Lift A Glass To Tom

Posted on August 17, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Tom died this morning. I heard the news while standing at lands end, literally. I was at the end of a pier looking across the water when my phone rang. He would of loved the moment, the dramatics of the scene. I sat on a bench and talked with Marcia, Tom’s wife, and we talked about the good angels that were with her through the long months of his dying. His amazing beautiful mind scrambled into dementia and then his body let go and throughout the right help came just when she needed it. Life is extraordinary that way.

Many years ago, late one night, Tom and I were drinking white wine, and he suddenly turned to me and said, “I need your help. I have an obligation to Isabel and I don’t know how to fulfill it.” Isabel was his great grandmother, a woman he never met. She died 30 years before Tom was born but she was present with him all of his adult life. His obligation was to tell the story of Johnny, the son that Isabel lost to typhoid fever. Tom found plastered into the walls of the old ranch house a trunk of Johnny’s possessions. Isabel packed the trunk after Johnny died. People believed that the fever could be passed through possessions so Isabel was instructed to burn all evidence that Johnny existed. She couldn’t do it. She wrote notes that she placed with artifacts in the trunk and knew that someday, one of her descendants would find the trunk and tell Johnny’s story. Tom found the trunk when he was 52 years old. And, although he’d shared the trunk and Johnny’s story with scores of school children, he never felt that he’d honored his obligation to Isabel.

For a few years, every couple of months, I flew to California and spent a week with Tom. He unpacked the trunk for me and told me the stories. He took me to the graveyards and introduced me to his ancestors. He told me a tale of lost boys and covered wagons and an epic search for spirit. He took me to the land were his people settled and toiled and prospered and squandered their inheritance. Tom was the rememberer of his clan and because there was no one to pass the stories to, he passed them to me. Over and over he asked, “What am I going to do with that trunk?” We wrote a play for him to perform but his mind started to go before we could produce it.

Sitting at lands end, I smiled at the irony. I am 52 years old and the rememberer of a clan’s story – a clan that is not mine by blood. I knew this day was coming. I stare out across the water and of this I am certain: I do not know what to do with the trunk, either. But the right help will come along when I need it. And I need it. In the meantime, I’m going to get a good bottle of white wine and toast Tom and all that he taught me about life and the power of story.

Filed under: Story, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Pass It On

Posted on August 10, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

871. 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 locus of my family has shifted from my generation to my nieces and nephews. They are now having children of their own and I delight in watching them assume the role of parents. They are the generation of becoming and are hungry to learn the family narrative. My brothers, sister and I are the story-bridge generation. We are now grandparents and grand uncles. We are the channel between the elders, my parents, and the youth.

As the channel I am more acutely aware that not all stories are created equal. There are the day-to-day stories. These pass through. Then there are stories that belong in the cabinet of curiosity. These are life event stories like the day my sister brought her future husband home to meet the family. We tortured poor J.T. on that first meeting and he laughs heartily at the retelling. The story is legend in my clan. The subject for debate is whether or not my dad carried a shotgun on that first meeting (he doesn’t own a gun and never has but he’s also remarkably resourceful when an opportunity for mischief presents itself)? I know the answer but won’t tell (I was there and wore a Little-Bo-Peep costume). I like the debate and the gales of laughter that it brings my sister’s children.

And then there are the campfire stories, the narratives that define us. These are foundational identity stories. Every family has them though in our modern era it is common for a family to not recognize them. These are the root stories and from these stories the family vine grows. The answers to the three great questions (who am I, where do I belong, what is mine to do) are blossoms of these tales. No one truly knows who he or she is separate from his or her foundation narrative. Vines cannot grow without a root. People cannot grow without a meaningful connection to their root story.

Stories form layers of personal and family identity. Stories serve as both root and nutrient. The next time my clan gathers in such numbers I will be the elder, my nieces and nephews will be the channel to their children who will have become parents. And the cycle continues. We recreate ourselves in the telling. We nurture the soil in the sharing. We make visible the web of our connection. Stories are so much more than recounting the past. Stories are how we re-member ourselves, affirm our belonging, and reach from the past through this day into the distant future.

Filed under: Identity, Story, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Dream And Follow

Posted on August 8, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Patti used to say that she refused to make business cards because a business card was a commitment. Say it and you will have to walk it. I’ve learned in the past several months that entrepreneurs resist talking to potential customers for fear of learning that their idea – their dream – may not have merit. Today Sean said it best: people are afraid of failing at their dream so they find a thousand reasons not to pursue it.

