The Direction of Intention

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On my drive home a few days ago I caught a bit of an interview with Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun. He was explaining an essential idea that he learned from his grandfather: passive violence is the root cause of all physical forms violence. “When we see people in poverty and do nothing,” he said, “that is a passive form of violence.”

I immediately thought of how we fund our public schools. Each school is funded according to the tax base of the property surrounding the school. The schools surrounded by wealthiest homes receive more money; the schools surrounded by modest homes receive less; the schools that receive the least amount of money are in the poorest neighborhoods. India has its caste system; the United States has its tax code. Is not this what Arun Gandhi means by passive violence? Add to this the application of a standardized test applied equally to all schools with the jaw-dropping assumption that all schools play on a level playing field. Is this passive violence or something more intentional? Certainly the children know the difference; the children feel the impact.

Here is a question I asked in one of my first posts:

What world would you embody if your desire was not a response to personal lack but an impulse toward greater wholeness for everyone?

What would be your dedication? What story would you tell?

So I change the pronoun and ask it again:

What world would we embody if our desire was not a response to personal lack but an impulse toward greater wholeness for everyone?

What would be our dedication? What story would we tell?

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356.
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Last night I watched Werner Herzog’s film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, about the incredible paintings found in the Chauvet caves in southern France. Over 30,000 years ago, for reasons about which we can only speculate, people painted images of horses, bears, lions, and rhinoceros; they left hand prints and other markings. These are the oldest known images created by humankind. They are shocking in precision, shape, and delicacy of line. They are contemporary – in some of the shots as the camera panned across the images, I could swear that Picasso had spent some time in the cave working out his chiaroscuro. Many of the images overlap and carbon dating tells us that there was 5,000 years between the earlier and later images yet they live as one cohesive intention as if drawn by a single hand.

In the film, Herzog made a statement that seems especially appropriate to ponder on this day. He said, “These people did not live in history.” They did not have clocks or calendars. They did not take classes in the history of the ice age or tribal war in the year 37,000b.c.e; they would never think to distinguish between before and after the contemporary era; the concept of an era would be meaningless, the word “contemporary” would be lost on them. They did not locate themselves in their lives in the same way we do.

It is a leap year and we think we have an extra day. I’ve read the same question in multiple places over the past few days, “What will you do with your extra day?” Having just seen the film I ask myself, “Isn’t every day of life an extra day?” If I lived “out of history” would I note this day as somehow special? I hope so, but not because I consider it a bonus gift in the cereal box of my life. This leap year notion is made possible by how we count, a small hiccup necessary to keep our numbers in line with the cycles of the moon. If I count this day as special, how do I count the other 365 days? Ordinary? I guess a better question is, “What am I counting?”

What if, like today, you went out tomorrow and did something special to mark the extra day of life that you have. And the next day, too. And the next. What if you woke up every morning and asked yourself, “What will I do with my extra day?”

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353.
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The tagline to this blog is something that I think about a lot: it’s not in what you get from life, it’s in what you bring to it. To me, this tagline is more than a clever phrase or nice sentiment. It’s more than a philosophical guide-star. The more that I think about it and do the work that is mine to do in the world, the more I realize that it’s an imperative of our time. It’s also an opportunity. Here’s my thought trail:

Something extraordinary is happening in my lifetime; it is something that has never happened before in the history of humanity. It lives under the broad category of The Pace of Change but this one we rarely talk about or factor into our news of the day even though it impacts every nuance of contemporary life. The first time I heard about it I was sitting in a classroom in elementary school though it meant almost nothing to me at the time. The second time I heard it I was in college and I leaned into it because I knew it was far more important than I could grasp as the time. Now, I’m living in the time that my teachers told me was coming; it’s not an abstraction, no need to think about it, I see it all around me every day.

It is this simple fact: it took many thousands of years for the population of human beings to double. The next doubling only took a few thousand years. The next doubling took a few hundred years. Never before now has the population of human beings doubled in the span of a single lifetime. And, in my lifetime, assuming I will live to a ripe old age, the population will triple. There were 3 billion people on the planet when I was born. In the space of 80 years, a mere blink of the eye, and there will be 9 billion people.

“What’s the big deal?” you might ask. Simply this: our systems and economic ideals – our way of thinking about the world – are rooted and structured in colonial intentions: it’s all about commanding and controlling the resources. It’s all in what we get. Manifest Destiny was a nice idea for the folks playing on the chosen team but was a horror story for the rest of the world’s people. It continues to be a horror story though now we have television and the internet so we can look at it if we choose to look. It might be new news but we citizens of the United States of America consume far more than we produce. We were the only nation on earth to occupy that special category until the late 1970’s. Now, each year, more nations join us in our model of consumption. It is an old and increasingly untenable idea to be in the world according to what we can get. It’s a global economy. That is more than a nice phrase; it is a functional reality and economies, local and global (no separation) run on the movement and flow of resources.

