Make It Ordinary

Posted on February 7, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

700. 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 midnight train, an early morning taxi, and a day at the Denver airport. Trains, planes and automobiles followed by a light rail into downtown Seattle and then a ferry to Bainbridge Island. I think in a single 24-hour period I will have only skipped submarine and hot air balloon as viable transportation options, though Judy reminded me that I had not yet traveled by camel. And, the day is not over yet so I knock on wood. These days I can make no assumptions about what the next moment will bring.

The benefit of riding on the rails, in the cab and on the concourse is that I’m very productive in transit. I’m a bit shocked at how focused I can be when rocking across Colorado in the dead of night or in the midst of thousands of noisy airport travelers by day. I finished the first true draft of the book. I caught up on emails (mostly). I untangled a banking knot, I made lists and all the while I watched the amazing dramas that unfold in an airport. I talked with Horatio and Diane and Megan. I had a text fest and toasted k.erle with a great cup of java. Judy played her harp for me just before midnight and it was among my favorite experiences all day.

I’m aware of the varied and glorious textures of this day. The amazing palettes of colors of this life are available if we only choose to see them. I saw the sunrise over the plains. I watched hundreds of small kindnesses and acts of generosity. Many were unknown to the recipient. A man pulled luggage off the train for an elderly couple. A woman quietly helped a young mother herd her children through security, doors were opened for baggage laden travelers, bus drivers waited for tardy riders, a barista left her post to give directions to a lost man and all the people queued for coffee stepped out of line to help.

And think about it – it was just a day like any other day. And, no day will ever be like this one. Little generosities swirl around us. The sunrise will never be the same as it was today; it was not like any other and the same will be true tomorrow. We have the capacity to see. We have the capacity to place our focus wherever we choose. The life we experience is a direct result of what we choose to see, where we choose to stand, how we choose to interpret and what we choose to celebrate. The day can be ordinary or extraordinary and the only difference is what we decide to perceive. Why not make the extraordinary ordinary?

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It’s About Seeing

Posted on January 16, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

678. 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 book is starting to take over. I’ve been working on it for a week or so with lots of bumps and uphill pushing. Today it announced where it wanted to go and required that I type a short prologue that I thought was post worthy:

This is a book about seeing.

Not many people see. Most people merely look. Just as most people hear but they do not listen, most people look but they do not see.

And, although this might not make sense yet, seeing has more to do with stories than it does with eyes. It works like this:

Everyone can see as a child. And then something happens. Children learn to name things with words. Then, they learn to spell the words they use to name things. Soon, they grow up and have a hard time seeing beyond their words.

It is a funny paradox about words: they can imprison your mind; they can also set you free. It all depends up how the words are used.

Artist’s and entrepreneurs share this trait: in order to master their craft they must learn to see again. And, in order to see, they must once again understand the power of their words.

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Exit The Drama

Posted on January 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Sitting in the Philadelphia airport I’m thinking about Drama. I watching them unfold all around me.

Drama is the first level of Alan’s elegant and oh-so-potent model, the 4 Levels of Engagement. Drama is story without a root, otherwise known as a victim story. Gossip is drama. Drama is predicated on enabling, there is a self-righteous gravity spinning at the heart of a drama story. I just heard this: “Can you believe what they did to me… Look what they made me feel.” Drama stories are easy to tell and often feel really good; victim stories are like sugar and are addictive. They are only tasty if shared and over time you will find that you need more and more drama to satisfy the need. They are hell if they dominate your thoughts. Literally. You are without power if you give credence to or invest in your victim story, “Can you believe what they did to me!” is another way of saying, “I need to pull someone down to feel powerful.” Drama creates power-over scenarios. Drama is usually carefully crafted to relieve us of the reality and impact of our own choices. Drama blinds us to our participation and that is precisely the point of all Drama stories. Life is happening to you.

You can never know another person’s story. You can never know their point of view, their circumstances or intention. You can never stand in their shoes. It is an easy game to make another’s story about you especially when you have no way of seeing through their eyes. We see their story through our filter. We distort what we can’t possibly know. There is one thing certain, a bet you can bank on with a Drama-teller: they will never ask the other about their story because it threatens their Victim status. They will accuse, they will blame, they will concoct, they will imply, they will manipulate, but they will never ever ask.

To exit the level of Drama requires some modicum of self-awareness and willingness to own your story. It requires acknowledgment of participation; an inward looking eye at your choices. It requires a greater concern for the story that you live than the story you tell about others. Assuming positive intent is great place to start. Asking others about their point of view before whipping up a Drama tale is another healthy technique. Practice challenging your assumptions. Practice listening. Practice focusing on your story more than the story you tell about others.