Dreams can be deferred but they will not be denied. A dream rejected becomes a knot in the belly. A dream ignored becomes low-grade anxiety, heart palpitation, road rage, a good reason to drink too much, an investment in notions like perfection or not-good-enough, a deathbed regret. Ignore a dream and it will twist and block all flow.

“What if…?” is a powerful question when in reference to the future. It is a call to action, a fount of possibility, an imagination tickler. “What if…? is equally powerful question when in reference to the past. No action is possible. It is an imagination tormentor. it is an abdication of responsibility to your self.

It is an old adage: the only certain road to failure is to not try. Failure is an abstraction. It is a construct that exists only as a story in your mind. It is an investment in what other people might think. Hint: other people have their own dreams and usually if they are negative about your dream it is because they are ignoring theirs; they need allies in their impotence.

As Tom used to say, “A painter paints.” A Painter does not succeed or fail. A painter paints and becomes a better painter. Failure is not an option when you are following your dream. Success is not an option when you are following your dream. Dreams do not dally with failure or success. Dreams call. All that is required is to follow, to grow, to learn, to live. To love.

Filed under: Art, Business, Creativity, entrepreneur, Possibility, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Let The Story Carry You

Posted on August 7, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

868. 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’m at 37,000 feet in a plane (of course) returning from my father’s 80th birthday party. He is the patriarch of the clan since his brothers are now all passed away. And isn’t that an odd phrase, passed away? They didn’t just go away. They passed away. I love how delicate and inexact language can be when we have no real grasp of what we’re describing. Passed away: an inexact reference of time and place. Perhaps it is a phrase of transcending time and place. They existed but are now away. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that they passed this way.

Many cultures believe that in death we return to the elements and the elements are forces. They are energy in motion. So, when they say, “My grandfather’s breath is in the wind,” they mean it. He was this. He is now that. He is vital and living and present. Energy can take many forms. After my grandfather died I sat in the mountains listening to the wind through the pines and I wanted to have the consciousness that saw death as transformational and generative. I imagined I could hear him in the wind and in the rustling of the grasses. He was this. He is now that. He was present. Of this I was certain: I carried forward his story.

It is rare for my immediate family to gather – my siblings have children who have children. We are spread out across the country so we often have a quorum but it is unusual for us to find a crossroads accessible to all. We all made it to this celebration. There was no question. We needed to see my father. He needed to see us. We needed to celebrate him and reaffirm our identity through sharing stories. We needed the young members to hear certain ancestor stories and through the story plug into the vitality, depth and breadth of their roots. In telling our story we revitalized and made visible the potency of our vast web of support always present in this world. We needed to know where we belonged in both linear and vertical time. I think I needed it most of all.

The event was made even more special with cousins that I have not seen in decades. My web is much larger than I understood. The entire space-time layer cake of my family was immediate visible. My niece brought her infant son, there was a tribe of two and three year old children playing, teenagers dreaming, college students aspiring, twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings achieving, mid-lifers taking stock, many nearing retirement and yearning to be free of achieving, elders appreciating and playing, and a very few tissue paper hands who whispered to me as we said good bye, “This will probably be the last time we see each other.” And I could not deny it although I said, “Don’t be silly! I will see you soon.”

As I said good-bye to my father this afternoon, I knew as I have never known that story is a force. It is elemental. It is both constant and constantly transforming. I can feel my ancestors present in our story just as my grandfather was present in the wind. I am a carrier of this story and grateful beyond words at how this story carries me.

Filed under: Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

See The Color

Posted on July 27, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Occasionally, for reasons I can’t explain, I become fixated on the words people use to describe their experiences. Language is powerful and we are rarely aware that in using specific language to describe particular experiences we are, in fact, defining ourselves.

Today I was struck by the predominance of phrase polarity I heard in my conversations and travels. People were “effective” or “ineffective.” Experiences were “good” or “bad.” We “liked” or “didn’t like” an idea. I heard, “Are you in or out?” A frustrated pedestrian shouted at a young woman who’d stopped to adjust her ear buds, “Walk or Don’t Walk!”
This or that. Up or Down. Black or white. More or less. Main Street or Wall Street.

It is comfortable to pretend that things are simple and easily defined. It is probably efficient to pretend that there are only two available options. We are, after all, a society of laws and in a legal preset there must always exist a clear line though we learn again and again that the line is never clear. Who honestly believes that Justice is blind? Context complicates even the smallest decision.

Dogma is not spirituality. Data is not knowledge and is miles from approaching wisdom. Wisdom is complex. Data sorts to the simple. There are an infinite number of points between those two poles. The question remains: how is your language defining you. Do you define yourself as data with two points or do you allow for more complexity? Listen to how you story yourself and your world.

