It’s About Time

I think about time a lot. The time that I have meetings during the day. The 10 minutes of time that I have before some of those meetings. The time that I take after those meetings to follow up. The time that I have to get more done than there is seemingly time for. The time that I want to walk my dog, or be in my garden. There always seems to be some part of my brain that is chunking out time.

I’d like to think about time less. I’d like to feel less “driven” by the clocks on my computer, my stove, my microwave oven, my phone. I’d like to feel more spacious. Less pressured. I’d like to feel less rushed — a quality that can often become habit when thinking so much about time. Time seems to be in the middle of all of this.

For much of 2015 I got to be an official mentor with my friend Jessica Riehl, completing her thesis for her graduate program. Her final project was a focus on time that started with recognition of the pattern that many people experience — not having enough time and how to adapt to that. Though efficiency with time interests me, what feels more powerful and intriguing to me is becoming more aware of the relationship with time that any of us have. With awareness comes choice — so the thinking goes. With choice comes different behavior and practice.

Jessica and I created an exercise that included some fill-in-the-blank statements using post-it notes, one for each person for each question.

  1. Time is a _____. Or, Time is _____.
  2. The hardest thing about time is _____.
  3. The easiest thing about time is _____.
  4. The reason I don’t have time to _____ (something you like to do) is because _____.
  5. If I could change one thing about time it would be _____.

Then we had people talk about their responses. It was revealing. It was really interesting. For me, because our respective relationships (thinking, beliefs, practices) with time really impact who we are and what we are as human beings. Individually and collectively. If I feel that I’m always “short on time” I build my life around that. A timeless wandering walk that could be the afternoon becomes 20 minutes to the end of the block and back.

Fast forward from that time with Jessica. Earlier this week I was in a conversation with another good friend and colleague, Tatiana Glad, visiting from Amsterdam. I love Tatiana for her incredibly quick brain and big heart. Over breakfast, I asked Tatiana about her practice with simple things like email and texts. “If someone texts you, by when do you feel you are responding late?” Of course it depends on who is texting and what the topic is. But what I was trying to surface with her, and learn from, was more of the nuancing of relationship with time. For me, texts are more immediate. I feel that I want to respond within the hour. However, with email, unless urgent (again by project or person), I typically will respond within a couple of days. I don’t want to treat the randomness of email as being my priority todo list — that never ends and often can displace all of the available space for my creative project work.

It was a fun conversation with reaching implication about a simple, simple thing. Yes, corny as it sounds, it’s about time that more of us start talking about time and our relationship to it. To remember the ways that this human construct, clock time, has come to shape our very conception of reality, often, without much of our awareness.

It’s about time.

 

Fear is the Root Problem

And hatred. And how they escalate. These are roots of the problem too. These are the parts to get underneath to.

I appreciate those words from Pema Chodron, teacher to one of my teachers, reflecting on the an escalating violence in the United States (Bahamas has issued a travel warning to the US, cautioning black men in particular to be careful — it’s not safe, right; some of my Canadian friends tell me that when they travel to the US, their friends and family are now encouraging them to be safe — and meaning it).

I also appreciate the words from Pema Chodron, “I don’t know what the solutions are…. I am committed to continue to help where I can.”

I am committed to exploring fear that is underneath, to change who I am, and who we are. In the big scale (loss of power, identity, reactivism as rhetoric) and in the “small” scale that is individuals and groups (what if we don’t do this project, being behind in time, not having enough).

Peruse Pema’s full post below.

“It has finally really gotten through to me how dangerous it is to be black in America, especially for black men. It feels like Emmett Till all over again. Even in the case of Trayvon Martin, who was killed by a private citizen, I wonder ‘How could it be that George Zimmerman was not convicted of any crime?’ As this systemic oppression is seen over and over again in full sight with no justice, it is not surprising that there will be violent reactions such as the tragic shooting of 12 innocent police in Dallas.

If parents of black children have to teach them how to behave with police so they won’t get killed, there is something wrong with this picture. This situation is deeply disturbing to most Americans, including most police officers.

In the US, racial injustice has been going on since the days of slavery. But what is different now, is that the videos of the murders are there for all to see, and white people can no longer ignore what is going on. I am one of them. I don’t know what the solutions are. In fact, anything I would come up with I am already hearing from Black Lives Matter, Dallas Police Chief David Brown, and others, but there has got to be a way for us to move toward justice for all these victims of endemic racism.