Being a participant in life requires surrendering your Victim role. It engenders generosity of spirit, an open mind and more importantly, an open heart.

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Stop Pretending

Posted on January 4, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

It’s First Thursday in Seattle which means this is the night that artist’s all over town open their studios. My studio is on the fourth floor of a very large building so it is the hearty soul that troops to the top after so many floors of art. Tonight, I forgot that it was First Thursday (I’ve been traveling and am about to leave again so I’m disoriented) and was surprised when Andre showed up at my door to see art. At first I was confused but he explained that many more people were coming up the stairs so I might want to pretend that I knew they were coming. So I did. I opened my door and pretended that I knew what was coming.

While I was pretending that I knew-what-was-coming I started wondering how often in my daily life do I trick myself into thinking that I know what is coming. The answer: most of the time! Isn’t that the very thing that wraps a dull blanket around the magic of being alive? To pretend that we know when, in fact, we can never know what’s coming. To pretend that we know is to stop seeing. To expect the same-old-thing is to miss the extraordinary and new. As I sat in my chair waiting for the hordes to ascend the stairs I realized that I am not a fortuneteller nor am I a prophet, despite my consistent investment in pretending that I am. And, when I stopped pretending that I knew what was coming the most amazing thing happened: I was completely delighted and surprised by every person who made it to the top floor and stopped by to see my paintings. It’s so easy to drop the dull blanket and see what’s in front of me instead of what I pretend is there.

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Witness

Posted on December 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Sometimes I think the greatest power of a teacher is nothing more complicated than the power to witness. What is it to be present with a person and to see them? See their curiosity. See their desire to be seen. See their need to pursue. To hold space for another person’s discovery is to offer them a great gift; to behold their encounter with the unknown gives them an ally, a companion. What could be more potent than to ask, “What did you find?”

My greatest teachers never answered my “how” questions. They’d shrug their shoulders and responded to my question with another question. They helped me to keep looking. They fed my curiosity. They would not allow me to orient according to their perspective but required me to develop my own perspective. They required me to orient from myself, to seek guidance from my inner compass, not theirs.

They taught me an important lesson that I am only now beginning to understand. Learning is not about knowing anything. That is worth repeating: learning is about not knowing. Learning is an endless engagement with mystery and has little to do with expertise or fact or certainty. There is always another layer. There is always another question. Learning is how you address yourself to the mystery and particularly the mystery of yourself. Ultimately, the most important thing you discover is yourself. There is always another tier to uncover.

They taught me to practice “not knowing” and, in fact, they helped to understand that “knowing” is a kind of defense against being seen. Having to know the answers and needing to be right are types of armor; it is the need of a right answer that keeps us separate. As someone recently said to me, “thinking that we know cheats us.” It shuts off the pursuit. It blunts the discovery.

The capacity to see begins with being seen.

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Ride The Goat

Posted on December 7, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Judy was typing a quick email. She wanted to tell me which ferry she was taking into Seattle the next morning to meet me. Instead of typing “boat” she typed “goat.” Catching her mistake she deleted “goat” and tried again to type “boat” but instead she missed again and typed “boar.” She was so amused by her swimming menagerie that she told me of her mis-types so I could share in the fun. We decided she would take the early goat over and return on the late afternoon boar. Entire worlds change with alteration of a single letter.

Meaning making is a subtle yet powerful business.

Quinn was curious about perception and personality; he was a great studier of humankind. No experiment was too silly for him to try. Once, many years ago, he read an article in a magazine about personality traits and how character reveals itself in small children. It was a nature or nurture question. He had two daughters who in many ways were as different as night and day and decided he needed to create his own test and his daughters where the perfect subjects. At the time, Quinn was a banker so he wore nice suits and carried a briefcase. One evening when his oldest daughter was 5 years old and playing in the swimming pool, Quinn came home from work, tipped his hat to his daughter and walked into the deep end of the pool. His daughter laughed and laughed. Daddy went swimming with his clothes on. 4 years later, when his younger daughter was 5 years old, he repeated the experiment. This daughter cried and cried; something was dreadfully wrong with daddy.

I met his daughters when they were adults. The oldest is filled with laughter; the youngest feels deeply the world’s pain. Both smile and recount with great love the day their father came home and walked fully clothed into the pool. Both are dedicated to helping create a better world – they just do it in two entirely different ways.

