meaning making | The Direction of Intention

Place No Blame

Posted on May 25, 2015 by davidrobinsoncreative

a detail of my painting, “John’s Secret.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness. Earlier today, Kerri read an article to me and the author, someone with terminal cancer, wrote that blame is a waste of energy. Life is too precious to waste on blaming. Forgive and move on.

My meditation on forgiveness has inadvertently become a meditation on blame. As it turns out, forgiveness and blame are often dance partners.

My favorite phrase of this week: Blame, no matter where you place it, does no good. To me, the crucial concept within the phrase is this: blame requires placement. Although it might feel otherwise, blame is not a passive act. We place it. We aim it. It is a way of making meaning of things that don’t feel good. I’ve written that blame is like sugar; it is addictive. It is choice wearing the mask of it-happened-to-me. Oddly, as an active choice, blame actually inhibits action and as an inhibitor it does no good either for the placer-of-the–blame or the recipient. It stops motion. It is an energy eddy. It is destructive both ways.

Forgiveness is also not a passive act. Forgiveness takes more effort because forgiveness is an unmasked choice. It, too, requires placement and aim. It is also a way of making meaning of something that doesn’t feel good. But, unlike blame, forgiveness does great good for both the giver-of-forgiveness and the recipient. It creates motion. It is generative both ways.

Filed under: Awakening, Navel Gazing, Possibility, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: blame, forgiveness, meaning, meaning making | 3 Comments »

Make A Pie

Posted on November 28, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Taking a walk with K.Dot and Dog-Dog

Stay with me. This post is not nearly as curmudgeonly as it might first appear.

Many years ago I was directing a play in Santa Fe. It was the week before Halloween and I went into a coffee house. I was taken aback to find the place decked out for Christmas. Since then I’ve kept a running count of the first day in the fall that I see Christmas appear in the shops. As you might have guessed, it is earlier and earlier every year. This year’s arrival date: October 3^rd.

I laughed out loud this Thanksgiving season when I heard an advertiser shout that, this year, Black Friday begins on the Monday before Thanksgiving. The whole week is black! Mark my words, next year Black Friday will begin on the Friday before Black Friday. Soon, the month of November will be decked in black while also decking the halls.

As has become our national custom, the midterm elections began the day after the last Presidential campaign and the new Presidential campaign began the day after the midterms. Are we never out of an election cycle (a rhetorical question)? It is the only example I can cite in which politics is running ahead of the rest of the advertisers.

I’ve not had a television for a few years so I’m a bit behind the wheels of progress. This morning, as we made pies, we turned on the Thanksgiving Day parade and I was wide-eyed with wonder that the entire affair is now a not-so-veiled advertisement for products, television shows, and musicals on Broadway. Along with each float came a cut-away commercial for the sponsoring company (I learned how to bake a lot of new desserts and was prompted more than once to rush out and get the ingredients NOW). Even the shots of Al-in-the-crowd were interviews, not with the crowd, but with celebrities; I heard when their show airs, and learned what their character might eat on this holiday and be grateful for if they were not imaginary. I was also prompted to text the network and tell them what I might be grateful for so that I might feel a sense of participation.

Take a step back. There is so much noise. There are so many competitors for our attention. I read that our attention spans are shrinking and how could they not shrink (or flee into hiding) under such an unceasing assault. Apparently with a shorter attention span it takes longer and longer to get our attention. I can’t help but think it is all stuffing and no bird.

Each year I work with people actively seeking for meaning or purpose. They tell me that something is missing in their lives. The pattern is to purchase-for-fulfillment but commerce makes for a lousy core and inevitably shows its true colors as a temporary numbing agent or distraction. And that’s the point. Seekers cease seeking when they learn where to place their attention. They step out of the noise cycle. Instead of navigating the noise they simply turn it off and take a walk or a nap. Instead of texting the network they look at their loved ones and say, “Let’s make a pie.”

Go here to buy hard copies (and Kindle) of my latest book: The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Innovator, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator,…You.

Filed under: Awakening, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: attention, meaning making, paying attention, presence, silence | Leave a comment »

Find The Purpose

Posted on October 9, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Despite warnings, Icarus reached for the sun. Why do I paint? Why does anyone do anything?

The question of the day is, “What is the purpose?”

Mike is 85 years old and she said, “Never in my entire life did I think I would live in a world where beheading was a reality. We’ve gone backwards, it seems to me. My god! It’s like we’re living in the Middle Ages.”

Is history a sandwich with madness in the middle or perhaps a Mobius strip? What is the purpose?

Arnie just returned from Israel. He was profoundly moved by his experiences there. He was also angered by the discrepancy between what American media reports about Israel and what he found there. “I’ll never again believe another thing I hear on the news.”

Belief meets disbelief. The fields of the profound exist beyond anything called purpose. What changes in our hearts and minds when our experiences touch the profound? Our sight changes; our eyes open.

Horatio recently wrote and told me that he’d dumped his Facebook and Linked In accounts. He wrote, “I dislike them and the fallacies we suffer because of it. Mostly, I wonder what took me so long. I mainly feel like a man with a simpler life.”

Simplicity arises when complexity falls away. The extraordinary is always found in the ordinary, something as common as holding hands.

Kerri and I sat in the autumn sun to eat our lunch. She gazed at our house. She asked, “Do you think our house will be here in 100 years?” Before I could respond she answered her own question, “If it is, we’ll never know.” And then she asked the question beneath the question, “What is everyone racing to achieve?”

Moments of fulfillment. Presence. Both require a move beyond achievement to something more connected.

It is passing. Life. Purpose. Who assigns purpose to a life? Who assigns purpose to all of life? Is it achievable? What happens when we get there? Mirages.

“Purpose” is a word like “Outcome”; it exudes permanence but don’t be fooled. An outcome is a snapshot. Just as bottom lines are temporal, data is interpretation, and endings are beginnings.

Purpose wants to feel important. Profound simply wants to feel.

Go here to buy hard copies (and Kindle) of my latest book: The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Innovator, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator,…You.

Go here to support my play The Lost Boy.

Filed under: Random, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: meaning, meaning making, profound, purpose | 1 Comment »

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: meaning, meaning making, nature, nurture | 2 Comments »

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