The Poem and The Path

We stand shivering at the door,
terrified and panicked
that we have lost the key.
We waste lifetimes
in the waiting
because in the haze,
the painted fog
of our fear, we forget
to check the handle
and discover
it has never been locked
at all.

Untitled by Tyler Knott Gregson

I very much enjoy poems that have lessons for living. Ones that do so through metaphor, as this one does, are even more pleasurable. We hardly think of metaphors except as used in poems and prose, as Shakespeare did, copiously. But we employ them constantly in everyday life. He has the heart of a lion, the interview went swimmingly, in our company he is king of the mountain, are just a few mundane examples. 

There is an interesting story about Houdini, which could be apocryphal, in which he tried to escape from a prison cell without success, only to find at the end that the door was never locked. True or not, the image is compelling and this poem somewhat echoes that story. Houdini’s mistake was not based in fear, which is the driving force in the poem, but in his failure to conceive of an unlikely alternative because he was certain he understood the game. Although not identical to Houdini’s situation, the poem also addresses the failure to examine, and perhaps pursue, life options or alternatives. 

Fear as a driving force is something I have mentioned in a number of earlier posts. My goal in those examples was to address the many ways that fear, whether on the surface or in the unconscious, controls our behavior, often to our detriment. This is not an argument for being reckless, or for ignoring the need for caution. Nor is it an argument for not feeling fear, or the anxiety it often produces when lodged in the unconscious. It is a comment on the importance for us to see when our fears are getting in the way of our becoming better human beings.  

The poem begins with a reference to possibly having lost the key to a door. Clearly, the key is not literal, nor is the door, and there are many ways to interpret this situation. In simple terms, the door can be considered a hurdle or barrier to some aspect of personal progress. The key may be seen as the way to get by that hurdle. The implication is that we had something before (the key) and lost it, misplaced it. That may well be true. But we can also see the key as something we never lost because we never knew we had it---the spirit of fearlessness and openness, with the courage to open any door. That spirit has been part of us from our beginning and (re)discovering it is the way we move beyond our fear and the suffering that often accompanies it.

So what happens when we find the key, when we divest ourselves of our fears and open the door? The path awaits us, surely. But is there a path? A saying in Taoism refers to “the pathless path.” Although appearing to be senseless, the saying embodies a great truth. The paths that matter aren’t straight lines, nor are they defined in any way in the world. When we see the path as something real, we run into the problem of seeing it as an Answer---if only I could find my Path, all will be well. Sadly, this is a lost cause. Seeing the Path as a way to an outcome, a destination to be arrived at, misses the essence of pathless---it is the journey that matters, not the arrival. But the journey to where? Like the key we always had and may not have known it, the path was always there, and there is nowhere to go. The journey is realizing what we knew all along---who we really are, still, silent, and present.

 

 

I Am Effective!! Or Am I??

Like most people, when I think about whether I am effective at something I am the one who makes the judgment. If it were not, who would it be?  

Effectiveness in the general sense is about getting a job or task done, whether it’s repairing a computer, developing a budget, learning Spanish, supporting a loved one, or engaging in self-reflection. And it need not imply a final completion, although it certainly may. Finishing preparing a budget represents a final outcome, but learning Spanish does not, unless, of course, one becomes totally fluent. I progress in learning a language gradually---achieving incremental levels of effectiveness over time. 

Some people confuse effort with effectiveness, a distinctly unwise view. Effort, regardless of quality, is an input. It is often vitally necessary, but cannot be seen as the end point. For example, I know people who say they are on a path to self-awareness---surely an admirable goal. Unfortunately, the inputs are as far as they seem to get. I asked one of these individuals what his goals were, and he stated that he wanted to better understand himself and the things that motivated him. I asked how he thought that was going, and his response was, “excellent.” Inquiring further, I wondered how he was measuring that, and his answer was simple---I am doing all the right things. That is, he is reading the right books, attending the right lectures, belonging to the right groups, etc. Not a thing wrong with what he is doing, but in 15 years he has made essentially no progress in understanding himself, if his behavior is any judge. It is as though he has mistaken the inputs (his efforts) as being equivalent to the actual outcome, greater self understanding. The really important effort, the very hard work of disciplined practice for years, is thus unneeded.  

