Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.

	June 16, 2008

Practice: Learning to Be Nobody But Yourself I've been thinking more about my Mid-Year Intentions, the things I intend to get done in the next six months, and intentions I failed to realize in the last six months, in the context of some recent discussion about our obsession with doing rather than being. Viv McWaters said: I’ve been pondering the need to be seen to be DOING, the need to produce OUTPUTS or PRODUCTS and the dilemma of the intrinsic worth of simply BEING with others and having conversations. This situation often arises when I talk about or facilitate open space meetings. “It was good to talk, to have some time to explore, to slow down, but what did we achieve?” I wonder why talking, exploring and slowing down are not generally seen as achievements in their own right? I think this is what was wrong with my New Years' Intentions list six months ago -- I was totally fixated on measurable results and achievement, on Getting Things Done, on getting there, getting finished. Those intentions were very ambitious -- lifelong goals that were, mostly goals of direction (love more, live simpler, converse better, be more present, move more, be more self-sufficient, be bolder, help entrepreneurs more, have more fun). These intentions were, in fact, not really about accomplishment or objectives. Rather than intentions to do, they are intentions to change the way I am (what I've called Let-Self-Change) -- intentions to be something different. To be what I was intended to be, to be more authentically myself. To be nobody-but-myself. In a remarkable synchronicity, Evelyn Rodriguez just twittered a link to her 2005 article about Conrad's and Joyce's comments on this same subject. She quotes Gandhi as saying "My life is my message." (he also famously said "Be the change you want to see in the world" -- Be, not Do). She quotes Joseph Conrad as saying that real art -- infinitely present art, that is created for its own purpose, a simple representation of what is -- has the enormous power to astonish, to extinguish the ego. By contrast, he says, 'art' that intends to persuade other people to feel or believe or do something is mere marketing, propaganda, pornography. Real artists, she quotes Tom Asacker as saying, "live worldview-disrupting lives". And, she concludes, "if we draw from inspiration, our lives themselves can be works of art". Regular readers know I've been conversing with Siona and Patti about this whole issue of being vs doing and what we're meant to do and our responsibility to the world, and to ourselves. As I thought about all this, I suddenly had an Aha! moment: Is my Purpose, generalist that I am, to simply be a model for others of how to be, in this terrible world where there is only so much any one person can do? And if that's so, I wondered, how can I be better? Then I began to completely rethink my intentions list and put them in terms of getting better, of being better. This would require that I engage regularly in practice to move towards being better. For the most part these things can never be done -- there is only the striving to get better at them, a bit at a time. What's more, practicing getting better at these things requires that I do less of something else (there are only so many hours in a day). So I decided to take a look at how I spend my time now, and how I would have to spend my time to allow myself enough regular practice to steadily get better at these things. When I realized that I currently spend almost no time practicing these things, and that my current workload almost precludes me finding time to practice these things, I realized why I have made so little progress in achieving these intentions. The chart above shows how, on average, my day is spent. Much of my time is taken up in the activities shown in grey, activities that do not involve practicing the things I need to in order to achieve my intentions. Embarrassingly little is spent in the activities shown in red, yellow, orange, blue, green and purple -- the six activities that I get greatest satisfaction from and which will best equip me, if practiced regularly, both to achieve my intentions and to be more useful to others and the world in the years ahead. And to be more authentically myself, to be nobody-but-myself. My intention now is to increase the time I spend practicing these six activities from 5.6 hours a day to 11.6 hours a day, as illustrated in the chart above. Here's how I might spend that time: Practicing Being Better at Additional Time/Day Examples of Practices Playing and Learning 0.7 hrs Creating my Centre for Sustainable Entrepreneurship; Writing about why business should care about climate change; Listing to, composing and playing music; Exploring Intentional Community; Drawing (take course); Puzzles; Making furniture (get coach); Subsistence forest permaculture (self-study) Conversing 1.4 hrs Listening and speaking; Story-telling (take course); Improv (take course) Giving 1.7 hrs Appreciation, love and attention, generously; Provoking with Aha! ideas & insights through stories; Facilitation (take another course); Environmental activism? Self-Discipline 0.3 hrs Meditation (guided); Exercise (varied) Writing 1.0 hrs More short stories & poetry; Novel: The Only Life We Know Reflection and Being Present 0.9 hrs Wilderness hikes; Candles and aromatherapy; Making vegan meals; Attention skills (self-study) In practicing these things, I intend to learn to be more myself. These are long-term intentions, totally unlike a Getting Things Done list, and I intend to practice from now on, just keep getting better. The only 'results' will be the self-change in me (greater competencies, self-sufficiency, self-knowledge, presence, and happiness) and being more useful (perhaps even a model) to others. The very thought of spending most of my waking hours practicing these things is exhilarating. This is what I used to be, when I was very young, naturally. This is what, I think, I am meant to be. How did I lose my way? Category: Let-Self-Change 9:06:54 PM  trackback []  comment []

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