General Learning • Tenneson Woolf

October 2, 2017

It Is Hard Not To

It is hard not to feel sad in the world.

This morning I read of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada that took place last night. The description I read was of a lone gunman, perched high in a hotel overlooking an outdoor country music festival. He had many guns. Fifty people killed. Hundreds injured and taken to the hospital. One man, my age, laid on top of his kids — “I lived a good life. You have much in front of you.”

Sad is a euphemism. Shocked. Despair. Stunned. Traumatized. Paralyzed. Speechless.

It is hard not to feel angry in the world.

Anger is an accompaniment of sadness of this type. Anger goes with shock, despair, stunned, traumatized, paralyzed, and speechless. Who isn’t feeling fed up with the violence and the rhetoric of violence. And the bravado of violence. And sensationalism. It is so commonplace that a collective neural circuitry and psyche is being remade that will reside for generations. “War torn” is threading increasingly into the fabric of being human in this decade and century.

I’m not smart enough to know all of what to do. I’m grateful for the people who know more than me and who can respond to a very big picture. I’m grateful for those whose contribution is different than mine toward a common good. For me, when angry, I’ve always tried to find the step in front of me. Today, that is to be deliberate in not blocking the pain of the specific story nor of the broader pattern. It is to pause, to be quiet out side, to breathe, and to be still. It is to find with some deliberateness my own center, so that I can be helpful.

This violence is a phase. I hope this is true, the temporariness of “phase.” I feel lousy for even naming it that way, with such distance. I feel ripped apart inside when I think of those in Las Vegas and those in any of these similar acts. These are people being killed, not just numbers. With families. With partners. With stories.

One act of mass violence may never equal one act of simple local kindness, but it is this practice to stay in the now of local kind acts — without denying numbness and loss — that resets a foundation for reclaiming mass kindness. Love the ones in front of you in simple ways.

It is hard not to feel a desire for good. I’m trying to hold myself to that today, even when sad, angry, and pain. Please join me.

September 28, 2017

Five Tips For Hosting and Participating in Online Circles

I recently wrote an article for The Circle Way Newsletter about virtual circles. I’ve excerpted the headlines below. Check out the full article here.

Over the last twenty years, I’ve been with literally hundreds of people in face-to-face circles. Some circles as large as fifty of sixty people. More commonly, in groups of six to sixteen. Most of us have been moved to tears at times in these circles. Or deep convictions. Or delightful surprises. Some of us have even found life-time companions, friends, and colleagues in the container that is circle.

One of the most common questions I’m asked from those face-to-face circles is, “Is this possible online?” I love the hope in people’s eyes that is behind that question. And I can see a bit of the worry too — worry that often comes with the vulnerability inherent in hope.

My response is always the same, after a deliberate pause to hear the question. “Yes, of course.” That’s the simplest, and most honest response I can offer. It speaks directly to the hope and to the worry. Then I usually go on to share that online circles are related, but different from face-to-face circles. Both are important. Both are exciting. With intent for good hosting all around, it’s important to feel the similarity of depth and to acknowledge difference.

Over the years, particularly the last ten, in this explosion of virtual possibility and global community, I’ve come to rely on a few tips in hosting and participating in online circles. I think of these tips as practices and dispositions.

1. Arrive Early

2. Avoid Distractions

3. Virtual Environments Take Time Too

4. Get A Little Extra Tactile and Descriptive

5. Invite a Sequence for Speaking and Signal Your Completion with Extra Directness

I’m glad that so many of the virtual circles I’ve participated in and hosted have felt intimate and well connected. I love it when people express their appreciations. It’s the voice of hope. It’s the relief of released worry.

When at my best, whether face-to-face or online, I remind myself that I / we are not just leading meetings. We are holding space for a possibility. An honesty. A realness of connection. Presence is the common denominator across the mediums. Presence is the operating system. It just takes a little extra imagination and practice to bring it fully to make the virtual circle real.

September 27, 2017October 9, 2021

Nobody Knows

Everywhere I go, I meet people who are learning to lean in to the reality that most of our environments are just too complex to know completely. It doesn’t mean that we don’t know anything. It does mean that nobody can know everything.