All effectiveness is determined by the comparison of an outcome (even if partial) with a standard or goal, which can be informal or quite formal. I assess my improvement in learning Spanish on my own very informally, and quite casually, while a boss may assess the work outputs of an employee using various strictly defined methods. In the first case I decide how effective I have become, and in the second the boss (for the most part) decides the employee’s effectiveness. 

This last example addresses the role of others in the determination of effectiveness. Certainly there are aspects of life where I can determine my effectiveness without reference to others. As mentioned above, if I self-study Spanish, I need only please myself. And if I repair my computer, the virus is either gone or it is not. The input of others is not needed to determine if the problem is solved. But many aspects of life call for others to have a role in the effectiveness determination, something we may well dislike because it can contradict how we see ourselves.  

If I have a Spanish teacher, he may have a view of my language progress that does not match mine. Or, consider a real-life example. In the past I offered to help my wife make the bed after the sheets had been washed and dried. She took me up on this, but soon dispensed with my help. My concept of effectiveness in doing the bed did not match hers; in fact, she saw mine as distinctly inferior and, upon reflection, I saw that it was. 

As a consultant to organizations over many years in the area of leader behavior, I have witnessed many examples related to who determines if a particular manager is a good leader. Most managers, regardless of level, think only they (and possibly their boss) determine if they are a quality leader. It is clear on the face of it that this is incomplete at best, and destructive at worst---destructive because the manager may be living an illusion, and he acts on that in dealing with his staff. Without the input of others, mainly those who report to him, he exists as a legend in his own mind. In the minds and hearts of his employees, however, he may be a walking disaster. Managers often discount the opinions of employees, but they do so at their peril. A misbehaving manager, even if good at his job, will not generate the commitment and loyalty needed to produce great outcomes---he will not be a quality leader.  

A question of significant personal import is whether I determine if I am a good husband, an effective one. Surely I cannot unilaterally decide that. Imagine I tell my wife that I am indeed a fine husband, and imagine further that she has decidedly different views. If I insist that my view prevail, I have likely confirmed her view just by that simple act---an undesirable outcome. What happens in many cases with this question? Simply: How can my wife possibly see me as a flawed husband, when I see myself as the pinnacle? I uncritically accept my laudatory view of myself, to which I am deeply attached. She, obviously, has to be wrong. This means that my wife must be led, by any means needed, to see the “correct” view. You can imagine where this little effort is going to go! But that is what happens when we cannot stand the light of reality, when we are unable to give up our precious, and often biased, opinions of ourselves. I cannot become a better husband unless I accept and deal with my wife’s views. That does not mean she is unilaterally correct. But the perceptual difference does mean that something is up between us, and the only way to get at it is for me to let down all the protective barriers. 

You and I, but only to a modest extent, determine our effectiveness when others are involved, whether those are life partners, friends, relatives, or colleagues. But those others usually play a significant role in the determination because they have a vested interest in our behavior. I am not suggesting that others automatically have a more accurate view of our behavior than we do, but the chances are very good that they have an edge on us, mainly because we are remarkably resistant to a true understanding of our own motives and actions, some of which look rather unpleasant.  

Inputs from others, even flawed ones, are vital to becoming a better person. But it takes considerable courage to behave properly when we are the receiving end of undesirable news. Thus, before we can become a more effective spouse or leader, we have to become a more effective listener.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You Can't Get There From Here

"Once you have found the center
and achieve harmony,
heaven and earth will take their proper places
and all things are fully nourished."

The Second Book of the Tao, by Stephen Mitchell.  

Who can disagree with this? Certainly not anyone I know. And there are good reasons for our welcome and acceptance of such wisdom. At its best, Eastern wisdom like this encourages us to unflinchingly look at ourselves and how we interact with the world, with the eye of developing within us the ability to flow with the world and not against it---the essence of Taoism.  

This short passage emphasizes the importance of harmony, a state that most of us surely aspire to achieve, but which relatively few of us actually achieve. Disharmony is clearly visible in individuals, families, offices, churches, governments, and nations. Simple observations of what is happening today point to a profound sense of dis-ease among people in Western societies, especially the US. Structures and moral systems that provided some sense of certainty and support have been uprooted. Young people seem lost and without much sense of reality, often living in social media and looking for continued affirmation as they struggle with their identities. Civility is disappearing and dis-respect on the ascendance. Violence is increasing. Poverty and racism remain disturbing aspects, as does hunger. 