Quinn served as my personal Viktor Frankel: he taught me that meaning is something we make, not something that we find. He also demonstrated, again and again, that some of us will cross the Sound riding a goat, others will take the boar, and still others will make the crossing on a boat. Some will see mischief and whimsy, some will see suffering and misery, and some will never see the magic beyond the ordinary filters that they’ve chosen to wear. And, that has nothing to do with the world and despite our natural orientation we have great choice in how to see it.
He also taught me that life is much more fun if you sacrifice the suit to the moment rather than try and protect it. He understood that we too often sacrifice the essential to maintain the superficial; it takes a wily trickster to alter a single letter and open our eyes to the amazing possibilities available in the small moments of life.

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Change Your World (part 2)

Posted on December 4, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

635. 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 from 634]

One of the greatest dysfunctions in a power-over story comes with the emphasis on individual achievement. The dog-eat-dog story is only sensible to a community (I use the word “community” loosely) that suffers from the illusion that the members are distinct and separate…and consumable. Claw your way to the top, get your slice of the pie, and push others down to elevate yourself. Someone eats, someone starves. Isn’t it a mighty paradox that we individualists are rabidly eliminating cultural and ecological diversity from the face of the earth – the stuff of healthy life? We homogenize. We homogenize seeds to our great peril, shop from the same six stores, have proudly invented the cubicle, and embraced the standardized test as a measure of individual achievement. Power-over stories are riddled with insanity and isn’t it the hallmark of the insane that they can’t see their psychosis? Psychosis leads one to believe that they are all alone.

Picasso, arguably the most innovative western artist of the past century didn’t create anything that didn’t already exist. He is the artistic gold medal winner of the 20th century. Yet, when you understand what he was doing, you recognize that he played with forms from all over the world, combining and recombining. He knew that he did not create from a vacuum. He knew his roots, his artistic ancestors and his influences. He said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” He was a mighty thief. We place great emphasis on innovation in the arts – we want to make people see something anew – ours is an art of abstraction. A shift of perception is highly revered. Seeing differently, opening to a new perspective – noble stuff. And, to facilitate the new perspective our artists must stand outside of the society so that they might see it with some clarity. They must isolate, separate. Cubicles commenting on cubicles. In a power-with community the artists live at the center; they are the keepers of the story, they are the guardians of the communal identity. In a healthy power-with culture, the arts carry, nurture and maintain the identity of the community. Art is not meant to make you see differently; it is meant to help you know yourself in relationship to the community, and beyond.

No one creates in isolation. No athlete becomes a champion without a coach. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, we owe a great debt to our teachers and mentors and cousins and friends. We eat because someone grew, picked and shipped the vegetable. The atmosphere we enjoy is not separate from the trees that exhale it or the ocean that churns it. Power-over storytellers have the insane notion that they can control it, the consumer is somehow distinct and impervious from toll of consumption. Individual merit, the inane notion of a chosen people, and the equally insane roll to Armageddon, are rooted in the same narrative. They (we) are outcome focused, forgetting that this magic life is nothing if not a continuing dynamic relationship. Separations are fantasy and outcomes are illusions.

A community celebrates individuals because of what the individual brings to the community. A power-over community is destined to collapse because its members understand themselves to be distinct and are oriented according to what they can get from the community. An individual is not a center; only a relationship can serve as the core; relationship is the gravity that holds. Every community is nested in a greater community. There is no greater imperative than to see the power-over story that we play and the misery it causes (us and others) and begin entertaining a narrative of power-with. It is simple to begin the shift: start by asking yourself, “What do I bring?”

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

Listen

Posted on November 28, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

629. 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 Orca returned today. The crowds gathered at the bottom of the street, binoculars pointed to the Sound. The word gets around and soon there was a crowd whispering things like, “Amazing,” or “Look!” These simple words of reverence were usually followed by an “Ohhhh” or an Ahhhhhh!” I stood with Riley the Samoyed and Charlie the black Labrador. Dogs to pet and whales to watch, the sun was shining, the water was calm; it was pretty much a perfect day. Extra magical.

After the Orca pod passed, I walked a loop through the neighborhood and was transfixed by two small trees. They’d dropped their leaves and their bark was brilliant red! At first I thought they were painted but this brilliance was natural, shockingly bright, a color in nature usually reserved for autumn leaves or feathers. Dado (my postman) joined me in my revelry. He said, “Can you believe it!” Dado is a great lover of the small moment. I’m not sure how he ever gets the mail delivered because he is always talking to someone, sharing stories, laughing, good for a joke or a shoulder to lean on. Dado is bartender to the world. He is used to finding me transfixed and always joins me. “Wow,” we whispered in unison and then laughed.

