Yesterday, I watched a launch of a lifeboat for my first time ever.

People were running towards the Queensferry boathouse within moments of one another.  Just a few moments later they all appeared on the other side of the building with their uniforms on and the boat being launched, and then they were gone.

I don’t know whether this was an exercise or for real but, as I reflected on what I witnessed, a number of elements had just come together:

Acute need experienced by those in trouble on the sea demands a highly skilled crew to respond – not just anyone who likes boats can do this.

The crew possesses a combination of personal values, skills, and experience which makes them the rescuers they are – matched on land by a team in support.

They have the kind of equipment which makes it more possible to deliver their skills and succeed for the people in need: boat, clothing, etc.

I call this acute need because it’s obvious to someone in trouble on the sea when they need help.

There’s also chronic need, though.

I’m thinking of the work people find themselves in, but it could also be their worldview or relationships or a health issue of some kind.  Many put up with their needs and try to get by – it’s not as if it’s life-threatening, they reason.

Rescue is at hand – people with values and skills and experience and means and practices who help us to turn towards the need rather than hide from it.

And people who are rescued tend to become rescuers of others – which is why today’s cartoon is a tribute to Harriet Tubman, who escaped from slavery but then decided to become a rescuer of others, being a founder of the Underground Railroad.

‘I’m very inspired myself, as a teacher, to communicate ways to help people not run away.  To help people take the view that they can allow whatever comes up, uncomfortable feelings, for example.  And then, secondly, to teach methods of different kinds to help others stay present.’*

I can name all those who helped to rescue me and those who still do.

(*From Pema Chödrön’s Fail Fail Again Fail Better.)

When Lewis Hyde writes about how the increase of a gift ‘is to speak of something simultaneously material, social, and spiritual,’* he catches my attention because these are Theory U’s three disconnects – and they’re really big ones.   U theory is about anticipating the emerging future together, and the place we begin is observation.**

We have to be willing to see, even when what we see is unpleasant and unpalatable.  To avoid the truth about ourselves, others, and our world is to impair our ability not only to see now but also to see the future.

“The most reliable way to anticipate the future is to understand the present.”*

This may not be good news to you.  Your present (or the present of others or the world) may not fill you with pleasant thoughts.  In my experience, though, there’re way more good things to see than bad or indifferent.  There are so many values and abilities and energies and dreams.

Yes, we make mistakes and we fail – often, but life loves grace and providing another opportunity transforming mistakes and failures into things to learn from.

Honestly seeing the truth of who we are is not an end, then, but a beginning.  Facing failure in this way makes us change-agents towards: ‘the beginning of something fresh and new in your life, turning you in a whole different direction … making you braver and stronger and more there for other people, and it will bring out your best human abilities’.^^

(*From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(^Theory U by Otto Scharmer.)
(^Futurist John Naisbitt, quoted in Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious.)
(^^From Pema Chodron’s Fail Fail Again Fail Better.)

Elegance is flow.

The motion of a generative life, elegance works to remove barriers and obstacles to the possibility of an idea, a gift, a life.

When moving us into generative dialogue with others, elegance does not want to exclude people or win the argument, it doesn’t simply want to help another, but would rather create something with others, finding beautiful words or actions or ideas on the far side of complexity.

‘[E]legant proofs or theories have most or all of the following features: they are simple, ingenious, concise, and pervasive; they often have an unexpected quality, and they are very satisfying.’*

Elegance is not easy.  At its core lies vulnerability: a willingness to try and fail and try again until something works, with all the misunderstanding and pointing this involves.

‘It’s in that space – when we aren’t masking ourselves or trying to make circumstances go away – that our best qualities begin to shine.’**

(*From Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious.)
(**From Pema Chödrön’s Fail Fail Again Fail Better.)

‘We can infer from the speed with which people respond to questions about their life, and from the effects of current mood on their responses, that they do not engage in a careful examination when they evaluate their life.  They must be using heuristics, which are examples of substitution and WYSIATI.’*

There we were, on a beach below St. Andrew’s castle: four middle-aged people picking out “sea diamonds” from among the stones, and dodging the waves of an incoming tide.

Sea diamonds are just my name for the pieces of broken glass ground smooth by the action of the waves.  A little later, in the window of a jewellers in the town, we spotted these pieces of glass made up into earrings, necklaces and bracelets.

Three things caught my attention this morning:

Lewis Hyde tells of how a gift’s value would increase amongst Native American tribes as it was broken.**
Pema Chödrön tells a story of how, when it comes to failure, we tend notice what is happening to us rather than our feelings about what is happening – which means we are more acted upon than acting upon.^
Rohit Bhargava encourages us to be thoughtful about a thought or idea before passing it on.^^

We are the sea diamonds in this tale, more than broken glass.  Something beautiful is happening in the gifts are lives are becoming to others through the difficult experiences of life.

Whilst we don’t invite these, we choose our response as we go through them, before we share our gift.

(*From Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.  Substitution is the swapping of a difficult question for an easy one, and WYSIATI is to be closed to a new way of seeing: What You See Is All There Is.)
(**Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(^Pema Chödrön’s Fail Fail Again Fail Better.)
(^^Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious.)

‘The gifted artist contains the vitality of his gift within the work, and thereby makes it available to others.’*

Although life is about passing on the gifts others have made, in this universe, everyone is capable of making gifts to fill the emptiness.

