I was impressed today by a colleague - a member of my client team who greatly outranks me. He sent me a note with a request. I had a couple of questions and emailed him a note to that effect saying I'd come find him to talk to him later in the day, as I knew he was busy prepping for a meeting. (I'd already looked for him and he wasn't around.)
Ten minutes later he was in my office. "You had a question?"
There are all sorts of little power plays that take place in daily interactions in the workspace. Who sits where in the room, on what side of the desk, who waits for who, and definitely, who comes to who's office. Higher ups can summon common folk. "Please see me."
I've never held rank. I always find people and respond to summons. It rose to my awareness a few weeks ago when another colleague and I were talking but she had to go. "Can we work on this later?" "Sure," I said. "I'll come find you."
"No, I'll find you," she said. I was mildly humbled.
I was mildly humbled again today when this other colleague came to find me to respond to my question. Funny how just little things like that make a difference. At least to me.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Fractals are cool
My new favourite thing is fractals. Fractals are geometric shapes that are very complex and infinitely detailed. You can zoom in on a section and it will have just as much detail as the whole fractal. They are recursively defined and small sections of them are similar to large ones. They blow my mind and as a cool byproduct - they are beautiful.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Almost Lent?
I apologize in advance for the weird brain-dump to follow.
My cousin Sarah is doing a PhD thesis on something about ecology, something and the archetype of initiation. (Due apologies to Sarah for not being able to remember the whole topic properly.) At Christmas she was telling me about it. It was interesting. That mixed with some things I was reading, working on, and watching that made me think a few perhaps random but seemingly related thoughts.
Part of the deal with the "archetype of initiation" is that at many times, in many cultures, young people went through some kind of initiation rite. Like, the Native American Sun Dance ritual, for instance. Most initiation rituals had some fairly high level of intensity to them - discomfort and pain - but experiencing that and pushing through it lent to healthy individual growth, realization, or sometimes revelation, and in many societies signaled the entry into adulthood.
Although we have many accepted "rites of passage" now in Western culture, I speculate they tend to lack the intensity and perhaps effectiveness of some more traditional versions. We're not really big on discomfort in our society. We try to avoid it. At all costs. We even avoid people who are experiencing it.
I was trying to piece together how ecology fit in, and thought of bit of trivia I heard about forest fires. It is now well understood that forest fires are important to the healthy life-cycle of the forest. The fire clears out death and decay leaving room and fertilizer for new life. I'd heard an example from the 1970's were our collective wisdom on forest fires was that they were bad and should be avoided. If any started they were stopped asap. This, it didn't turn out was good for forests. In one instance a forest fire finally took hold in an area that natural fires hadn't been allowed to burn in for many years. The fire burned so long and so hot that is scalded the earth and new growth won't be possible for decades.
At work I have a poster a colleague gave me that creatively looks as the process necessary for innovation to take place in a team or organization. There was a phase in the fairly complex process that spoke of a sense of "misfit" then "pain" that often proceeded innovation. Something form that connected in my mind to this idea of initiation or need to walk through some kind of uncomfortable process for something good to grow.
Some bit of pain, discomfort, or degeneration is necessary for healthy growth, in individuals as well as ecologies, it seems. Probably it's important in organizational as well as societal systems. In the back of my mind I'm developing a hypothesis that our cultural distaste for discomfort is going to cause some kind of 'total burn out' in western culture unless we get better at adjusting to, understanding and even embracing the pain that comes with shift, and decay. Even in our economies.
My cousin Sarah asked about my faith in connection to this. It was a surprising question, but I was perhaps even more surprised to realize that there was a link. At first baptism came to mind symbolizing death and rebirth. Later as I thought about it, I realized much of Christianity revolves around the need to experience death as a prerequisite to new life. We don't focus so much on the death part in much of western Christianity, but it is clear and ubiquitous in scripture.
I'm not sure where all that came from, or what it means. Perhaps it's because it's almost Lent.
My cousin Sarah is doing a PhD thesis on something about ecology, something and the archetype of initiation. (Due apologies to Sarah for not being able to remember the whole topic properly.) At Christmas she was telling me about it. It was interesting. That mixed with some things I was reading, working on, and watching that made me think a few perhaps random but seemingly related thoughts.
Part of the deal with the "archetype of initiation" is that at many times, in many cultures, young people went through some kind of initiation rite. Like, the Native American Sun Dance ritual, for instance. Most initiation rituals had some fairly high level of intensity to them - discomfort and pain - but experiencing that and pushing through it lent to healthy individual growth, realization, or sometimes revelation, and in many societies signaled the entry into adulthood.
Although we have many accepted "rites of passage" now in Western culture, I speculate they tend to lack the intensity and perhaps effectiveness of some more traditional versions. We're not really big on discomfort in our society. We try to avoid it. At all costs. We even avoid people who are experiencing it.
I was trying to piece together how ecology fit in, and thought of bit of trivia I heard about forest fires. It is now well understood that forest fires are important to the healthy life-cycle of the forest. The fire clears out death and decay leaving room and fertilizer for new life. I'd heard an example from the 1970's were our collective wisdom on forest fires was that they were bad and should be avoided. If any started they were stopped asap. This, it didn't turn out was good for forests. In one instance a forest fire finally took hold in an area that natural fires hadn't been allowed to burn in for many years. The fire burned so long and so hot that is scalded the earth and new growth won't be possible for decades.