Today in class, prior to my date with the Orca and my walk, we introduced the tool of dialogue and deep listening. As a group we listened as a member of our class talked without interruption for a set amount of time. Then, as a group, we responded. In our daily lives we rarely listen because we often have agendas and, therefore, do not listen; we look for opportunities to be heard. We miss what is being said. When we give space for pure sharing and pure listening a magic thing happens: the speaker will often, to their great surprise, wade waist-deep into gratitude. They sort to the positive. They tip toward wholeness. And then, the responders, overwhelmed by the generosity of the speaker, open their hearts and celebrate their lives, too. The wound is not ignored; it is honored as the catalyst for awakening. That is what happened today in class. Our speaker, thinking she was going to bring a challenge to the group, found herself expressing her love of life after a rocky road. And we the responders, quietly released into our personal revelry of this extraordinary life. Deep listening requires space. Reverence loves a listener.

I was so moved by the class that I decided I needed to take a walk before jumping back into work. I put on my coat, walked to the end of the block and found the Orca passing by and all of the humans were holding space, listening. The entire dialogue of life is magic and immediately available when we slow down enough to listen.

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Build An Altar of Gratitude

Posted on November 22, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Each year on the day before Thanksgiving, I secretly build an altar of gratitude. Sometimes it is in a single location, a collection of cards and objects that remind me of the generosity of those who populate my life and the abundance I enjoy. Sometimes I scatter the altar across many locations. The day before this day of thanks giving, I leave tokens of appreciation and marks of gratitude all across the city. I think it is my attempt to create a sacred geography for myself; I want to see the world as a living, dynamic, holy place and since that was not my original orientation, I have to tend my vision. I cultivate a new relationship with this magic place because I want to; like working a muscle, I intend to grow strong in my reverence. I make offerings to something beyond my knowing but well recognized by my feelings. This earth is an old friend and my days here are nothing short of astonishing.

In my first systems class, the professor gave us an exercise useful for recognizing the immensity of our interdependence and, therefore, our opportunity for gratitude: imagine a goldfish in a goldfish bowl. Follow to the end the support system necessary to keep the goldfish healthy. I’ll give you a clue: you could spend days on this and never come to an end. Separations disappear. It has taken the entire planet and the history of human kind to sprinkle those few flakes of goldfish food into that bowl. Any end line you draw will be false, a construct.

And so it is with you and me. As you sit down to your traditional meal with your family and friends, take a moment and try to track the system of support necessary for you to enjoy your meal in your goldfish bowl. If you take it to heart what you find will astound you. Separations disappear and you might just find yourself in a sacred geography instead of living on the pile of rocks you thought you inhabited. Gratitude is potent thing when directed to a vibrant living relationship and not merely a world of consumables. The real question of this day is this: to what do we give our thanks?

Filed under: Awakening, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | 5 Comments »

Do As Lexi Does

Posted on November 19, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

“We don’t eat sticks, David,” she said to me. And, with a shake of her head added, “Ick!” Her 2 year-old eyes, brown and deep as a well to the center of the earth, looked into me to make sure I got the seriousness of the message. I did, so we went on to the next, “We don’t eat stop signs, David. They are no good!” I shook my head and said, “Ick.” She shook her head with me. “Ick,” we said together and made faces of distaste and disdain.

At two years old, Lexi already has a vocabulary that matches mine. She will soon outpace me and I will need to look down at the 3 year-old version of her and ask, “What does that mean?” She will sigh, choose to have patience with me, and slow down long enough to explain. At dinner the other night I attempted to secure my superior word status and set a trap for her: I used the word “pterodactyl” and she looked at me (again with those eyes that look into my soul), spotted my trap, all but yawned and said perfectly, “pterodactyl.” Then, as if to torture me, she said, “hanguber (hamburger).” It is refreshing to be with a little Buddha that has yet to learn the word “can’t.” Everything is possible and trying is everything. It is infectious; I have seen otherwise constipated adults giggle and scribble outside of the lines in the presence of a 2 year-old. With Lexi, I make faces and outrageous bear sounds (do you know the sound a bear makes when it laughs?); hang out with us and you are certain to hear it.

Picasso famously said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” He is also said, “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” With two quotes he states the problem for living a good life and solves for it. Problem: how to remain an artist once we grow up. Solution: always do what you cannot do in order that you may learn how to do it. Hint: do as Lexi does and eliminate the word “can’t” from your vocabulary. Try with gusto! Mispronounce everything! Do what you have never done because you have never done it! Turn to the person nearest you and declare with awe and enthusiasm, “I kicked the ball, David!” (keep the “David” part even if the person closest to you is otherwise named; it tickles me to think that I will be the universal recipient of your unbridled enthusiasm. Note: that is not a trap).

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