Andrew's Daily Notes

If we chase something long enough, we run the risk of conforming to it, even it that wasn’t the goal in the first place.

Example: A performing artist desires to have a successful career, but doesn’t necessarily agree with the “doing whatever it takes.” If they chase the idea of a successful career long enough, they will run the risk of conforming to the demands of the industry in order to achieve their goal.

This goes for who we surround ourselves with as well. Hang around people with a particular set of values long enough and we run the risk of conforming to those values.

This is important to note in that in the midst of all the pressures of life it takes a second amount of energy to hold one’s space against “easier ways” of conforming – of succumbing to the pressures. The easier ways will present themselves, but they will come with a price.

How do we prevent this from happening? Know your anchors. Strengthen your resolve. And by all means, check yourself and take breaks.

Systems are supposed to be great. They are supposed to make us more productive. But productivity is not a virtuous end in and of itself. So what is the benefit of a System?

People will say the benefit is scale. We can do more with less. But scale (as any corporate jack would know) trends toward the impersonal. And less human doesn’t mean better.

People will say ease of use. But anyone whose ever tried to implement a system will speak volumes of the pain of designing just the right one, rolling it out, and of course adoption.

So, what of a System?

Systems have power.

They are intriguing in their promise of ease and productivity. That draws people in.

They have the ability to enforce their necessity at large scales. That keeps people in.

What of the dangers?

It takes work to make sure that we aren’t corrupted by or put into servitude of the systems that are around us.

It takes the opening of our eyes and ears, so we can see and hear clearly. It takes the continual connection to our fellow human beings such that we are reminded of the more important things (like love and life). It takes maintaining a clear vision of the purpose of the system that was built so it stays in its place.

I used to think what I saw performers and corporations produce was the thing they were currently working on. This perspective was a consequence of hanging out with amazing improvisers. That is, cats who expose where they are (and what they are exploring) in any given moment in professional public performance settings. It’s how they work.

I’ve since come to realize that the practice of presence that permeates improvisation doesn’t get practiced in many other places. Improvisers don’t plan out 3 to 5 years for strategic plans. They don’t try to manipulate other players. They just offer, and respond to offers. They stay in the space of moment by moment offering and responding. They don’t take the easier path of assumption, rote responses, or control.

The context of corporations, “performers”, and societies works differently. It’s a longer game. Plans are made, cycles of iteration are experienced, only brief moments (a single performance, a new product, a particular celebration or ritual) of public exposure are shared. And this was a huge point of learning for me.

Come to think of it, improvisers are continually doing this work. It’s just often not isolated from everything else we do.

Either way, the private work is the anchor for all the public interactions. The private work – thinking, dreaming, training, practice, meditation, prayer – all of it underlies what happens in public. Do you know your private work?

It’s good practice to articulate it, focus on it, remind ourselves of it, lest we lose our anchor and drift off to sea.

Have eyes that truly see and ears that truly hear.

It’s strikes me how often I forget things. I use a number of tools to provide reminders of my daily tasks. It also strikes me that in all of the teachings of Jesus Christ there is only one specific activity that He instituted with His disciples in the teachings of Jesus Christ there exists a specific activity of remembrance. He asked that the breaking bread, and the drinking wine – oddly enough, something they would do anyway at a meal – would now be done in remembrance of Him.

Something so small, so regular, so seemingly pragmatic, now was given meaning that pointed towards the most meaningful experiences of the disciple’s lives – the time they spent with the one they recognized as the Messiah.

I wonder what would happen if the small, regular, and pragmatic activities in our daily lives were given such important meaning? What if every task were turned into mini-celebrations of life? What if they all had the weight of the future world dependent on them?

Would we realize our self-indulgence, our ineptitude, and our complete lack, outside the context of a greater power?

Updated: April 6th, 2019. Corrections are meant to be received, made, and propagated.

We desire our leaders to be transparent. We want institutions to be open about how they operate. We have arrived here because many leaders have betrayed our trust. Many institutions have been found lacking in their integrity. So we demand transparency.

But trust does not mean secrecy. It just means that we don’t have to know everything. However, if that trust breaks, then we want immediate access to all information.

Then immediate access and full transparency becomes a standard. Not a bad thing necessarily.

But I wonder if having immediate access to all information is always good? Have you ever had someone make a call on information that wasn’t interpreted correctly? Maybe it takes some time for all the information to be digested correctly? Or maybe we just need to work to develop more relationships based on trust?

We live in a world in which access is assumed. The internet has provided the building blocks upon which this assumption has flourished. We now take issue with the hiding of information, seemingly unfair pay walls, and of course the outright denial of access.

But there is another approach. Especially when considering information of value. Things that have been entrusted are not easily given away, nor should they be considered “all access”. When considering entrusted wisdom, understanding, or information, before it is shared the parties must come to a certain level of agreement around the possible use of whatever will be shared. They must establish trust.

This trust underlies all future interactions. It comes around when corrections need to be made. It holds the community together as growing pains are experienced. Without this trust, providing access will always feel like too much giving. Too much vulnerability.

The thing with all of this is discerning what information needs to be kept and what needs to be shared, and when. That demands some wisdom, and maybe another day or two of notes 😃

When I was in high school I was taught not to remember anything that I could look up. Instead, I was taught to remember where to look. This may be good for information that has mass adoption, is easily documented, and never changes. An example might be a standardized mathematical formula, or physics equation.

But what if the information, or rather wisdom, that is only kept in people, difficult to document, and is not widely adopted?

If you have been given such wisdom there is a big responsibility that comes with that. You are a keeper. One who was entrusted to hold the wisdom of another. You were entrusted because you were deemed to have the good judgement to know what to do with what you have been given, able to respond to the weight of being a keeper, and able to identify and teach the next generation of keepers.

If you have found yourself in such a position, be encouraged, the strength will come, hold fast to the wisdom you’ve been given, and stay true to the work in front of you. It may not be an easy road, but it is full of good work.