At work I have a poster a colleague gave me that creatively looks as the process necessary for innovation to take place in a team or organization. There was a phase in the fairly complex process that spoke of a sense of "misfit" then "pain" that often proceeded innovation. Something form that connected in my mind to this idea of initiation or need to walk through some kind of uncomfortable process for something good to grow.
Some bit of pain, discomfort, or degeneration is necessary for healthy growth, in individuals as well as ecologies, it seems. Probably it's important in organizational as well as societal systems. In the back of my mind I'm developing a hypothesis that our cultural distaste for discomfort is going to cause some kind of 'total burn out' in western culture unless we get better at adjusting to, understanding and even embracing the pain that comes with shift, and decay. Even in our economies.
My cousin Sarah asked about my faith in connection to this. It was a surprising question, but I was perhaps even more surprised to realize that there was a link. At first baptism came to mind symbolizing death and rebirth. Later as I thought about it, I realized much of Christianity revolves around the need to experience death as a prerequisite to new life. We don't focus so much on the death part in much of western Christianity, but it is clear and ubiquitous in scripture.
I'm not sure where all that came from, or what it means. Perhaps it's because it's almost Lent.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
On my knees...
I was wondering what would take to compel me to my knees. I don’t know why, but I think about from time to time.
I remember the very first time I knelt at an alter to receive a blessing. I was 18 or 19 and just exploring the new ideas I was discovering through Christianity. I was at a Communion service and had never taken Communion, nor could then, being neither baptized nor in any legitimate way conceding to these new ideas. Not yet. I understood and respected that I wouldn’t be allowed to take the wine and bread, but the priest presiding offered an alternative. Congregants could come forward and receive a blessing. That sounded cool, and scary.
Now if you’ve ever seen a liturgical Communion or Mass, you’ll know there are some logistics involved. There’s a pattern to how people approach the alter rail, kneel, receive and return to their sets. There’s an order, so the servers don’t get confused and no one crashes into each other. I was nervous about messing up this well practiced choreography – new to the dance as I was. But I made it up there okay and knelt.
Immediately something in me reviled the action. I was surprised. I had been feeling victorious in making so far without crashing into anyone or generally embarrassing myself by messing up the process. Safe at home plate. But as soon as I landed at the alter rail I felt an intense response. It was a clenched teeth, quite, slowly enunciated reprimanded from somewhere. Almost a hiss.
Get. Off. Your. Knees!
I know for some it’s hard not to assume some diabolical creature was whispering to me (it’s my own fault I guess for using the word “hiss”), but I really think it was 100% me. I’d never before knelt in any kind of sincere act of submission to anything or anyone. Of course I stayed put and received my blessing, but I’ll never forget that spontaneous and venomous resistance to coming to my knees for the first time.
As the years passed the ritual of Holy Communion became familiar. I came to take the bread and wine, but there was less and less reaction on my part. As important as I knew and believed it was, it’s hard for those things not to become a familiar and easy action lacking any intensity – good or bad.
But I’ve often wondered what kind thing, what kind of feeling, experience, revelation or realization would cause me – compel me – for real, to my knees. Outside of a ritualized context. I imagine what it would take, what it would feel like. I think I can almost sense it. But it seems too immense, too complex, but I still feel compelled to try and imagine it. I don’t know why.
I remember the very first time I knelt at an alter to receive a blessing. I was 18 or 19 and just exploring the new ideas I was discovering through Christianity. I was at a Communion service and had never taken Communion, nor could then, being neither baptized nor in any legitimate way conceding to these new ideas. Not yet. I understood and respected that I wouldn’t be allowed to take the wine and bread, but the priest presiding offered an alternative. Congregants could come forward and receive a blessing. That sounded cool, and scary.
Now if you’ve ever seen a liturgical Communion or Mass, you’ll know there are some logistics involved. There’s a pattern to how people approach the alter rail, kneel, receive and return to their sets. There’s an order, so the servers don’t get confused and no one crashes into each other. I was nervous about messing up this well practiced choreography – new to the dance as I was. But I made it up there okay and knelt.
Immediately something in me reviled the action. I was surprised. I had been feeling victorious in making so far without crashing into anyone or generally embarrassing myself by messing up the process. Safe at home plate. But as soon as I landed at the alter rail I felt an intense response. It was a clenched teeth, quite, slowly enunciated reprimanded from somewhere. Almost a hiss.
Get. Off. Your. Knees!
I know for some it’s hard not to assume some diabolical creature was whispering to me (it’s my own fault I guess for using the word “hiss”), but I really think it was 100% me. I’d never before knelt in any kind of sincere act of submission to anything or anyone. Of course I stayed put and received my blessing, but I’ll never forget that spontaneous and venomous resistance to coming to my knees for the first time.
As the years passed the ritual of Holy Communion became familiar. I came to take the bread and wine, but there was less and less reaction on my part. As important as I knew and believed it was, it’s hard for those things not to become a familiar and easy action lacking any intensity – good or bad.
But I’ve often wondered what kind thing, what kind of feeling, experience, revelation or realization would cause me – compel me – for real, to my knees. Outside of a ritualized context. I imagine what it would take, what it would feel like. I think I can almost sense it. But it seems too immense, too complex, but I still feel compelled to try and imagine it. I don’t know why.
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