Are you seeing the whole picture? - Day 42

Day 42 (Thursday 11th January 2018)

42 years ago, on Sunday 11th January 1976, Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen topped
the UK Charts - it managed 9 weeks at Number 1, before being knocked off by ABBA with
Mamma Mia. Bohemian topped the charts again 16 years later, following the death
of Freddie Mercury. Mercury wrote the song whilst in bed (he had a piano as his headboard)
and it was originally called "The Cowboy Song". It is the 3rd highest selling single of all time in the UK.

Today's blog is a first for the Advent Blog series - a jointly composed piece by Helen Amery and Mark Gilroy. Both are executive coaches with their own businesses and (as you may have guessed) good friends. Mark is the Managing Director of TMS International Limited, where he has worked since September 2003. Mark studied (Psychology) at york and still lives in the City. He has a passion for people, technology, photography (I love this phrase from him: “Life is like a camera. Focus on what’s important, capture the best bits, develop from the negatives, and if things don’t turn out, take another shot."), networking and social media - you can link up with him on Twitter, his handle is @thatmarkgilroy. He writes a good blog, snap-leadership.com.

Helen is a seasoned Advent Blogs blogger. She is married and has two of the most adorable children. She (and her business) are based in Leicester in the East Midlands. After obtaining a degree in Chemistry from Edinburgh, Helen commenced training as an accountant with PwC but then realised that she was better suited to HR. She then took a postgraduate diploma in Personnel Management at Nottingham, before joining Boots (initially within employee relations).  Helen succumbed to her entrepreneurial spirit and now actually is involved in two businesses - her own, Wild Fig Solutions, and she also has co-founded Aligning Teams with fellow Business coach Zoe Jepson. You can follow Helen on Twitter (her handle is @WildFigSolns) and read her people-centred blogs on her business site.

Both Mark and Helen are on personal journeys of development and are learning about Buddhism - their post was inspired by some shared reading and ensuing conversations.

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A little while back I mentioned in this post that I’ve started to learn about Buddhism and that I might write about it soon.  Then when the topic for this year’s Advent Blogs appeared in the Twittersphere this felt like it might be the right time to put pen to paper.  So here’s a joint blog from Mark Gilroy and me, the result of both reading the same book, a fabulously exploratory conversation and co-created content.  We’re beginners in this Buddhism world so would love to hear your thoughts and perspectives.

Darkness and Dawn.

The suggestion of polar opposites.  The absence of one means the presence of the other.  

Dawn kissing Night - Eos and Hypnos Painting by Phyllis Mahon

And herein lies one of our sources of duhkha (doo-ka) - our desire for things to stay the same.  Our desire to nail constantly-moving things down.  Which of course is impossible and so the illusion of permanence doesn’t last for long and dissatisfaction returns.  

[Duhkha is one of the four Truths of Buddhism.  It’s experienced like a wheel being out of kilter, something isn’t right, we develop discomfort which grows over time.  The arising of Duhkha is because of a thirst, craving or wanting.  The back-and-forth shift we experience between longing and loathing.  Hence, the desire to keep things still is a source of Duhkha because we long for things to be still, and when they aren’t we loathe them. They aren’t doing what they “should”.]

And so when we long for the dawn and loathe the night, we experience duhkha because, of course, the dawn and daylight don’t stay forever.  In this place we’re not seeing dawn and darkness for what they really are.  When we step back to see the whole, to see Reality, we see the interconnections.  We see the dynamic flow and flux.  

 

We see the Reality that daylight here, means darkness elsewhere – both are present at the same time.  And even at night, the sun is seen in reflection on the moon.  It’s never completely gone.  Neither darkness nor dawn are absolutes.  They are part of an interconnected whole both of which are essential for the wellbeing of all that lives on our planet.

When we see things as they really are, we drop the concepts that we humans place on everything around us.  These concepts make our lives simpler, faster, easier to categorise.  We like that.  It meets our (deluded) belief that things can go in boxes and won’t change.

Darkness is a concept.  It’s a made up “box” for that period in the 24 hour cycle when the sun is not visible.  The instant we separate a concept from the whole it sits in contrast to an “other” of some kind or other.  We deny the reality. Because what’s really happening is that every moment of the night is different from the one that went before, and different from the one coming next, because the light levels will have shifted marginally in one direction or another. The concept of darkness as a solid single thing is (we think) comforting.  It’s a controlled box or label for an ever-changing phenomenon.  And yet concepts like this only lead to suffering.

