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.

Filed under: Gratitude, Perspective, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

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?

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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).

Filed under: Art, Power, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

See Again

Posted on November 5, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

606. 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 got new glasses today. I had great vision until I was 45 and then, just as a prophetic optometrist predicted when I was 21, the world went fuzzy. I denied the existence of my first pair of glasses until one day during a workshop I thought a team wrote on their flip chart, “All new hires should have babies.” I walked closer to the flip chart (rather than put on my glasses…) and discovered that they’d actually written that new hires should have buddies, not babies. I was both relieved and distressed; what else was I misreading?

It amuses me when I bust myself in full-blown story attachment. In my brown-eyed family, I am the only member with green eyes. I was the only member gifted with perfect vision; not only do I have green eyes but I do not need glasses…that was the story. I do not need glasses. I am an artist with perfect vision and that is a gift. With glasses, I thought the gift was revoked. I must not have used it well. I was, with glasses, somehow less special. I knew that the story of my glasses was ridiculous and existed nowhere outside of me, but I told it anyway.

And then I learned through my new fuzzy sight that my gift was not my vision; it was my vision.

The first time Joe saw me wear my glasses he said, “Oh, thank god! Now you at least look smart!” Over time I grew accustomed to wearing them when I needed to read flip charts or drive. Pulling them from their perch on the collar of my shirt I’d put them on and think, “Time to look smart.” It became a game, like Clark Kent running into his phone booth and coming out as superman; I’d turn around and put on my glasses, spin around and be a few points smarter than before. “I need some more smarts,” I’d think, spinning around, and re-emerging wearing my smart eyes. And then, I realized that glasses work like a mask or a clown’s nose: they are transformational and allow an infinite number of new characters to come through: my glasses worked just like a clown car!

So, picking out my second pair of glasses today was an event. Since I now recognize that my gift is not my vision but my vision, and I have a unique opportunity for new characters to emerge through each successive pair of glasses, I went to the most special place, Eyes On Fremont, to pick my new look, my new superhero persona, my next clown car of personalities.

Watch out world! I can see again. And, with my new look came a new superpower though I must not tell what my new superpower is (hint: I am less smart in my new mask but speeding bullets have nothing on me now!); superpowers must remain incognito until needed.

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See The Dalai Lama

Posted on November 1, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Standing in Trader Joe’s waiting to check out with my groceries, I watched the courageous moms wrangle their rambunctious kids while shopping, corralling chaos while trying to pay. Moms in Trader Joe’s have endless patience. They know how to make a grocery store fun. I was third in line so I had some time to watch and that’s when the thought occurred to me: what if we treated all kids, every single child, like they were the return of the Dalai Lama.

I mean no disrespect as I recognize that the Dalai Lamas are believed to be the manifestation of The Bodhisattva of Compassion. When the previous Dalia Lama passes, there commences a search for the reincarnated spirit: a child is identified, recognized and raised as the special spirit reborn to continue their service to humanity.

I do not know where these thoughts come from: what are the odds of thoughts of courageous moms in Trader Joe’s and the Dalai Lama colliding in my mind? Astronomical. But they did.

Isn’t the little being running around in too cute shoes, pulling peanuts off of shelves, a special spirit come to serve humanity? I want to see that notion, that intention, as the design principle driving what we do in the schools. I do not want to see a factory milling children for a lifetime of work in factories. I am sick to death of the conversation about standards; could we have a lower common denominator?

The teachers that I know and love want the same thing that I want; they recognize that each little spirit entering their classroom world is special, unique beyond measure. And yet their hands are bound, they are threatened and paid by the board foot of standard produced. Recently my dear friend Robert watched his son work through an endless sequence of worksheets. Robert said, “I can’t help but wonder if this is good for him, if this learning by rote is the best we can do?” His question was rhetorical. He, like the rest of the nation, already knows the answer. Treat them like lumber and they will act like lumber. I work with many organizations and a common complaint is, “Why are our new hires so incapable of thinking for themselves?” There is no mystery here, only a monumental case of denial.

Who might they become if we held them as exceptional, attended to their spiritual growth (note: I’m not talking about religion), and taught them that their lives mattered to the health and well being of a world that needed their strongest offer. What if they knew, as the Dalai Lama knows, that they carry a flame that reaches back generations and how they conduct their lives will send ripples through many generations to come?

It seems so simple and begins with recognition.

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See The Orca

Posted on October 29, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

599. 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 came to the end of my street today. Two pods! Or, at least that is what the excited onlookers claimed. There is an organization that follows the movements of the whales and they’d arrived with a sack of binoculars. People generously shared the binoculars and took great delight in pointing to others the location of the whales; the customary tides of not-talking-to-strangers were momentarily reversed: the crowd beckoned to passers-by. Unsuspecting dog walkers were surrounded by excited orca watchers; “You’ve got to see this!” they exclaimed.

As I stood there looking at the people look at the whales, I couldn’t help but wonder if the orca knew what they do to us. Do they know that a simple swim-by jolts us into simple presence; we not only see them but we are suddenly capable of seeing each other. I imagined the orca woke up this morning, stretched, had some coffee and discussed which human pod needed an intervention. It was our good fortune that today they chose the pods in and around Elliot Bay.

Last night at a dinner party we talked about how difficult it is for Americans to discuss complex topics. A professor of law told us that his conservative students never share their opinions for fear of being ridiculed. He said they are hooted out of class if they share an unpopular belief. We claim territory too soon. We fight. We choose sides and argue for our point of view, skipping over the part where we listen to each other, the part where we offer each other the grace of difference.

The orca must have heard our conversation last night. They must be listening to our political non-conversation. I hope they are scheming about how to reach the inland human pods. It is a joy to see what a little orca intervention can do.

Filed under: Seeing, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

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.

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