to be miserable. Fifteen days into the repair I passed her in the hall and asked how the repair was coming along. Her answer, “I hate it. I hate every moment of it.” I was not surprised. She’d carried the two “hates” into her life just as she’d planned.

Ellen decided that there was nothing she could do. Like many educators she told me she “loathed” the standardization and testing madness that continue to drive the public schools into the dirt. She told me that her children were suffering, the teacher’s were suffering, and the community was suffering. And then she said, “There’s nothing I can do so I just go with it. What else can we do?” “Loathe” is a powerful word. So is “helpless.” Apparently, “helpless” is more powerful than “loathe.”

What is it to loathe and still choose to participate? What is it to decide that you are helpless? What is it to decide to “hate” your experience before you actually have it?

Once, while sitting in the passenger seat of a car spinning out of control on a freeway, time slowed and I closed my eyes because I’d decided that what ever was about to happen was surely going to hurt. I heard the tires squealing and the beating of my heart. And then, nothing; stillness. There was no crunching of metal, no breaking glass or screams of pain. I opened my eyes and saw my brother gripping the steering wheel. We were facing the wrong way and all the cars around us had stopped. We didn’t hit the concrete barriers, other cars, rails, or plunge into the river. We were still. My brother, with his eyes wide open said, “Do want to get a drink?” and then, “Welcome to Kansas City.”

We decided that we were fortunate. We decided that, although losing control of a car on an icy freeway bridge was thrilling, it was only necessary to do it once. We decided that there was a lot we would do differently if circumstance ever presented us with another icy bridge.

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Truly Powerful People (422)

Posted on May 5, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

422.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Let me begin by saying that I have always liked big porches. That will mean nothing to you until the end of this post.

Aloof (adj): remote in manner. Separate. The antonym if aloof is friendly – implying that to be aloof is to be unfriendly. Once, many years ago, Tom said that I was the only person on the planet that was more aloof than he was. Out of seven billion people on earth I won the blue ribbon for aloofness. Tom awarded himself the red ribbon assuming the number two spot in the aloof games. I laughed heartily at his scorecard and told him I would have given him the blue ribbon. I was certain that he out-aloofed me by a mile. He snickered at my deflection and I accused him of deflection and his snicker blossomed into a full guffaw. “I’m shy!” I exclaimed. “I’m an introvert!” I claimed a bit too emphatically. I was a victim of my own label-libel. Who might I be if I stopped arguing so adamantly for my reticence?

I’ve been working on being less aloof for a decade. I’d have made an excellent hermit though I know my shack would have had a porch since I like porches. So, I would have been a conflicted hermit. I’ve attended Aloof Anonymous and have learned to make causal conversation at parties. Sometimes I smile when I have my picture taken even though I fear I look like Baron Sardonicus.

Enter the present day. Teresa is helping me market myself. She is brilliant and our first phone call left me speechless: she helped me see that my business is me – so, her homework for me was to discover how I could become more of my self (try this. It is an excellent task certain to lead through madness before illumination. Note: I’m making up the part about illumination). During the second call she reduced my brains to pudding: she agreed with Tom, though she did not know it (and I will not tell either that they have an ally in my blue ribbon aloofness); she said, “Your door is open. You invite people onto the porch. Why don’t you them invite into the house?” When I stuttered she said, “You allow people to see your paintings and have their own response don’t you? You don’t try and tell them what the painting is about or control what they see do you?” “No.” I agreed. “Then be like your paintings. Let people see you. Invite them in!”

In my stunned silence she snickered (suspiciously like Tom!) and said, “You thought you were exempt from this stuff didn’t you.”

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Truly Powerful People (421)

Posted on May 4, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

421.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

This is an example of why Ana-the-wise is wise – and I am a David-the-slow-study. Our conversation this morning went something like this:

Ana: What are you trying to create with your work?

David: Success. I want to create success.

Ana: David! I’m confused. Aren’t you happy?

David: Yes. I’m very happy. Why are you confused?

Ana: Maybe it is not me that is confused.

David: (silence. I know Ana well enough to recognize the incoming dope slap). Uh……

Ana: Do you know what my teacher taught me about success?

David: (stepping lightly onto the thin ice) No…. What did he teach you?

Ana: My teacher taught me that the successful person was someone who knew how to be happy regardless of their circumstance. You seem like a happy person to me.

David: That’s true. I am a happy person.

Ana: You seem happy in all kinds of circumstances.

David: Yes, that’s true.

Ana: So you are already successful! Why do you set an intention for something you have already realized? You are teaching other people how to be successful, aren’t you?

David: I guess so.

Ana: No wonder you are confused!

(And so on. I might be confused about success but I am crystal clear about where to go for perspective, support, and wise-eyes).

The End (Or yet another beginning)

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Truly Powerful People (418)

Posted on May 1, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

418.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Mike was in an especially fearful place. Life’s challenges were stacking like bricks and she could see nothing but wall. In a particularly dark and monster-steeped moment the phone rang. It was her old friend Andrew. He asked the requisite conversation starter, “How are you?” and Mike, not wanting to unload the full weight of her monsters on Andrew instead confessed her fear. “I’m really afraid,” she said.