Especially when we layer beliefs onto the concepts we create, attaching meaning to the concepts that wasn’t there when we were first born.  I don’t like the dark, that’s when spiders come out.  I don’t like the dark, my sister used to jump out at me from behind the bedroom door.  I don’t like the dark, that’s when I think of my lost loved one.  Or maybe, I love the dark, that means it’s time for a party and seeing friends.

Whatever we make the concept mean, it hooks us back into the arising of duhkha – longing or loathing based on our life experiences in relation to that concept.  Wanting it more or pushing it away.  Trying to make it go away faster or stay longer, depending on our beliefs.

Step back again.  See the situation for what it really is.  See that the sun has gone too far to be seen directly, but it is still there, still shining on earth, still bringing life to the plants and people on another part of the planet.  See that the darkness is an important time for people to recuperate, for plants’ photosynthesis to pause, for night-dwelling creatures to seek their food before daylight returns.  Knowing that in this world of constant flux, the sun will again return to our part of the earth and rise with a new dawn.

 

The same is true of us as people.  Our notions of “personality” or “self” try to capture fluid, ever-changing phenomena with frozen concepts, immediately positioning you as “other” to me, separate and “out there”.  In Reality, we don’t exist alone but in relation to others, and to everything around us.  By attaching our ego to a “self” we see ourselves as corks floating in the stream of time,

whereas in truth, we are the stream.  

There is only stream.  As the stream ebbs and flows, so do we.  In this place there is no duhkha.  We are in flow.

So when you find yourself in a place of longing or loathing ask –

• What am I making this mean?  
• What are the beliefs you’re ascribing to the situation?
• What are the “should’s” you’re telling yourself?  
• What's really going on; which of these beliefs or should’s are man-made, box-like concepts which deny the reality of the whole?

If you step back, what is the “whole” that you’ve not been seeing until now?

All Dark Matters Have a Bad Reputation (But They Shouldn’t) - Day 34

Day 34 (Wednesday 3rd January 2018)

34% uplift in premium spirits sales occurs over the festive period compared to
other times of the year. A study by cloud-based software provider Epos Now,
studied sales data between 11.30pm on New Year's Eve 2017 and 12.30am on New Year's
Day and, according to a poll of 800 pubs around the UK, during this hour prosecco accounted
for 18% of total wet sales while Champagne contributed to 17% - these two drinks
accounted for 35% of the pubs' total revenue during this time. In England hospital
admissions due to alcohol-abuse peak around the end-of-year holiday season.
Normally about 15% of ER admissions are alcohol-related, according to the NHS,
but at weekends and holiday times, that figure can shoot up to 70%.

One of the things I love about the Advent Blogs series is that is is a global phenomenon and today's post proves just that. The 34th blog is by Maya Drøschler. Maya is based in Copenhagen in Denmark. She joined the Advent Blog series as a writer in 2016 and wrote a poem last year, to describe the highs and lows of her first year in business - she had decided to follow her dreams and become an entrepreneur. I am pleased to report that her business seems to be going from strength to strength. She specialises in what she calls "The Point of HR" - that intersection between HR and communications and can advise on HR, systems and process design. She is also a respected public speaker and blogger. She writes a good and informative blog - in Danish - HR forretning (which translates as HR Business) as well as posting articles on LinkedIn. She has a background in HR (and has worked in Retail, Engineering and Medical Technical Equipment and Analysis). You can find her on Twitter (her handle is @MayaDroeschler).

I have huge admiration for Maya, not least because English is not her first language and yet she insists on writing in English for the Advent Blogs series because that is best for the majority of readers.

All of the pictures used in the post have been provided by Maya herself.

We are still within the 12 Days of Christmas and hence her sentiments and wishes expressed at the end of the piece are sound.

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To a large extent, language is built upon semantic opposites, but the relationship between two opposing terms like, say, black and white, is rarely neutral. Rather, the two terms are subtly ranked, because the relationship is characterized and determined by the act of human value attribution.

We prefer The One to The Other; we prefer Humans to Non-humans; we prefer Civilization to Barbarism; and we prefer Growth to Stagnation. 

The word dawn is often associated with a new beginning, transparency and a clear mind, whereas the word darkness is associated with a weathered mind and all things hidden and forbidden.

