The Direction of Intention

413.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

During a recent Transformational Presence Leadership call I referenced a story concept that is important for doing the work of transformation: embrace the wolf. In the story of Red Riding Hood, the wolf is the character that drives the story forward. Without the wolf there is no story, no action, no catalyst, or creative tension. Without the wolf there is no transformation.

What is true in the story of Red Riding Hood is also true in our lives. The wolf drives the story forward yet we dedicate much of our time and energy attempting to eliminate the wolf from our story. If we are not trying to eliminate the wolf we at least try to neutralize it, avoid it, or pretend that it is not there. In protecting ourselves against the wolf we inhibit our growth and stall our capacity for change.

Wolves bring discomfort and disequilibrium. Wolves bring conflict and doubt. No one willingly seeks discomfort yet if the wolf is the catalyst then we must learn to walk toward the discomfort and utilize the creative tension. The common mistake we make in our lives and businesses is to believe that discomfort indicates that something is wrong, that we’ve lost control. That may be the case sometimes but more often discomfort signals that something is right; there’s movement into the unknown!

Investments in keeping our experiences safely cotained within The Comfort Zone, in balance, stasis, equilibrium of process at all times, is a recipe for stagnation. Wanting to be in the Comfort Zone all the time is the equivalent of Red Riding Hood never setting out on her journey to Grandma’s house. It is like trying to stop the seasons because you want to live in summer all of the time.

The comfort zone serves a purpose: there are seasons for balance, maintenance, and stability. There are also seasons for movement, growth and change. And, because we are deeply invested in maintaining control and staying in our comfort zone we need to be kicked out of the nest, we need to be knocked off balance, and compelled to leave the safety of the comfort zone in order to grow. That’s the role of the wolf in our story.

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409.
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 used to have a guitar named Magnolia. Linda gave her to me a birthday gift and she was immediately one of my treasures. Magnolia was used when I got her, warm and full of story. She felt good to hold and I loved to strum her and imagine that I knew how to play. I imagined who I would be if I could play her. I carried her with me for years. I learned a few chords. I practiced sometimes, learned to stumble through a song or two, and then she’d go back in the case for several months when I went into rehearsal or flew away on a job.

Shortly after I moved to Seattle I knew I had to cut ties with the past and make a fresh start. I knew that Magnolia was never going to get proper attention from me, that I wanted to learn to play but I had on my list other things that always took precedence. I had to choose and my choice was usually the studio to paint or the next play. I knew she’d be happier with a real musician. So, I found a real musician and gave Magnolia to her. She was thrilled (and so was the musician).

I realized that letting go of Magnolia was about letting go of a life that I would never live: an ideal. I had too many other lives calling me (note: I could never bind myself to the mast like Odysseus – when the Sirens call I follow. Were I a Greek I’d have been turned into a goat or a sheep a long time ago. Cyclops would have eaten me for brunch). Magnolia was a Siren from another time, a love long lost, a heartbreak that I carried in a guitar case. And, although I grieved giving her away (seriously – I had to eat alone that night for brooding and hiding my misty eyes) I was almost immediately lighter in spirit. I’d made a choice. She helped me see how many stories and I held with white knuckles and continued to follow halfheartedly. After Magnolia I let go of the weight of so many stories I’d carried like a bag of boulders for so long. Stories can be heavy when filled with false expectation or excessive judgment. Stories, once liberated, will also let go and set you free.

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404.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

This morning the Sound was shrouded in fog and sprinkled with a slight drizzle. It was very quiet and the water was glassy and still. The islands, Bainbridge and Vashon, were doing their Avalon imitation and fading into the mists of time. For some reason, these mornings inspire my inner archeologist to come out and play. I generally feel that I am living in a culture/world that makes no sense to me so there’s always a bit of the archeologist peering from behind my eyes; the questions, “What is this?” and “Why did they do that?” are velveteen questions that I can’t help but consider.

This is what I found:

A single running shoe sitting alone on a bench – its mate nowhere to be found. I imagined the shoe to be heart broken, confused, wondering whether it’s mate left with another shoe or was tragically swept out to sea. It is the not knowing that is agonizing, the sudden purpose-less-ness that drove the shoe to this bench to stare into the foggy waters. Perhaps it drank too much and woke up alone on the bench and wonders silently to itself, “What the hell happened to me? What will become of me?”

A lime, whole and uncut, resting 6 inches from a child’s blue plastic sand shovel, broken, missing the handle. They seem to be staring at one another, curious, “Who will make the first move?” It is like a middle-school dance. The lime is playing hard-to-get. The shovel, hiding it’s lost handle, it’s missing piece, puts its best face forward hoping the lime will not notice or at least will have an open mind and give it a chance. So much yearning!