The challenge with phrase polarity is that the points are often pitted against each other. It’s as if data and wisdom are two distinct paths so you can have one or the other but not both. The phrase “effective or ineffective” recognizes no middle ground. It eliminates any common ground. The same holds true if you define yourself as either good or bad. Do you have worth or are you worthless? Are you identified with a red state or a blue state? Can business have heart? Can data support wisdom? Can wisdom translate data?

Isn’t life sweet with only two choices! In such a paradigm it is easy to be the good guy and so by default the “others” are bad. In such a paradigm, when rushing to your very important meeting, all the “others” are in your way. My way or the highway is a bleak and immature paradigm.

The important questions do not live at the poles but are in constant movement in search of a balance point. Balance is available in the center and the center moves all of the time. Do you love your children? Do you want to make a better world? Do you want your life to have meaning? Is it possible that people in the other color states also want the same things?

Coloring outside of the lines requires crossing lines. It requires a desire to work with color, lots and lots of color, which opens the capacity to see a multitude of options. Everyday I work with people searching for the greater meaning in their lives. The first thing they come to realize is that they have choices. Not one or two but many, many choices. They have a full palette of choices. And they can only see the multitude of choices when they stop telling themselves that the world is black or white. They can only see the rainbow of possibilities when they get off the pole of rightness or wrongness and step toward the middle. Living a rich and varied story begins when you start telling a rich and varied story. Language is the building block of story. It matters.

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Be An Idealist

Posted on July 21, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

851. 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 rolled down the windows even though it was still hot. The sun was almost down and we just began the climb out of the central valley. Skip said, “Do you think it’s cool enough to turn off the air-conditioner?” Neither one of us liked air-conditioning and only used it when absolutely necessary.

“Of course!” I chirped. We rolled down the windows and the hot air blasted us. I put my hands out of the car window and said, “See! Nice and cool!” Skip smirked and called me an idealist. Truer words were never spoken. I am an idealist.

I’m told (often) that the best thing about me is that I tell a good story. I will put a good spin on every experience. I’m also told that the worst thing about me is that I tell a good story. Is it denial or optimism? Am I detaching, dealing, not dealing or dancing? Am I telling myself a lie or loving to live? Maybe it is all of the above.

Like everyone I know I’ve walked a broken road. No ones’ path is pretty. Earlier in my life I invested in the tragedy and wrestled with every angel. I made up lots of demons to fight. My gifts scared me so I pretended they were not there and served the gifts of others. I dialed down my life-force. I lived in resistance. I took on everyone’s pain and made others problems and priorities my own. I created limits and then moaned about my confinement. I did all of those things, made messes and looked to the heavens and asked for a break.

The heavens looked back at me and said, “It’s not happening to you. You are creating it. If you want a break then make a break, break something, or take a break. Either way, stop pretending that it is someone elses job to make it pretty for you.”

What I broke (am breaking) was my idea of myself. Carol recently told me that she was breaking up with her relationship with the world. She wanted a new relationship. She was tired of waiting for the world to change her story so she decided to change her story of the world. I was tired of telling a broken story. I was tired of telling a story of being broken. I was tired of making my focus other peoples’ stuff. So, I broke up with my story. Call me an idealist or tell me that I’m in denial but this life is mine to interpret and I much prefer joy stories to frustration. As someone once said to me, “I’m the only one who feels my anger so getting angry all the time is only hurting me.” That rule works in reverse, too.

An hour after the sun set we were off the valley floor and the air finally cooled. I looked at Skip and said, “See! I told you it was cool!” He laughed and wrinkled his brow. I said, “This is the strategy of an idealist. Claim that it is cool and then wait long enough for reality to match the ideal.” It always does.

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Can You Hear Them?

Posted on July 16, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Two simple images: as we descended from the vineyard, walking the path between the properties, Skip asked, “Can you hear the stories?” Earlier in the day he said that five stories where shared when drinking a single bottle of wine. That means that vineyards are full of stories. “Yes,” I said, “I can hear them.” And I could.

Barney walked with me up the hill to the insectory. He is teaching and practicing biodynamic winemaking. He said, “We’re not in the business of growing grapes. We’re in the business of making great soil. It all begins with the soil.” He clarified that by saying, “We’re in the business of getting out of the way and letting Mother Nature do what she does, which is make great soil.” He jumped up and down and asked, “Can you feel it?” I jumped up and down. Yes. I could feel it.