We are quite capable of going to war for oil or water or spice (salt was all the rage before the age of oil) but I suspect we’ve outgrown the good guys-n-bad guys storyline. The chosen people story is another variation of the good guys-n-bad guys story; it’s a useful story to mask a resource war but in a truly global economy it seems a bit out dated. We can do better. The earth’s belly is pregnant with people so obviously interconnected that it requires gargantuan hubris not see that we are, in fact, in this together. Transcending the tribal thing and the colonial thing is, in my mind, the real challenge of our times.

Life lived according to what we get prospers a few in the short term and wreaks havoc on everyone in the long term. It is an operating principle that worked really well for a few people when the population afforded lots of space and we communicated with smoke signals and pigeons. Today, it still works well for a shrinking few but since there are more and more of us… well, you get the picture.

The opportunity is not to continue cycling through models of dominance. The opportunity is to grow and reorient to the world in which we live now. We live in an extraordinary time because the opportunity for real change is present. We can continue to live according to what we get or we can pull our heads out of the sands of the past and take a look at what me might actually bring to the feast.

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334.
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In Bali you often pass through a “split gate” when you enter home compounds or temples. They are beautiful, ever present symbols. Two opposing towers that look like a single structure cleaved in two to form a gate. The halves are symbolic of the polarities, an architectural yin and yang reminding the Balinese of the polarities of our existence and the importance of balance in all things.

Budi took me to a split gate and said, “The half on the left is the masculine, the half on the right is the feminine.” He asked me to pass through the gate and to turn and look back at him. Once I was on the other side he asked, “Now which is left and which is right? What was left in now right, what was right is now left!” He threw his head back and laughed; Budi has a great mischievous laugh, a broad Cheshire grin. He said, “What is important is that you remember that you must pass between!” He was teaching me about balance, about the middle way. This symbol for balance, this split gate is the metaphor for a life transformed, for how it is to be done.

Polarity is not opposition; it is about relativity. It is about awareness. You only know the light because of the existence of dark. There is no light without the dark. There is no learning without mistakes. And there are infinite points between the poles. To walk the middle way it to embrace all the colors and textures in your story, to get out of the business of splitting yourself, to let go the notion of absolutes. It is to allow the full range of possibilities in your life.

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331.
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In his chapter on Taoism, Eric Weiner writes about Wu-wei: “Wu-wei is actually ‘effortless action.’ It’s the difference between making things happen and letting them happen.” I read the chapter this morning and recognized a theme for me in early 2012. Wu-wei is popping up everywhere!

Scott and I recently talked about the difference between soulful action and willful action. Soulful action is Wu-wei.

When I paint, I know I am in the “zone” when the painting comes through me, when I am merely the conduit. I am not trying to make anything happen. It is almost as if I follow; there is no thought, no pushing, no sorting, no composing. Flow is Wu-wei.

In coaching classes for the past few weeks we’ve been discussing the difference between acting according to “what wants to happen,” and trying to force things to happen.

In Tai chi class, we practice letting the energy move us instead of trying to move the energy. Tai Chi is the practice of Wu-wei.

I suspect Wu-wei means to step out of the story of struggle. Today, I was late meeting a friend for lunch. If I hit a red light I’d tell myself a story of being blocked. If I hit a green light, I’d tell myself a story of good fortune! “What great luck!” I’d think. Being “late” was a story (in fact, I got the restaurant before my friend). Being “blocked” by a red light was a story. “Good fortune” in a green light was a story. All was willful action, pushing to make something happen. None of it mattered outside of my mind.

Here’s the paradox: effortless action is something I strive for. Funny, yes? I am most alive when I am stillness in action. I am learning not to strive but to allow.

Eric Weiner continues his thought: “Wu-wei means approaching life less like warfare and more like navigation.” Who doesn’t want to bury the sword, call a truce between the factions in the inner warfare and instead pick up a compass? Woo Wee!

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328.
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You’d be surprised by how much in common training an actor has with coaching an executive. Clarity of intention, specificity of target, honesty of relationship, and ability to honor the greater integrity of the story are just a few of the similarities. The forms are different but the path is the same. Here’s the map:

Know what you can control and what you can’t. It is impossible to clearly see choices if you are trying to control the things that can’t be controlled (like other people’s thoughts and feelings).

Once you’ve let go of what you cannot control, choices become very clear. Where you put your energy shifts from manipulation to creation. In shorthand, you begin to control what you can control: your choices, your opinion of your self, what you want to create.

Intention is a fuzzy thing until choices become clear (and owned). Your relationship with control clarifies your relationship with choice – not the other way around. Your relationship with choice, once clarified, opens the route to a specific actionable intention.

It’s dominoes: a proper relationship with control reveals choice and a proper relationship with choice reveals intention. For the actor, there is nothing more powerful than a clear choice in service to a specific intention. The same is true of an executive. And, intention is pointless if not in service to a greater relationship. In business or on the stage, this is the map to transformation (if you are business type and shudder at the “T” word, insert the word “Innovation” for increased palatability). Art is business. Business is art. The language may be different but the path to mastery is the same.

