I was startled today as I looked into his eyes. What do we do when everything is gray slush and we just want to be free from the uncertainty and void? What do we do with the truth that we can never return to Eden? How do we manage the reality that we cannot reverse evolution or slip back into a former mindset that seemed to shield us from a present reality that pulls us apart? Our only salvation is to go forward through the desert into deeper and ever-deeper levels of consciousness. I’m not convinced that the exchange is necessarily pain for happiness, but a degree of immobility for power. . .power to grow, to live fully, to understand the origins of our anguish, how to stop it, and the pathway that is necessary for both cessation and an emergence of a greater whole.

“When crows find a dying snake they behave as if they were eagles. When I see myself as a victim, I am hurt by trifling failures.” - Shantideva

Today I left a well educated leader who may have lived the vast majority of his life out of the victim modality. Think this doesn’t relate to most of us? You would be wrong! The prevailing norm in my experience is that the majority of people see that life has done things to them . . . largely unfairly and undeservedly. Personal responsibility is rarely acknowledged.

This leader could do really good things, but has largely chosen to do tiny things because he has not owned his life well enough. It should be a gut check for all of us from my perspective.

We are bombarded with tens of thousands of messages in multiple forms throughout each day. Each of us use filters to block, or sort through the messages in order to expedite understanding and the overall management of data within our lives. How well are we listening? What do we use to assure that we are paying attention and then acting on the important matters of our lives? There have been far too many times that I thought I was awake and aware only to find how I failed in both. The cost of this form of blindness is immense . . . the truth of this matter is that generally what we call blindness is not some cute area that we should get to when we can, but rather a killer that will destroy us and others if left unchecked. It is partial blindness, not sightlessness that we must address . . . each of us must clean away the obstructions that keep us from being empty, open and able to see what often is right before us.

A leaders first task is to acknowledge reality. Shall we begin?

It amazes me how poorly most of us are concerning the fundamentals of getting along. So much of my work with leaders is focused on interpersonal competencies. Becoming a parent requires a minimum level of competency, likewise, the entry qualifications for groups, social networks, teams, or families, is oftentimes equally low. Interpersonal turbulence is created as we live our lives in the reciprocal volley of relationships. What one does, impacts generally not just another, but the greater whole.

We seem to forget about the requirement of playing by a common set of rules that governs our collective actions. The present norm is to do what we think is good, with special emphasis on it being good for ourselves personally. If this is largely true, the prevailing outcome within social networks is chaos. Chaos occurs as each individual defaults to their idea of what the group norm should be, even if it is “to each his own,” and remains accountable only to their opinion of behavioral integrity and goodness. The issue in this kind of chaos isn’t that people aren’t interested in doing what seems good, but that good for the greater whole requires more than intention, but outcomes that measureably are better in the judgement of the larger group.