In tonight’s meditation group, Mark raised the question about why we spend so much of our life thinking and talking about problems. It was a good reminder of the Buddha’s suggestion that life is lighter when we stop hoping for a problem-free existence and world. The only realistic choice is to decide which problems we want to have and have mostly the ones of our chosing. Then this frees us to do the real work of enjoying everything else.

Leadership is the capacity to initiate a future distinct from the past. This is what distinguishes leadership from management. Management is the capacity to give order and structure in service of high performance. Management is not burdened with an act of creation, it is about operationalizing goals and objectives.

A distinct future can only be achieved through high engagement. We can say then that the essence of leadership is about convening, valuing relatedness, and decentralizing its own role. It is not a personality characteristic or a matter of style and therefore it requires nothing more than what all of us already have.

Peter Block, from a recent article, Reconstructing Our Idea of Leadership

Someone needs to counter-publish an obsessant collection of how-to books from a strength-based perspective for a market of “smarties” rather than “dummies,” as in “Home Improvement for Smarties” and “Romance for Smarties.” This collection would start with the premise that people already have the prerequisite skills that only need to be engaged for effective action. The recipes would give people credit for have the brain and wit to do well with very little instruction. Just a thought.

In the Zen tradition, to be non-attached is not to stop wanting that which we want. It’s to be the witness to our wanting, to be the open space that allows wanting to come and go like clouds. The paradox is that in non-attachment, we become more than less engaged because we then identify with the whole. Being witness dissolves our sense of separateness from the whole. There is no longer a separate I wanting a separate it. As Zen teacher and innovator Alan Watts would say, perfect action then arises from the intelligence of the whole.

I think the emerging interest in urban farming is an innovation that deserves attention, investment, and engagement. The growth of assets like open spaces and agri-opportunities is amazing. The conversation also shifts the whole economic and job development from a post-industrial model to a new urban agrarian model. We have the people to work new farms, we have the resources to teach new methods, and we have people who have the practical need for organic foods that only lack ever-growing transportation costs. The farms can be on micro-scales, approached co-operatively, and best of all, people from the suburbs can be finally relieved from any guilt, fear, embarrassments, or resentments about the city that will always exist at the geographical core of any metropolitan region.

Many people in the civic space we call “leaders” are budget administrators. Their talent is in negotiating and spending other people’s money. For many, asking the community for its perspectives is an unnecessary if not burdensome task they would rather avoid because they are not leaders in the sense of being skilled at authentic and complex facilitation and engagement.

In their defense, asking any diverse community for feedback is a Pandorian box that certainly can complexify what would otherwise be a more simple partisan job of budget administration. The good news for them is they get to exclude even the crankiest of communities from any substantive role in budget decisions, by reminding people in a double-chin tone that they hold very serious “fiduciary responsibilities.”

Many could have the following below their email signature:

We own the money. You don’t. Get over it.

When I graduated from college in the mid-1970’s, free love was starting to accumulate costs. Streakers were replacing protestors as the main quad entertainment. There were still plenty of reasons to be distracted from one’s studies.

One ripe summer night going into my senior year, I found myself deep in Kerouac narratives with a girlfriend who was fast becoming my co-conspirator in a late summer romance. I was still uneasy from an ominous call earlier in the day. It was the dean’s secretary calling to set up a meeting with the dean. She tendered no agenda, so my only choice was to ruin the better part of an otherwise good day in pre-dread speculation.

“The dean’s my dad,” my girlfriend smirked with the snap of a wet locker room towel.

By then, I had survived being number 16 in the last Vietnam draft and learning to drive a stick shift trekking up mountain roads in a van full of equally unhappy goats and chickens. None of it prepared me for that moment squandered in a frantic audit of recent events in search of any possible indiscretion that could have reached the ears of her stern dean of a father.

The next morning, I kept the appointment.

“Son, do you know why I called you in?” “No sir, I do not.”

“I’ve been looking at your records.” This is something I have never found to preface to anything congratulatory.

“I see you need to declare a major.”

It was my senior year, and my renaissance soul had been well known for roaming a wide countryside of interests. I had accumulated the proper portfolio of hours at that point, but with no clear path to choosing among things like classical languages, communication, theater, and psychology.

After the drama of a few unnecessary moments of reflection, I though this was a better time to assert questions than deliver questionable assertions.

“What do I have the most credits in?” “It looks like psychology.”

“Let’s go with that,” I announced, barely containing the facade of confidence that betrayed my long history of viewing ambivalence as the mother of opportunity.

I did graduate that year, long after parting friendly company with the dean’s daughter. As it turned out, psychology became the cornerstone of a career that’s served me for over three decades, the wisdom of my procrastination proving to be a source of life-shaping serendipity.

… from a forthcoming book on the power of our stories

In tribute, some of my favorites from George Carlin:

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

Sometimes people argue over the details of modified vegetarian diets that include fish or dairy products. If it gets unruly enough, the conversation disintegrates into metaphysical speculation about the relative consciousness of broccoli, nuts, trout, and cows.

Everyone has their own reasons for abstaining and indulging as they do. For me, it’s in part a symbolic nod of respect to living things and in part understanding of the carbon footprints of food production, packaging, and transportation. It’s never perfect, just an intention we play out that perfectly mirrors our understanding of ourselves, and things.

We hold fast to the political beliefs and biases of our families and friends. Our loyalty is the cost of belonging. That’s what makes it hard for us to listen to people who differ. When no one listens, the community has no hope. Hope only lives in the land of listening.