So there I found myself. Nowhere near any real food but with yogurt in hand. I had planned it as a mid morning snack - always proper after early morning exercise with its protein and all. I had planned to eat it, I just (apparently) did not plan how to eat it.

What is it with spoons? There is ALWAYS a spoon here where I am but not today. Why not today? I need the spoon today not yesterday when I remember there being plenty. But there was a fork. So I used it thanking myself for not planning soup.

The yogurt was good and I was able to get most of it creatively turning the instrument around scoring the bottom blobs with the end of the handle. And I did all of this while maintaining a fairly healthy ego. Not a bad snack moment after all.

Here’s what I learned in that yogurt moment. We all have our bucket of tools that we draw upon to get us through whatever. If you have a little time under your belt most of these tools are reflexive - yogurt - grab a spoon. You don’t go through a checklist or call your lifeline. You just grab a spoon. We do it all the time. “Oh here’s a problem but I know how to handle that. I just do x y z”.

But what happens when we are confronted with a seemingly common problem and the tool isn’t there? Or a variation on the problem theme and a quick glance later it seems the tool might not fit? A little panic - a little freaking out. Or we don’t engage at all (always a great choice that never has any back-end consequence).

We think because we don’t have access to the tool we always use to solve ‘this’ we can’t or at the very least we must invent something or go learn a new way of doing whatever. And that ain’t always the case. What tool do you already have that is in the same category of what you don’t have?

A fork is in the same category as a spoon. They are both used to facilitate the courteous path of plate to mouth. (If you said they are both used ‘to eat’ you would kinda be wrong). You can eat with your hands which is yet another tool not normally included in the subject category. Unless of course you have the pleasure of indulging in a traditional Indonesian meal which is consumed utensil-less. So even in some places things not considered here are there in their category list. It is always helpful to remember that your list is not the only list.

So what else do you have? What will work here if I just take a moment to consider the options. Not every category item is useful in every situation but take a glance at the drawer and look.

Jim Reece
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimreece
jimreece on twitter

In conversation do we sometimes pay more attention to what words mean than how they mean? In any conversation if each party could be guaranteed clarity and honesty (and by honesty I don’t really mean a lack of deception - more like how courtesies and politeness can cloud the intended message or mask a tension) then most things would run more smoothly. Could it be that the difference in disconnected conversation - those seemingly unsatisfying at conclusion - lays between what is ‘At’ the surface and what is ‘In’ side and how it relates to the ‘tention’ at hand? There is a need to go beyond the surface and pay attention to the intention.

Most talk is ubiquitous and filters into the air around us. However some of it doesn’t. The reasons for disconnect in talk are many (way many) but can fall in two great big categories; I don’t want to/know how to say this, and I don’t want to/know how to hear this.

It’s not that paying attention to the words spoken or, as the speaker, the impact these particular words may have is not important, it is. We just may or may not be equipped to deal with it. More often than not the person expressing is not aware of how the intention may be defined.

Remember that, as a sender, we hear ourselves speak but cannot hear the other person hear.

Here’s the point. Words are a tool. If you are the earth understand what a shovel means to you. A lobster; boiling water. If you are a daffodil understand the sun and rain (and the annual American Cancer Society fundraiser).

So now you know that being a daffodil is more complex than being the earth. Speaking and hearing; talking and listening - even more so . . .

Jim
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimreece
jimreece on twitter

As with most traditions I have no idea where this one came from. Except that I was present and complicit. How the hell does that happen?

For me forever the holiday has extended well into January perhaps out of comfort (there is nothing quite like sitting the evening away wine in hand under the glow of twinkling lights) or perhaps it had something to do with the Epiphany. Whatever that is. But extend it did. And I was fine with that; a certain comfort/peace.

But somehow creepingly over the past several years there has been this internal campaign to shorten the joy (NOT the intent but the result nonetheless) and to, in other words, get on with it. Truly I never got it. I thought it a matter of attention span, or to mitigate the sometime sadness that can be remembered around the holidays.

I have an extraordinary Aunt - my mother’s sister/only who died several years ago. One of the great memories of this theatrical soul (among many great memories) happened at their home in New England following the burial of my grandmother - her mother; my mother’s mother. Amidst the joy of celebrating a life of a century-minus-one-day there was the sadness of missing one who had done so rather magnificently. Wait. There really was not a tearful sadness (the daughters had already) but a longing for the spirit of what made her life. Where was that in us? And I guess along with this the realization that we will, to a person, be the subject of funeral conversation ourselves one day. Personally I will not miss the certainly embarrassing (to me) banter thrown about at my own. But I certainly wish those willing to give up a days pay to attend the very best.

At any rate Carol was theatre! And the spirit she brought to the close of our meal that evening was life confirming if not altering. Not altering in the “Oh my god I have never felt that” or whatever. More confirming in the sense that it made sense. And in a way not imagined before. We have all had the experience at one time where we said (to our Self), “Gosh, I knew that, but never in that way”.

I have had a thousand meals and cleared as many tables. And while sometimes accompanied by friends, or a kid, or wife (we do the I cook you clean deal - very fair) or a cat or sometimes alone it is a fairly unimaginative mechanic - something not thought about even though the surroundings vibe pleasant. Not with Carol. And here’s the power.

At the end of the meal (and remember that she and Bobbie had just buried their mother (or perhaps because of it) while most relaxed in the post meal fog of conversation Carol rises and lungs out a hearty, “Strike the table”! How perfect. In the theatre of life why not call out production assignments to get us on the road?

Because at the end of life (or the day) we have done all that we can do. We did it well and those who saw agreed. The performance is finished yet our script’s intact for tomorrow’s interpretation. We shall start anew tomorrow. Strike the set. Strike the table. Strike the holiday.

Enjoy what you have done today. Tomorrow brings another show. Another audience. Another chance. And perhaps a deeper interpretation of the script. Characters grow.

Toni was right. Christmas lights and the everything accompanying needs to be struck on the first day following the last day they were relevant. Christmas (and all of the religiously non - but otherwise - related) is yesterday’s show in Dubuque. I laughed I cried. Great performance - but it was yesterday. Not to mention Dubuque. Welcome to today. And to your own town.

I have come to not only accept but embrace with all my being my lesson from Toni. That it is our knowledge and lessons learned which should LEAD us into the new. Not our sluggishness to release yesterday’s performance and the comfort of our “shtick” (read mind map). It is indeed time to strike and to get on with today. Be in today with the knowledge of yesterday and the anticipation of tomorrow. It is the presence of this trinity that makes today the only real day. Be in it.

Strike the old. Strike the mold. Strike the status quo. Or for at least gods sake strike the immobility.

Strike the (08) holiday (with a nod to 09). Fa la la la la la la la la later . . .

Jim
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimreece
jimreece on twitter