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321.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

My studio is in an old INS building (immigration and naturalization service). It is the place where people were detained before being admitted into the country or sent back to their home country. Before it was converted to artist’s studios, there was a cellblock, dorms for men and women, dorms for children. On the second floor there are two open-air courtyards, places where the detainees were allowed some time in the sun. On the brick walls of the courtyard, written in black tar, are the names and home countries of the generations of people who were detained here. They were not allowed to have pens or pencils so on warm days when the sealing tar got sticky in the hot sun, the people would dip sticks (or their fingers) into the tar and write their names. In this liminal space, a place that is neither here or there, in the hours and days of detention and boredom and uncertainty, these people left a record of their passage. There are hundreds of names. I was here.

Sometimes I sit in the courtyard and read the names. Some days it is hopeful, as if each name represents a dream in process. Some days I find it depressing, as if each name represents a dream dashed. Some days I don’t see the names at all but a Jackson Pollack wall, a painting that caught the movement of the artists that left their mark. Some days it is like a cave painting, a sacred space like the belly of the whale, a place where people met their monster and were transformed by the trial. Some days I am compelled to add my name to the wall; I was here, too.

Once, I watched a brilliant art teacher work with beginning students (they were teachers) and he had them on oversized paper write their names as big as possible. He asked them to do it again and again, to play with their signature, to write full body signatures until the motion was a dance, layering new signatures on top of old until they realized that to write their signature was the same as drawing. He said to them, “To write your name is to draw yourself into existence. It is to say, ‘This is who I am.’”

Sometimes I think this is what we do everyday, whether we are scratching our names in tar on the wall of detention or dancing our names again and again on oversized lives, we are drawing ourselves into existence. Through our choices and actions we say, “This is who I am and I was here, too.”

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313.
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 was on a ship that late one night ran aground in the Icy Straits of Alaska. They had to abandon ship. With several other passengers she was taken onto a fishing vessel. One of the passengers had a cell phone that had service so she left me a message (I was on the east coast sleeping in a comfy bed while she was having her adventure) telling me that she was fine, that all of the passengers where safe and that she’d call me when she was able. She wanted to call because she knew the news channels would tell a story of disaster instead of the story of safe competent response to an unfortunate accident.

Indeed, the next morning after receiving her message I turned on the news and saw the ship run aground. All around it were life bright orange rafts – in cold climates the life rafts are like tents – the news choppers couldn’t see inside so they were reporting that people were freezing in the rafts and that almost certainly there would be casualties. The rafts were deployed but no one was in them. All the passengers were transported to an Alaska State Ferry boat; while the news reported a tragedy the passengers were enjoying a warm breakfast and a good nap after a night of high adventure.

I remembered this experience today as I listened to the stories being told around the tragedy in Italy. People died. The captain most certainly abandoned his ship. And, within two hours, the crew safely evacuated over 4,000 people despite the limited ability to launch their lifeboats – a listing ship renders the boats dangerous to deploy. Someone did something right. And, it was certainly messy and panic-filled.

Yesterday I listened to economist Tyler Cowen’s TED talk in which he implored us to doubt our facility for story. I think he got it wrong – we are storytelling beings and our facility for story is what makes us human. It is the glue that binds community; it is how we make sense of the world. What we need to doubt is the intention behind the stories that we tell (and are told). We are in too much of a hurry to assign blame, too interested in whipping up disaster. Affixing blame also limits our capacity to see, to think, to act, it is easy, feels good (because we are not to blame), and makes victims of us all.

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306.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Horatio gave me two great gifts last night (well, in truth, there were more than two but I’d make his head swell were I to admit it).

First, he told me he was going to hold my head in the toilet, drown me in the porcelain pool, until I told more stories within these posts. “I want examples from real life!” he exclaimed. “Practice what you preach!” He is, of course, right. He is also quite a bit taller than I am and fully capable of making good on his threat. I love a good story and sometimes tell them. Lora would caution you to remember that I am given to exaggerating details – I call that good story telling, and she once threw a frozen leg of lamb at me feet. I danced like she was shooting at my boots. No toes were broken and she made me eat the leg of lamb later that night. Imagine my trauma.

Second, in the bar after the Pinter film, Horatio cautioned me to pay attention to my language (he took a play from my playbook!) and helped me see that I too often set up oppositions: for instance, I regularly assert that process is better than outcome. It’s not. It is more accurate to say that I believe outcome nests within process as a finite game nests within and infinite game. We need both. I believe that if you pay attention to the process, the quality of your relationships in the moment, the outcomes will take care of themselves. If you focus on the outcomes to the exclusion of the process (i.e. standardized tests, bottom lines, the ends justify the means, weighing our interests against our values), you will end up asking yourself, “What’s it all about?” You will end up justifying and defending your actions.

Everyone deserves a friend like Horatio. I mean it. I’m not exaggerating. I’m not saying it just to keep my head out of the commode. Really.

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