The root problem is fear and hatred and how this escalates, which is where my kind of teachings could be useful. I am committed to continue to help where I can.”

Emergence and The Circle Way

Last week I wrote, “Emergence is the Game.” It’s been been helpful to encourage people with this perspective. Most of the people I work with are hungry for it. They want good facilitation and good meetings. But they also want what is underneath that. A disposition to emergence (be a part of; see; welcome; be surprised by; be inspired by, etc.) is one significant part of the underneath.

I rewrote some of that post into a “News” piece, Emergence and The Circle Way, on The Circle Way Practicum website that Amanda Fenton and I are using for the upcoming August 17-22, 2016 gathering. It is a bit more explicit about the connection to The Circle Way, which continues to open me up to emergence, that feeling of flow.

There’s also some other really good articles there that Amanda and I have posted that people have been telling us they appreciate. Peek, and reach out to us. Better, join us in August. Last call goes until July 25th ish.

An Increasingly Divisive Time

Recently I received an email from the Center for Council, one of the groups that offers a form of circle as core modality for reclaiming who we are as human beings (or evolving the edge of how we are as human beings in this time).

It referenced an “increasingly divisive time,” “nasty rhetoric that is common place in politics,” “contentious chatter in social media,” “growing orientation to us versus them,” and “putting up walls rather than coming together.”

This is a contemporary narrative that feels very familiar and accurate and needed. By narrative, I don’t mean a story to place on a bookshelf when tired of reading it. By narrative, I do mean a perceptive lens that shapes not only what we see, but what is seeable.

I appreciate the Center for Council’s invitation and their modality. For me, I work and practice through The Circle Way because of all that is named above. It’s the rubber-hits-the-road methodology that I teach and live as a way of being that makes the most sense to me. It creates the most change. At one layer, it is as simple as “let’s talk.” At another layer, “let’s listen.” At another, “let’s get real.”

All of these are good things. And needed. I’m an advocate. Dialogue will always matter. Understanding will always matter.

However, since beginning to write this post, I’ve watched videos and programs about the two most recent killings of black people by police officers in the United States this week.

I can feel a kind of hurt in me as I watch Diamond Reynolds describe the shooting of her fiancé, Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. I can hear the fear and panic from the police officer who remains with gun pointed in to car, having already fired it four times, while Diamond Reynolds, complies with requests to keep her hands where they are, yet remains filming and documenting.

I can feel my anger as I watch the wife of Alton Sterling describe the circumstances of his death. I can feel my confusion grow as I hear that he was shot three times in the chest while already subdued. I can feel my tears rise as I watch Alton Sterling’s teenaged son, break down in tears at the press conference. I can feel my frustration. Why? Why is this such a common story? Its never far from me — what if that were my boy, who is black, and mostly oblivious to these dangers as he lives his 11 year-old life? What if he were stopped later in life? What if he were misunderstood? And killed after being seen as a threat in a moment of fear by a scared officer with power?

No, I don’t believe it is easy at all to be a police officer. No, I don’t relate to that kind of stress and what are likely many stories of what was happening inside these officers in the real-time assessment and reaction of the moment. I can understand. I can tell myself to be patient. But I hear my friend Quanita’s voice speaking to me, “and people are still dying.”

I don’t get it. The part of me that has to imagine many choices of power that can be used that are not fatal. I don’t get it that trained officers wouldn’t be able to use guns to shoot other than in the chest and heart. If necessary, why not a leg? Get way from guns, why not a taser? Why not pepper spray? Surely there must be strengths that are debilitating enough to not kill yet provide more resolutions to a situation. Why is it that a gun shot to the chest is what we are seeing so often from what are skilled and trained professionals?

To be fair, I suppose there are many instances where this is the case. Cops do their job. It doesn’t go reported. That’s comforting.

“And people are still dying.” Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. Dontre Hamilton (whose mother I met in person a couple of months ago), Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray. Fuck!

And people are dying.

This has to change.

And people are dying.

Training has to change.

And people are dying.

Increasingly divisive.

And people are dying.

All lives matter.

I remind myself to breath, and return to talking, and listening. It better be real.

And people are dying.