These are as unique and diverse as those making them.

‘Honestly, that is the best advice for life: no note cards.’**

Here’s a clue.  What can you talk about or do which you don’t need any notecards for? This is probably your art, your voice in this universe:

‘When air travels to our lungs we are given a voice that defines who we are.’^

What matters to us so much, we would let go in order to let come something more?

(*From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(**From Pema Chödrön’s Fail Fail Again Fail Better.)
(^From Charlotte Bosseaux’s Dubbing, Film and Performance.)

‘No, the jumping frogs aren’t merely an unfortunate hassle for the frog tamer.  They are, in fact, the entire point.’*

It’s hard to control and be curious at the same time.  To be curious is about letting go and to letting come.  As Pema Chödrön has pointed out to a year of graduating students:

‘No one knows what is going to happen next.’**

Back in 986CE, Bjarni Herjulffson set off from Norway to Greenland.  When blown off course, he refused to explore some land spotted by his crew.  He got back on course for Greenland.  Later in life, he told this tale to his friend Leif Erikkson who was inspired to set out on his own journey of discovery. Erikkson set foot on the land Herjulffson refused to, the first known European to step out into North America.^

The gift lies beyond.  Curiosity takes us beyond the boundaries we construct.

(*From Seth Godin’s “forward” to Pema Chödrön’s Fail Fail Again Fail Better.)(**From Pema Chödrön’s Fail Fail Again Fail Better.)
(^Told by Rohit Bhargava in Non-Obvious.)

Good heartedness can turn just about anything into a gift, and bad heartedness can reduce any gift to a possession.

We expand a circle – from me to me and you, to us and others – and a gift is formed and developed and renewed.  Ego to eco.

(The gift circle is grown multi-dimensionally when we include the world and our higher hopes and values.)

When we seek to possess the gift, we reduce the circle.  Eco to ego.  The light of the gift goes out.

But we renew the gift when:

We allow curiosity to constantly renew us
We are observant, seeing what others do not
We hold lightly to pass on, rather than grasp to possess
We are reflective and thoughtful
We seek to add to (innovate), creating something beautiful to pass on.

‘Exclusivity is the economic sibling of scarcity.’*

Small-town America with diners and ice-cream bars one minute, then a scoop of London the next, behind which opened up a world of witches and wizards.

My wife Christine and I thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Universal Studios in Orlando, even though it was the repackaging of the large into the small.

Life, though, seems to be set up the other way around.  Taking us from small experience to large, including from me to me and you, and from us to others and more.  From this, we know the experience of life isn’t set.  It grows through the increasing numbers of people involved in sharing gifts.

‘No one else can drink from the ego-of-two.  It has its moment in our maturation, but it is an infant form of the gift circle.’**

We are walking sensor arrays.  No wonder mindfulness is one of the phrases and experiences of the present.  People are rediscovering they’re more than their thoughts.  As I was sifting through my thoughts this morning, I was struggling with a headache but was I was still excited by what I was reading.  The excitement wasn’t registering in my head but in my chest.

Rohit Bhargava’s description of the curator caught my attention:

‘This combination of collection and contemplation is central to being able to effectively curate ideas and learn to predict the future.’^

The miser operates in a world of scarcity.  He takes something very big and makes it small so he might own it, control it.  Deep down, he’s cynical about the experiences of others who witness to there being more.

The curator selects from a world of abundance on order to shape an experience intended to open up the future.  Hers is a crucial task in the universe’s circle of the a gift, making it possible for as many as possible to receive gifts and to give gifts on.

‘When we see that we are actors in natural cycles, we understand that what nature gives to us is influenced by what we give to nature.  So the circle is the sign of an ecological insight as much as of gift exchange.’**

We all have the opportunity to be a curator for at least one other.

(*From Joseph Pine and James Gilmore’s The Experience Economy.)
(**From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(^From Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious.)

‘He remains cold and indifferent to the joys and sorrows of others, even his own.  As a substitute for a live experience he substitutes the memory of past experiences.  These memories are a precise possession … .’*

The miser turns everything into a possession, even experiences.

A part of our lives will be about possessions and transactions: in the West, when we purchase something, we expect the value of the object to be commensurate with the payment we make, and vice versa – reciprocity.

But life must also be about giftedness.

The best kind of gifting may move the gift between more than two people.  If I give you something, I can keep an eye on it to see what you do with it.  But if I give you something with the hope you’ll give it to someone else, then I lose sight of it, and perhaps it will keep travelling.

This is fascinating to me because of the work I love to do – helping people to awaken to their dreams and to live more fully who they are.  So I love the idea of someone I journey with, journeying with another and this experience to be passed forward.

A century ago, ethnographer Bronislaw Malinowski lived amongst the Massim people of New Guinea.  He was witness to an elaborate form of gifting.  Armbands and necklaces would be gifted between islanders, across hundreds of miles of water, armbands travelling in one direction, necklaces in the other.  This wasn’t how they dealt with everything they had – the Massim used a bartering economy – but there was also gifting.**

The miser makes everything a reciprocal transaction.  The gift adds imbalance, something beautiful to life we create together.

Even if we’re in selling mode, we can always add a gift of some kind.

Life is a gift from the universe.  One day, we opened our eyes and there it was.  We paid nothing for it.

In this universe, gift comes first.

(*From Erich Fromm’s The Art of Being.)
(**From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)