My work, on the surface, is mostly process consulting and facilitation. That body of work grows from an acknowledgement that work and life are pretty involved and require us to go together. It’s an evolutionary step. And it’s one that contradicts so much of what many of us have been taught. Just like the gents in the cartoon above, we been taught to not say it out loud, and to mask “not knowing.”

Let’s face it. Not knowing, and the ability to own that as a step of vitality is essential these days. Relearning how we go together, without diminishing individual ability, yet contributing to sustainable, “go further” approaches only found in community (or team) — that’s the work of these days.

And beneath the surface of that, it’s just rather human to human adventure isn’t it. Sometimes I feel like I know a lot about that. Sometimes, even in knowing a lot, I can feel that I’m just beginning.

“Knowing” is a verb of continuous engagement. Not an item on the list to tick off. There’s the secret that many of us are trying to make not a secret.

September 26, 2017

What Boys Do

Boys do stupid things. I am one of them. I’ve done a few stupid things in my time.

This is not to say that boys are generally stupid. Nor, that all boys are stupid. Nor, that boys don’t do some pretty amazing and intelligent and kind things. But, I’m guessing that most of us, now grown in age, could have an important round of sharing stories about stupid things we’ve done, ranging anything from confessions of shame to “thank God it all worked out” acknowledgements of dumb luck.

I remember the time my twelve year-old friend took a whack at hornet’s nest (yes, I watched). That didn’t turn out too well. It required a trip to the hospital and counting the bites as badge of honor was of little comfort.

I remember the time my two early teen friends and I rode triple on a small mustang bike. One stood peddling. One on the handle bars. One sitting backwards on the seat. I think we laughed, proud of our ingenuity which only needed to get us half a mile to the end of the block. That one ended in scrapes and bruises and nowhere near the end of the block.

And then there was the time that two of my high school friends sat down, intrusively, in a restaurant next to a scrawny and solo junior high kid (I was pretty scrawny too), and pulled up their sleeves and began flexing biceps. It seemed funny, but…

Boys do stupid things.

So let’s suppose that, developmentally, boys will continue to do a stupid thing here and there. Inevitably. Let’s call it a phase, please.

The problem, however, is when boys don’t make it far enough out of the phase that tells us it’s a good idea to whack a hornet’s nest. When you’re twelve, ok. Live and learn. You’ll survive, hopefully. Say sorry to the hornets. When your 22, umm, really? When your 42, developmentally stunted. When your older than that, well that’s just sad. When your a leader with power, weapons, resources and influence globally, umm, that’s at minimum, sad commentary, and arguably, immoral or criminal.

Too many men are living void of essential maturing, still doing stupid boy things, yet with the power of bigger weapons, wealth, and ego — costumed in the illusion of matured human being.

When your a boy doing stupid things, stuff that doesn’t really matter in the long run, seems to matter a bunch. Speed means a lot. Fast cars. Shiny hubcaps. Bulking up means something. Protein. Calories. Looking good at the beach, or the pool, or hanging out on the corner. When your a teenaged boy doing stupid things, hormones drive way too much and too far. It’s stupid to objectify women and claim property in sexual encounter. When you are a boy doing stupid things, you pick fights that don’t need to be fought. Your pride doesn’t let you back down. You escalate to save face. When you’re a boy doing stupid things, you start fires with gasoline and if you are lucky, you only singe your eyebrows. Then you do it again without regard, grabbing a bigger canteen of gas.

Let’s be clear. There are many underlaying narratives and entrenched societal practices that need fundamental re-evaluation and conscious evolution. Much underlaying emotion is surfacing now — animosity, polarity, extremism — but these have been present, lurking, and hidden for a long time. I believe we are now living in an unavoidable confrontation with much hidden individual and collective shadow, which is a good thing. It’s not, however, leadership that is calling all of this forward. It is merely a symbol of outrageous egotism that is triggering most of us, and upping our alertness to essential, required, evolutionary change.

When boys pose as men, with accoutrements of power, money, authority, and yet still, to the core, have the unmatured, uninitiated psyche of boys, we are in a time of some much needed and deep soul searching. Definitely for what we see “out there.” But also for the unmatured and uninitiated “in here,” in each of us. It’s time to name the stupid boy things out loud, honestly. It’s time to take a good look inside to the ways that collectively, we’ve grown and allowed such hornet-whacking norms to be considered even remotely acceptable in boys and men.

Soul-searching. This is one of those times.