Eleven empty Corona beer bottles standing in a line on the sea wall (no where near the lime – of course, though the lime might have escaped the marauding Corona brothers and rolled into a budding love story); the bottles facing the sea. Knowing that bottles come in equal numbers raised the question, “Did the missing bottle run off with the missing shoe?” Or, perhaps the eleven bottles disposed of number 12 for a breach of the case code? They were certainly working hard to look innocent. They were too perfectly placed not to be up to something. I was suspicious but in no position to accuse.

A pile of cosmetics: eye shadow, lip liner, brushes, mascara, a pancake base, and other items laying in a pile on top of a concrete post. It was as if a purse ate too much make-up and vomited. Nothing else made sense. How many women do you know that dump their make-up on a pillar and walk away? It had to be a purse gone Roman, evidence of over indulgence.

This morning my inner archeologist was fired from his university post for excessive imposition of story on artifact. He couldn’t leave well enough alone and cataloguing did not seem nearly as fun as story-making. On his exit interview I asked what happened given all of his years of study and training. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I’m human.” What’s the point of all that data if not to tell a good story?

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393.
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 cleaning our some files and came across more notes from the archive; these thought are connected to the last batch:

Not only is story capable of holding us in a coordinated orbit and conversely, blinding us to each other, story also holds the power of guiding us through the wasteland and back to the garden. The old stories are like maps: this is how it will look and feel; these are the challenges you will face, this is what you can expect.

Knowing the stories won’t save you from your trials but they will bring greater meaning to them. Stories connect: every human that has ever walked the face of the earth has been born, grown to adulthood, wondered what was theirs to do, loved and lost, fulfilled themselves or not, grown old, and died; their advice comes to us in the form of a story.

If we listen metaphorically, the wisdom it holds will spill its guts. Stories don’t need to be tortured to reveal their secrets, they are eager to share. However, treat them as fact and they will clench their jaws and clutch their fists and hold their breath until they pass out. Their treasure lives beyond the realm of facts, beyond the superficial. You have to listen deeply, engage it, feel it in your body. Story requires a relationship with you. Reading a story factually is to cage what is wild, to shackle what is free. Reading a story as fact generates fog.

This principle holds true of people – because we are, each of us, storytellers. Believe that your thoughts are fact, that you are right, and you will impound your spirit.

Jay Griffiths writes in her delicious book, WILD, “To me, the human spirit is not a stain on wilderness as some seem to think. Rather the human spirit is one of the most striking realizations of wildness. It is as eccentrically beautiful as an ice crystal, as liquidly life-generous as water, as inspired as air.”

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390.
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 found these notes in the archives and brushed them up a bit. My thoughts loop back as I find myself remembering how central to communal health is a common story and a vibrant, shared image:

Where is the story that unites us?

Story is the gravity that holds us together, pulls us into a common orbit. It is the irresistible cadence of invitation: come. Sit. It is singular and essential; it holds us in affirmation like a burgeoning pod: it is the common narrative that affirms, “This is who we are.” In the absence of a shared narrative it is almost impossible to truly say, “This is where I belong.” This “story that unites us” is the nucleus, the artist’s obligation and most important role.

I took my fingers from my ears and heard the whispered possibility of a single narrative when I recognized the artist’s call, not as an obligation, not as something I had to “do;” it was something that I already was. I recognized that I am an artist, not as a role, not in the sense that I need to produce anything; nor that I need to comment on the politics of my world. I am an artist because I am aware. I am aware that I create my world in how I engage and interpret every moment. We create in every moment. And, because I am aware, I am capable of listening to the story behind the words. I understood the call when I began to ask, “What is the story that I am telling through my life (with my fingers jammed in my ears)?” What is the story that I am telling my self about myself? I am an artist not through anything I do, but in how I choose to be, in what I choose to hear and see, in the story I choose to tell. Is there a story that we choose to tell together?

Story is the gravity that holds us together, this we’ve forgotten, I know. And like the musicians in an out-of-tune orchestra, when we no longer recognize our common story the gravity reverses itself, we spin off into the void, alone in a cacophony of inner monologue. Hell is a community of individuals lost in the fog of their own story. Hell is the universe that has forgotten the existence of symphonic music. Hell is where you compare yourself to others (and the others always win), where you have to be perfect, where you are never good enough; Hell is where you invest in false notions of who you should be, have to be, could have been. In Hell there is no present moment because you are too invested in the fears of the future and regrets from the past. It’s a dense fog, an inner wasteland, a lonely place.

Staying in hell takes a real commitment to the story that you tell! The commitment to telling a common story is no less arduous but produces a dramatically different sound.

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