Darkness and dawn are not rigorous opposites, though, but rather two different phases in a repetitive cycle:

But even though darkness and dawn are not opposites in themselves each of them belong to a pair, which are:

Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad wrote the novel Heart of Darkness more than a century ago. In the novel, the sailor and narrator Marlow goes on a trip to find a guy named Kurtz, who is a successful ivory dealer in the colonized African country, Congo. When Marlow finally arrives at Kurtz’ camp deep inside the Congolese jungle, Marlow quickly realizes that the man, who is supposed to represent Western civilization and enlightenment, is quite the opposite; Kurtz is a disturbed person who has established his own brutal regime inside the jungle, where he acts as a demigod and exploits the natives.  
     

Later, it turns out that Kurtz suffers from jungle fever (today we call it malaria), and the last words Kurtz says before he dies are the famous: The Horror. The Horror. As readers, we don’t know if Kurtz is hallucinating, meeting his own personal angel of death or reflecting on his former misdeeds, but we do know that he, who should be the glorious exponent of dawn, is in fact much closer to darkness.

Everything is not always what it seems, like darkness turns into dawn and dawn turns into day, day turns into dusk. What counts as evolution, enlightenment and progress might in fact be an expression of human regression.

But no one seems to notice, before it is too late. 

Darkness Has a Bad Reputation

Darkness has a bad reputation, but this is a misconception, because darkness is not frightening, depressing and uncivilized at all times.

On the contrary, darkness can be comforting, it can hide your flaws and it can protect you from expectations, demands, obligations and responsibilities, when you need it the most.

Likewise, dawn is not necessarily positive; dawn is not always a new beginning, life starting all over again, the sun rising above the horizon to spread its light and warmth, but can be the very moment when you stand naked, exposed and visible to the decisions you must make and the hard work you must do, before the sun sets again. 

Repetition and Rest

Darkness and dawn are both part of a repetitive cycle. For thousands of years, dawn has meant the beginning of a new work day and darkness has meant the end of the work day, the moment when you could finally rest.

The children are a sleep, the soil is at rest, and everything is quiet.
The world has turned quiet. 

Modern work life has a lot of dawn and very little darkness, modern work life is one big, bright, busy endeavor, where everything is illuminated and everything is at stake.

You cannot hide, you cannot rest. Your brain is in constant overload mode and everything is up to you.

The Cycle

Although all natural ecosystems are built upon repetition and incremental improvement, humans of today tend to idealise radical innovation. It’s much cooler to be disruptive than it is to be repetitive, and you are undoubtedly a more fascinating and smart person if you are an inventor rather than a maintainer.

Lately, humans have invented algorithms and Artificial Intelligence, and those innovations promise us that we can get rid of all the tedious, boring stuff we had to do in the past, like weeding the soil.

In fact, we can get rid of repetition itself and only do new, exciting, creative things every day for the rest of our lives.

But this is a fantasy, because we need darkness as much as we need dawn, we need the repetitiousness of the cycle.

Too Much Daylight

I live in Denmark and this time of year we only experience seven hours of daylight each day.

When farming was the main industry, people slept on average two hours more each night than people do today, and even up to fifty years ago eight to nine hours of sleep a night was the norm. It’s not that we don’t need to sleep anymore, it’s just that we don’t have time to sleep.

Because dawn is always near.  

In a knowledge economy, it doesn’t matter what time of year or what time of day it is. We have liberated ourselves from the limitations of the cycle, we have liberated ourselves into the borderless work life.

We have established a regime of extreme enlightenment and civilization, where everything is transparent, elucidated and always fresh and new, and that’s great, but sometimes I wonder, if Kurtz and people like him are the true architects of modern work life. As I observe people giving up on their health, their families and their personal values to serve an endless series of dawns, I can almost hear Kurtz whisper:

The horror. The horror.

Christmas

These days, a lot of people experience heavy workloads, tight deadlines, unhealthy work environments, bad leadership practices, irrational decisions processes, even more irrational chains of command, unsuccessful projects, strategies badly executed and barriers to cooperation at work.
           

To me, these conditions are all symptoms of too much dawn and too little darkness, of too little time to absorb, reflect and make plans that extend to more than the next hour, next dawn.

I hope that you spend the Christmas holidays cherishing the darkness (if you live in the North), and I hope that you will allow yourself to experience the sensation of not being bombarded with sensory impressions and dubious assignments around the clock.

If you have time to rest, to think and to contemplate, you may realize that every idealized term, like dawn and busy and transparency, carry their opposites by their chest.

Dawn? I’m not ready for it, let me go back to sleep, please.
Busy? Always, but I really can’t say what I am busy with.
Transparency? This is a secret, but I don’t want to know everything about everyone.

Only Christmas has no opposite term, Christmas is always Christmas.     

Merry Christmas.

(and a Happy New Year!)