Archive for August, 2008
seeing the patterns & doing the same
August 22nd, 2008. Published under reflection. Comments.
If I can see the patterns of my life emerge in front and around me, why isn’t there the action to do differently? I had so much momentum in my creative and personal work a couple of months ago, though now it’s been stifled and I’m doing the same old things the same old way. The only difference now is that I can see the patterns clearly.
I can see the dread at night take my energy over and I somehow choose to rest myself down into it. Before, I had found a way to change my step or to walk a little differently and shake off the down energy… change the way I saw something, or just choose to do one more thing for myself at the end of the day. Instead, I open that door and walk right into tiredness, boredom, weariness.
“I’m just so tired” is a refrain I’ve had many years in my life. One thing after another comes upon me and I let it all build up until I feel justified in repeating to myself that “I’m just so tired”. For a few months there, it was like a joke to me. It was so easily to laugh off or to state the opposite and it just went away and the real energy behind it came out and I had life.
Is it the little things, the little choices that steer the energy the other way?
“It isn’t worth it” is another big one. What difference will it make? Why in the world would I do this? Etc. Those are easy ones to slip back into as well. And they feed on themselves. One small choice in that direction makes it just that easier ot make another choice. The little things add up.
Not having written here was a big piece of evidence that said those things above to me. Perhaps the voicing of the little things that head me away from my true desire will scare them away or scare me up enough to make some difference in my life and build the momentum back towards the energy and the passion that I know is there.
Yes, let’s see it!
individual integrity in a group
August 6th, 2008. Published under reflection. Comments.
It’s an interesting question about how to maintain my individual integrity within the context of a larger group. How do I keep my own sense of self while keeping commitments to a group of people I’m working with?
Whether it’s at work or on an athletic team or a group that has come together for a common purpose, I think it’s critical that each individual remains in touch with who and what they are and not let the group’s desires overtake the preciousness of each person within the group. I thought I had seen and been able to tell the difference between a group and a team. I’ve generally avoided groups because of the tendency to become an echo chamber and devolve into groupthink. When people are working together for a common purpose, though, the sense of team can arise and great things can be accomplished.
There’s no I in team, right? There’s a U group, though I think the silly semantic saying has it got it backwards. A team has a whole host of I’s in it. The individual excellence of each person while simultaneously working together has tremendous and life-changing power. When the power of an individual, though, is subsumed into the machinations of group desires you run into dirty waters indeed.
A collection of centers
Christopher Alexander has written some amazing books around the art and practice of building structures, neighborhoods, townships, cities. Once key idea in his Nature of Order is that spaces are considered alive when they’re designed as a collection of centers. And, that people working together function best when everyone is their own center within the network.
It’s a paradox. At once the individual is exalted in oneself and at the same it secondary to the actions of the group. And, where is that balance so that neither the individual nor the group is harmed and both find energy in each other? It ebbs and flows for sure. It’s not a constant equality to be balanced… instead intuition must be at the heart of each person’s decisions.
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