Category: General Learning

Phil Cass is someone that I really enjoy. He’s a great colleague and a good friend.

Phil is CEO of four affiliated not-for-profit health corporations (the Columbus Medical Association, Columbus Medical Association Foundation, Physicians Care Connection and Central Ohio Trauma System). He gave me a tour of his building earlier this year. It’s an impressive center, very deliberate in its design to encourage collaboration and expanded ideas.

Our colleagueship goes back to 2005. I got to be part of an Art of Hosting team in Columbus where a wicked question was hatched — “What would it take to provide affordable and sustainable healthcare for everyone in Columbus?”

Phil is also the kind of friend that I feel I can call when I need some really good thinking, ideas, or witnessing. He’s honest. He’s kind. He’s done his work and has a lot of awareness as a human being.

I’m looking forward to working with Phil in the next couple of months. We are on a team together focused on Washington State Health Transformation. Some of Phil’s reflections on leadership are here.

I particularly relate to his focus on living systems and self-organization. It’s worth a peek! And, the fact that there are 500,000 receiving their care through patient centered medical homes, well that’s rather impressive, right.

One of the friends I appreciate is Quanita Roberson, who I’ve known now for a couple of years. Quanita is a good listener and an honest friend. She’s also a thoughtful and skilled colleague. One of the things I appreciate about Quanita is her practice of gratitude. Her Facebook posts often include a simple statement, “I am grateful for _____.” The blank could be filled in with the name of a person and an important memory. It could be filled in with the word, carrots. It is a kind of witnessing that she does and it feels real.

It is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Today will be a day for many to gather in various layers of family or friends. There will be a fair amount of turkey served as main course for celebratory meals. For many, there will be games played — cards and board games are common in my family. I’m aware that days like today also bring out sadness and grief. I know this part of myself and simply say it here to acknowledge that just because a cultural story is dominant, that doesn’t make it true for everyone.

With a tip of my hat to Quanita, and permission to myself to just be simple, here are a few for me.

I am grateful for:

• the roof over my head that gives me a place of ease for silence
• family that I’ve created memory with — those that I grew up with in Canada, and those that are coming in new
• being a dad — in particular to Zoe now approaching the transition of marriage, Isaac now in mission service, and Elijah who as a 10 year-old somehow is teaching me a lot about kindness
• other layers of family, newfound family in second marriage
• “milk line”, the term a close friend uses for people that are not bloodline, but feel like it — friends that I recognize as essential and natural life companions
• a spouse who continues to create her path and is gracious about how that is related yet sometimes different than my path
• freedom of choice — well, mostly
• safety —  spaciousness
• work that welcomes, requires me to be honest from my belly and that contributes to goodness in the world (or an organization, or a team)
• wise, kind elders
• a day on which one my belly can relax into simple gratitudes as the most obvious thing to do

Off to some cooking now. Preparing a few things to offer with those that I get to be with today. Sweet potatoes, caramelized like my Grandma used to do. Turkey, buttered and baked, that I hope will offer ample leftovers for my favorite, turkey sandwich with stuffing and dill pickles.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Tim Merry is a friend and colleague. He’s always provocative, I’d say. Which is code for well-thought. I’ve learned much from him over the years, primarily in our context of The Art of Hosting.

Tim’s video blog post today is about belonging, and in particular, as a strategy for welcoming immigrants to Nova Scotia, Canada. Canada is on track with it’s new liberal government to welcome 10,000 immigrants by the end of the calendar year, and an additional 15,000 by the end of February.

One of the things I like about Tim’s post is that he is challenging the thinking behind limits. “Well, maybe we could take a few families, one or two. That would be the appropriate and prudent thing to do.” Tim’s advocating some thinking to bringing many. In the many there is greater chance of belonging — these are my people — and there is navigation of the boundaries with existing community, which there will always be.

Have a look.

I am told that the neurological lifespan of an emotion is 90 seconds. That is to say, the chemical part of it is, well, rather short-lived. Anger. Frustration. Sadness. Joy. Fear. Love.

Think, driving a car and being cut off. Adrenalin rush. The brain, rightfully so, releases chemicals that are intended to give our bodies the ability to protect ourselves, react, and adapt. I don’t know the detail of those chemicals. I’m glad I have friends that are learning that (Teresa Posakony in particular). I do know the chemicals help us to survive. We may get angry, or tense when cut off on the road, but the chemical part of that is highly purposeful.

That’s the cool part, the adaptiveness.

I am also told that if that emotion, the 90 second experience, if fed by a source — an external experience, a person, a thought about the experience, a story, a judgement — can live for a lifetime. Protectiveness from a road experience can create the perceived need for protectiveness throughout a life in all of the unrelated places.

Fascinating, right? The body tricks us into believing that the 90 second experience is one to maintain hyper vigilantly is so many non-related places. Chemical, chemical, chemical.

I have my favorites. Well, not so favorite, but often present emotions. Fear of loss. Fear of an aloneness. To be clear, I’ve done plenty to become more aware of these. But to be honest, they are still there. This is common in us humans.

I don’t think the point is to be emotionless. But there is an awfully big point in becoming more…, updated…, about how emotions work us and how release is possible.

Perhaps, with some discipline, emotions are a temporary sensation. Perhaps, with some discipline, a gateway to keen and needed awareness in a well-rounded individual spiritual being having a human experience.

Just from 90 seconds.