Many well-intentioned people want very much to solve these problems, and often are active in efforts to remediate them. Unfortunately, despite all their efforts, and those of the government as well, progress has been spotty at best. Why the intractability?  

Clearly there are many reasons why we have not eliminated poverty or racism, for just two of many societal problems---from entrenched attitudes or beliefs to inadequately designed or implemented governmental programs. Important though those may be, I am going to suggest another causal factor, one that perhaps gets at the root of intractability for at least some of these large challenges. 

The Tao quote seems to be referring to us as individuals---to our own personal harmony. And it is fair to read it that way, but there is more to it than that. “Heaven and earth will take their proper places” also says that harmony can be about more than just us. If our actions are in accord with the Tao, “all things will be fully nourished,” meaning that aspects of the world beyond our immediate existence can be positively impacted. The quote permits a linkage between the personal and the general, or the societal, and this is the key to my suggestion. 

The idea is very simple: a person or group will have little luck transforming certain societal problems if he has failed to first transform himself. In other words, making a true impact on societal problems often depends on a pre-existing condition in which the person is working on his own tendency to misbehave. My belief is that all greater (local, national, international) dis-harmony arises from each individual’s disharmony. Large-scale socially detrimental things such as racism, homo-phobia, incivility, intolerance and violence will not be successfully addressed until individuals heal their own malfunctions. I believe that the origins of all these distressing and very challenging societal problems are in each of us, not in the large-scale society, which only picks them up after the fact as we collectivize our dis-harmony. 

What matters most are not the grand, mega-societal efforts to change people or solve problems, although those can be useful, but the day-to-day way in which we interact with those we don’t like or with whom we disagree. Before we can truly help with the large-scale societal challenges, we must do a bit of work on ourselves. As David R. Loy says in his fine book, A New Buddhist Path “…we cannot expect either the economic or the ecological transformations we need to succeed without personal transformations as well,…” Failing to make the fundamental personal change means our intentions and motives are open to serious question. In our minds, unfortunately, we are paragons of virtue when in reality we are acting at cross-purposes.  

An example involves the decline in civility and the efforts good people want to make to improve it. But a person who has not mastered his own incivility, and yes plenty of well-intentioned folks have failed, will be fostering good at one level---the societal---and diminishing it at another level---the personal. That is not in sync with the Tao and will mean that the person is actually sabotaging his own efforts. This self-defeating aspect is also vividly evident in the idea of tolerance, a subject I have mentioned a number of times. Just like the civility issue, we cannot be tolerant of some and intolerant of others and expect that our efforts to improve tolerance overall will succeed.  

This post addresses the challenge of getting from “here” (our current personal condition) to “there” (correction of a social problem) when the “here” is flawed by our own less-desirable behavior. Essentially, you can’t get “there” without a changed “here.” Thinking so is an illusion, and results in little to no good coming from considerable effort. 

A further problem is that work done at the societal level is often that of form, as opposed to substance, or outcome. Committees are formed, debates are held, admonishments are tendered, bills are passed, celebrities add their names, and administrative structures are constructed. Well-intentioned people admirably commit their energies to these activities.  

Yet if even well-intentioned people fail to hold themselves and others who group with them accountable for inappropriate behavior, it is clear that the inputs, as good as they might be, will prove essentially useless. Political discourse, for one arena, is a disgrace today (each side often arguing maniacally, and uncivily, that it is the other side that is uncivil---I have earlier discussed illusory existences). And the reason for this disgrace is very simple. For politically prominent people (anyone, really) to change their awful tactics they have to be held accountable by their very own. How useful is it for a Republican to hold a Democrat accountable, or the reverse? Not at all. But when both Democrats and Republicans hold their own members and partisans accountable, well then we might have some action. Unfortunately, given the wildly irrational state of our society, don’t count on much on any large scale. But as individuals, we can take up the effort, both to reform our own mis-behavior and to hold our friends and associates accountable for their unpleasant and undesirable behavior. It all starts at home, and that is where the leverage for large-scale social change is.