Euan Semple's Blog, page 47

Annual pilgrimage

There is a wonderful bluebell wood nearby that we have visited nearly every year since we moved here. It never disappoints.

Bug bears

Wonderful clear air on today’s walk, but also getting warmer. It led to me wondering whether I prefer wind and rain to increasing numbers of flies…

Fantasy

“I live in a world that is completely seamless between the two. Fantasy is the real story. The world in which we live is structured from notions that are completely fabricated; your clothes, your wallet, that we all agree that pieces of paper are worth something. Geography is a complete fabrication. Where does Mexico start and America end? From space, nowhere. We agree to kill each other, to tax each other, to shame each other from notions that are complete fabrications. To me, those are harmful fantasies. Whereas my fantasies are liberating.”
– Guillermo Del Toro

H/T Whiskey River

Thinking

When I was young my dad would accuse me of “thinking too much”. Ironically you could argue that I’ve made my living for the last 16 years by thinking!
But what he meant was the sort of ruminative thinking that you just turn over in your head, over and over again. The sort of thinking that he has struggled with all of his life. We all do. Clinging onto some worry, or slight, or threat and attempting to beat it to death with thought.

It is really hard to stop doing this, especially when you’re not aware of it, if you think it’s just the way that things are. But it needn’t be. This is one thing that meditation has taught me. Not all the time, but some of the time, I am able to step back, to notice that I’m stuck in ever decreasing circles, and in the noticing of this its power begins to diminish.

We tend to avoid sitting thinking by making ourselves busy but that can be problem in itself. We can use busyness as a way to run away from ourselves. Especially nowadays when it is all too easy to pick up our phones to stave off “boredom”. In fact many of us have very few moments in the day when we actually stop completely.

Lockdown has given me the opportunity to stop more than usual. It can be a challenge. Echoing my dad I can have “too much time to think”. But as I get better at noticing when my thoughts career out of control, and better at bringing myself back to “just sitting”, the better equipped I feel to deal with life’s inevitable ups and downs.

Off Kilter

I have always felt that we know deep down when what we are doing is wrong. Wrong for us or wrong for other people. We don’t need Ten Commandments or a Noble Eightfold Path because we know if what we are doing is causing harm to ourselves and others. Expecting other people in the form of dogma to force us to do the right thing is a hiding to nothing.

Likewise we know deep down what is good for us. I knew that stopping smoking was something I should do and the deepest part of me “just decided” and told the more conscious part of me to shut up and get over it. The same happened with stopping drinking and giving up meat. The part of me that has my best interests at heart knew what to do even if my chattering monkey didn’t.

We know when we are off kilter, when we are out of tune with the universe and the way it works. Call it God if you like, or consciousness, or nature but we are aware when our lives are in tune with what makes the planet turn and the plants grow.

We can learn to listen to this all too often hidden part of us if we could just sit still long enough…

Noticing

One thing that lockdown has given me is an increased ability to notice the world around me. Instead of jetting off to new and exciting places, or even driving hundreds of miles to new and exciting hills, I have been “stuck with” walking the same local walks over and over again. And I have loved it! Each walk I notice something different.

Sometimes it is something small, like the first bluebells, at the side of the path. Sometimes it is the changes in the path itself as the weather changes and the mud dries. Sometimes it is a horse who I have admired many times in the distance but who yesterday decided to come over and say hello.

Sometimes it is the light on the many views I am lucky enough to enjoy. Yesterday these were stunning and several times, on a walk I have done hundreds of times over the nearly thirty years that we have lived here, I was stopped in my tracks and left just saying “Wow” over and over to myself.

Spring springing

A part of me always misses the winter as it passes into memory. The wind and the rain and the snow bring their own excitement. But walking in the warm air today, with the bluebells beginning to flower and the dry paths a joy to walk on, there was a definite spring in my step. Even the red kites seemed elated at the clear skies and the warmth.

Being told what to do

Last night I had a dream that I was being asked what to do by a young man who had built a business on the strengthen his own skills but was on the brink of having to take on the management of others.

I didn’t tell him what to do. I told him stories of my own experiences of managing others. I remembered that many had expected me to tell them what to do but that I resisted. My job was to explain and give context and then get out of the way as they worked out what needed done.

The same is true of life. All too often we expect someone else to tell us what to do, whether some beardy guy in the sky, some ex-pat Tibetan Lama, or the latest self help guru. We want to be told what to do to make everything all right.

But it doesn’t work like that. It is our life and we have to work it out for ourselves. We can listen to their stories, and we can learn from their experiences, but it is the working it out that is the point.

Miss that and we miss life.

Management

I have been known in the past to be disparaging of management but when you see it done well it is clear just what a difference good management can make.
Every time I ate in a Pret A Manger (in the dim and distant past) I used to marvel at how consistent the food was, how pleasant the staff were, how dependable the whole experience was and think “None of this happens without fantastic management putting in place effective procedures and getting staff on board with acting them out consistently”.
I think the same every time I get a message from a logistics company telling me when something will arrive, increasingly down to the nearest half an hour! Having spent my time driving I got to see first hand what this takes in terms of management, incredibly efficient systems, staff focus, training etc.
Good managers are worth their weight in gold. Staff know this as well, if not better, than anyone. Sadly what too often happens is that once in that select club bad managers are allowed to coast and can do untold harm to both their organisations and the staff who work in them. In fact rather than rooting out poor performing staff, doing something about underperforming management could have an exponentially greater effect.
But the divide between staff and management is like a class barrier where culturally it is easier to deal with staff, because that is your job, than with other managers, because they are your peers. Add to this that managers managers have come up through the system with the same mindset and you have a real problem that can only really be addressed from the top.
As I said, it is impressive when it is.

SOTN 40

40th episode, 3,000th download, and Paolo and I’s first online fight – over text editors – ‘cos that’s the kind of guys we are…