“Oh. Well, let me tell you what I do with fear?” Andrew chirped without missing a beat, “I put the fear in the palm of my hand, place my hand on the small of my back, and let the fear move me forward.”

Later, Mike told me the story of her conversation with Andrew. “Sage,” she said. “First, he didn’t commiserate and reinforce my fear. He made me laugh with the idea of putting fear in the palm of my hand. Second, I saw immediately that as long as I held the fear in front of me I was going to be debilitated because fear was the only thing I could see. When I placed it in the palm of my hand and put it behind me…well, the wall was behind me and I had some useful fuel to move forward. So I did.”

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Truly Powerful People (417)

Posted on April 30, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

417.
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 called Tom this morning. I rang his phone at the ranch and he answered but before responding to my, “Hi Tom!” he passed the phone to Marcia. I heard her explain to Tom who I was. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he exclaimed as she gave the phone back to him. “Hello!” he chimed.

“Tom, how are things at the ranch?” I asked. “Oh, I haven’t been at the ranch in months,” he said. I know enough about Alzheimer’s to go with the flow. No resistance. “Where are you now?” I asked. There was a long pause and then he said, “Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to ask.” He dropped the phone and went in search of Marcia. Far away I heard him ask, “Where am I?”

The last time I talked with Tom he knew where he was. He knew who I was. And so, we enter a new phase in our relationship. As I held the phone and waited for Marcia to come back to the phone I was suddenly thrust back in time, 6 years ago, late one night when I was visiting, Tom looked at me and said, “I need your help. I need your help with a story.” For the next three years, every few months, I flew to California and spent long weekends with him, sometimes recording, sometimes scribbling furiously, capturing as much as I could of his family origin story. Tom passed to me the seed. He is the rememberer of his clan and there was no one to pass the stories to. As I waited for Marcia I wondered if he knew this day was coming. He knew, as he put it, “I am on the glide path of my life now and don’t know what to do with the story.” I wondered why he chose me, was it a coincidence, spontaneous or was it planned. Either way, I was grateful that he did. I am grateful that I keep his stories burning.

Today, his story became mine and I will create an origin house to hold it. And I am compelled to find the connective tissue to my origin story so that I might wrap the fibers of Tom’s story into mine. Marcia came back to the phone, lifted the receiver and said, “Well, you know what DeMarcus used to say (her father), ‘Pay attention to the coincidences – they just might be small miracles.”

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Truly Powerful People (412)

Posted on April 25, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

412.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Bobby is a sports massage therapist. Most doorframes are not made to accommodate a man of his size. He is strong. He is big. He has been known to the block the sun when passing by, sending confused patients in the rehab center scrambling outside to see the eclipse. Bobby could spin me like on his finger like a juggler spins a plate.

The first time I saw him (in silhouette, of course, he stood between me and the sun) I thought, “This is going to hurt.” He said, as if reading my thoughts, “Don’t worry. I’m a shoulder guy. I promise not to hurt you. Much.” He grinned as I followed him back to massage room, the room so far removed from the rest of the center that screams cannot be heard. My first sports massage performed by my first giant. It was a day of firsts!

Bobby is helping me recover the use of my shoulders. He knows the exact spot to press in a muscle set to release traumatized muscles. He is the largest magician I have ever known. There are handstands in my future. I might even pitch a baseball or reclaim my yoga master superhero status (I demoted myself to yoga bystander when I lost my downward dog). While Bobby had my arm going places it had not gone in 4 years, he fell prey to what I now call, “that thing about me.” Roger used to call it my geek magnet. I am like a roving bartender; people spontaneously tell me their troubles or their life stories – even if they don’t want to – and although Bobby is a Sumo to my twig, he began telling me why he couldn’t be an engineer. I asked no questions. He just started, “Ah, that’s the one. Did you feel it let go? I always wanted to be an engineer,” he said. It was the math. Specifically, it was algebra. He could get the correct answers; he just couldn’t show this work. He told me he barely passed algebra class, squeaking by with a “D” so the course of his life was altered forever. “I had the answers!” he repeated, “but I really started to doubt myself. How could I know the answers but have no idea how to get there?”

I laughed (through my grimace) and said, “You’re lucky! Most people spend their lives looking for the answers AND have no idea how to get there. Imagine their doubt!” He said, “Hold on, I think this next one is going to hurt.”

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Truly Powerful People (405)

Posted on April 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

405.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Lora takes photographs of my paintings when I have a new batch ready. She shoots the full image and then does a series of sections. Often I liked her cropped images much better than my original composition! It always makes me laugh how her photographer’s eye can help me see my paintings as if I’d never seen them before. I am tempted to cut my paintings into her compositions because they are more dynamic – they are better paintings.