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Step Beyond The Woe

Posted on July 12, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Somehow, somewhere, I lost my debit card. I used it last night in the grocery store when I sprinted across the street to get some food before the store closed. I didn’t discover the missing card(s) until this morning. In retrospect I wish I’d had a camera trained on my panicked search-and-rescue response. Although the missing card could only have fallen from the wallet resting on the shelf, I opened drawers, dug through pockets, lifted papers (evidently those pesky cards can crawl), opened drawers again, looked inside coffee cups, crawled on the floor, dug through the garbage, opened and closed the door three times (I can’t explain it so don’t ask), and am certain I performed a perfect triple flip and stuck the landing (unassisted).

During my panic I told myself a horror story and had myself convinced that my survival depended on those cards. It was the zealousness of the story that brought me back into my body and my senses. When I heard the narrative I was whipping up in my mind I came to a full stop and started to laugh. Our thoughts are indeed the mother lode of comedy.

I crawled out of my drama hole and took care of it. The cards were gone. No one had attempted to buy a yacht with my vast holdings. I went across the street to the store, inquired with the lost and found, and then went into the branch of my bank that was conveniently attached to the store. It was simple. The people at the bank were pleasant, funny, and very helpful. They laughed at my panic reenactment (I didn’t attempt the triple flip but reenacted it with full body gesture), and in a few moments the old cards were cancelled and the new cards were on the way.

My survival was never at risk. There was no tragedy. Even if someone had taken every dime from my accounts, my survival was never at risk and there would have been no tragedy. The necessary actions are never hard; it is the story that we attach to our experiences that make life a struggle. There are legitimate struggles in this world and I’ve very rarely actually encountered them though you’d never know it by my inner monologue. How hard is your life really? Really? What would the day look like if you dropped the story of woe and simply took the necessary actions? And, what might your story become if you looked at your tale of woe from the lens of the ridiculous? I was a Keystone Cop this morning. I had the people at the bank looking under their coffee cups in mock search for my debit card. We had a great time.

This week I have been prone to telling myself a story of difficulty. After leaving the bank I crossed the street and was, for a moment, grateful that I lost my card(s). It was just the dope slap I needed to see beyond the story of woe and step again into a quiet center.

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

Weave A Conscious Story

Posted on July 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

837. 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 on the plane returning to Seattle I was surrounded by an extended family. They occupied the seats next to me, across the aisle, and the entire row behind me. I was the only non-family member in the immediate 12 seats on the flight and it afforded me the opportunity to revisit an old theme: in telling your self the story of yourself, you are literally creating your world. And what a world this clan created!

I was privy to some inner circle family negotiations and although I tried to be invisible, some of the conversations took place with me in the middle. I was the net to the family volley. Excited exchanges between the parents and children whistled over the net. And then the children huddled and debated their perceptions while the parents wrestled with the details of their version of the story. The story creation on my left bore little resemblance to the story brewing on my right. There were grandparents, too (sitting behind and to my right) and their commentary added another spin to the narrative. A single event in their lives inspired a wide range of interpretations and they were haggling over which story they would tell as the official version. There was little or no agreement and so the heat of the story spin was intense. It was like watching competitive weavers shuttle their thread while pulling apart the pattern of their competition. Their wrangling was rapidly becoming the central pattern of their family tapestry. They were the Fox News and MSNBC of family dynamics; whose narrative would be central and therefore designated as truth (answer: neither)?

Story is relationship. Relationship is story.

Try this game: as you move through the day or the week, see the relationships of your life as story creations. Story creation is a collaborative art; no one does it alone. Together with the clerk at the grocery story you are creating a relationship. You are creating relationship with your coworkers in each and every moment. The relevant question: is this the relationship that you want to create? Just for a day, entertain the idea that you are the relationships that you create. Entertain the notion that you are a relationship creator and what you create is a shared story. Red state/Blue state is a shared narrative. Most antagonistic relationships are built upon an agreement of enmity. What story are you agreeing to tell?

What is the common story that you create? What is the common story that we create? The old theme: it’s not happening to us. We create it.

Filed under: Story, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Create Together

Posted on June 30, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

833. 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 came across this morsel of blog-posts-past. This theme of truth continues to show up in my wandering-time:

The difficulty is not in multiple truths, multiple stories; the challenge arises when there is the expectation of one truth. When I believe that your truth must match my truth, that my truth is the right way and yours is inferior, that I must convert you to my truth, then we walk an untenable path.

We step into the dark woods and get lost with idea that there is one truth and it exists outside of us and we must find it out there somewhere. This notion separates us from our capacity for presence; it requires us to doubt our inner truth while spending our days searching for something that is with us all along.

There are many ways. There are many truths. If there is a single story it is something we create together.

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