I am a slow study and did not recognize the possibilities until a earlier today: I sent Megan a photo I took on my phone of a painting in process – and I recognized that I was seeing things in the photograph that I did not see when standing before the painting. I was seeing compositional strengths and weaknesses. Looking at the photo I knew exactly what to do to with the painting! The photograph isolates the image, frames it and eliminates all the visual noise from the peripheral. It helps me see beyond what I think is there to what is actually there. This view helps move me beyond my idea of the painting and into a dance with the painting; it frees me to play.

As I went back to work on the painting I thought about how a magic camera could help educators or organizations (or people everywhere) when they are lost in the politics or consumed in a cloud of visual noise so that nothing seems clear. I’d like to help them put a frame around it. What we need to do to facilitate great learning is simple and clear when cleaned of the power plays, business interests and intentions that have nothing to do with learning and everything to do with controlling learners. A magic camera might help us see beyond the clutter. Business leaders could use it, too. There is so much noise when an organization’s original purpose fuzzes out of focus: myopic short-term market performance is the driver of all action. The picture torques, the composition falls apart, the values disintegrate.

As I write this I recognize that the clutter comes from the mistaken notion that reason and rational thinking rule the day; they don’t. The real work in our lives happens when we hit the resistance or feel out of our comfort zone – the first person to abandon ship in a hot moment is our reason. Heart and fear are left to sort out the confusion.

Pull out your camera and aim it at the painting of your life. Don’t think too much about it and take a quick picture. Cut out the peripheral noise. Do you see your heart’s composition or fear’s work? Either way your next steps should appear: simple and clear.

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Truly Powerful People (401)

Posted on April 14, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

401.
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 told Scott that I was at zero; all around me was a blank slate. He smiled and said, “That reminds me of a poem by Hafiz I recently heard:

Zero
Is where the Real Fun starts.

There’s too much counting
Everywhere else!”

I laughed when he said, “You’re right where the real fun starts.” How does this always happen: seeking sympathy my pals hit me with a poem and I realize with cartoon stars swirling around my head that I am again standing right where I want to be! Zero is the beginning of the adventure. As choices go, Zero can be utter stillness, the wasteland, lost in the woods, a score on a math test, or the moment before the big bang. It most certainly is a state of mind.

Once, I was represented by a gallery whose owner was also a painter. His home was his studio and in one of the seasonal fires sparked by humans and blown into conflagration by the Santa Ana winds, his house and all of his paintings burned. He was at zero. He said, “There’s nothing but space around me and I’ve never felt more alive.”

Scott watched my thought train and said, “It’s a good one isn’t it.” I said, “Now that I know better, Zero is the only place I want to be.” I’m tired of counting.

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Truly Powerful People (399)

Posted on April 12, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

399.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Riding my bike over the low bridge out of West Seattle, I shifted into an easier gear and my bike locked up. No pieces flew off like the last time this happened. It was as if I tossed the anchor off the back of the bike and moored myself to the spot. I lurched and stood, secure in the knowledge that I was going nowhere. My gears where broken. I heard Megan’s voice in my head saying, “metaphor alert!” I did not want to consider the implications of the metaphor. So, instead of my bike carrying me to my studio I carried my bike half a mile back to the new cycle shop that opened the previous week; I noticed it as I passed on my way to the bridge. Another metaphor alert: if your bike is going to drop anchor in the middle of nowhere then how fortuitous is it that a bike shop chose to locate itself on the edge of nowhere? I chose this as my metaphor.

I was jamming on my bike because I had a call with Alan so, instead of doing the call from my studio I found a nice bench overlooking Puget Sound. There was a drive through coffee stand a few hundred yards before the bench so I walked through, got a coffee, and had a call with one of my favorite people on a beautiful spring day with a hot morning latte from my bench office with a spectacular view across the Sound to downtown. I took off my helmet as my head was swelling with imagined status. Also wearing a bike helmet without a bike requires people to ask, “Are you okay?” Two people asked in addition to the barista. I never know how to answer that question. I did know how to answer the man loading the truck who asked, “What happened to your ride?” I responded, “It threw a shoe so I left it at the blacksmith.” He laughed and I laughed because he laughed.
Later (from my studio – I drove) I had a call with Teresa who is helping me rethink and market my business. She said, “Let’s start from the inside out,” and I almost wept for joy; no marketing plan on the planet has ever worked for me because, as Teresa said, “People come to work with you because of who you are – not everyone is ready for that (another metaphor alert!) so they must come to you when they are ready.” She told me I was like guy in The Giver who helps people when they see color for the first time. “They see the color red and think they are going crazy and you help them know that red is what they are supposed to see. You help people know that their creativity isn’t crazy; it’s natural. Then, you help them find all the colors of the rainbow.” It’s a good thing my helmet was already off.

She made all of the metaphor alerts come into focus. I am just like the bike shop; I’ve chosen to place my shop on the edge of nowhere because that is where the seekers pass on their quest to find color. She laughed when I told her my target audience is people whose bikes have spontaneously dropped anchor and then she said, “Now we’re getting somewhere.” That was my plan all along.

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