I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.
Mistakes. If you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living… Make glorious, amazing mistakes—mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life… Make your mistakes.*
When we set out to do or be something and we’re thwarted or something “goes wrong,” there’s a disparity between what happened and what the possibility was. But instead of sorting out whatever happened, we often relate to it as some shortcoming, some deficiency about ourselves. Our identity, (who we consider ourselves to be), jumps to front and center. Refrains like “What’s wrong with me?” “What’s wrong with it?” “What’s wrong with ‘them’?” are the litanies we hear in our heads. When we operate on top of disempowering assessments, our ability to be gets diminished—it’s the “failing to be” that takes us off course, not that “it failed.”
If we can consider that what we see as failures (given they live in language) are a making up, an invention, a declaration of something missing, (not necessarily followed by a “therefore” or a “because,” but just existing as themselves) instead of a “failure of being,” what’s there is the possibility of “inventing being.” Breakdowns, mistakes, failures as an invention, a saying, a making up, afford us a larger opening—power and freedom have room to emerge.
It can alter that way you feel and the way you act.
It’s what gives life to our deepest aspirations and our wildest dreams.
It has the power to create and alter the very nature of what is possible.
Choice. It’s the word that allows yes and the word that makes no possible. It’s the word that puts the free in freedom and takes obligation out of the mix. It’s the word upon which adventure, exhilaration, and authenticity depend. It’s the word that the cocoon whispers to the caterpillar.*
We tell ourselves, sometimes, that living a transformed life isn’t that important, that it’s enough just to get by. We get wrapped up in our own concerns, particular points of view, or positions, and the idea of getting ourselves to a place where things can be great seems too big an undertaking. If somebody had a magic powder to come and sprinkle on us and just through that we’d be transformed, we might say, “No, thanks—I don’t want any! Let me stay just as I am.” It takes courage to live in a transformed way—to wrestle with our resistances, to give up mediocrity, to live consistent with what we know is possible in being human. It’s always and only a matter of our choosing.
The why not is mostly because people don’t know it’s really possible—and because we don’t know that, we play for low stakes. If we took our day and divided it up between the stuff that really made a difference, and the rest of the stuff (not between what was important and what was unimportant, but the stuff that really made a difference and all the rest), what would we see?
You might have to go back in your life a few years to consider this matter. Remember, for example, when you were a teenager, the stuff that was REALLY IMPORTANT. Remember when your parents said you couldn’t go to a dance, or you had to be home at a certain time and couldn’t stay out an extra hour. Remember how really, really important that was? Now, as adults, most of us forget that “important” things are pretty much just like that—they seem important at the time, but a week or two later, a month or a year later, what was the big deal?
This brings up for me something about my teenage step-daughter, Alex that she, my wife, and I wanted to share in this piece. Alex has taken The Landmark Forum for Young People and for Teens. She knows what it takes to play powerfully in the game of life and she has created very big shoes for herself—mostly.
Once in a while she likes to pretend the shoes aren’t hers. I remember a fight she had with my wife, Diane, over a curfew agreement. Afterward, Diane and I both thought the issues had been sorted out, that they had been discussed fully, and agreed to. Alex went off to school the next morning, but she did not come home when we expected her. It got later and later. We were upset and enormously concerned for her safety and well-being. Once she did get home, we all sat down together and talked about it. For her, the issue was more than merely a conversation about a curfew. It was about things that were HUGELY IMPORTANT in her world—her peers, how she looked to them, her sense of independence, and being in control of her own life.
Everything got sorted through—and what was left was that she knew that all of this could have been sorted out without a struggle, or any looking bad with her peers, or any upset with us—but to do so, she would have had to live up to the person she knew herself to be. She, however, chose not to go down that path. She preferred to be part of the same conversation her peers were having, to not communicate, to be defiant even when she knew that it wasn’t necessary and wouldn’t get her what she really wanted. When it was all over, we talked about the courage it takes to live in a transformed way, to know what it requires, to know that under any circumstance we each have a choice, to act and live from that reality.
That’s the story of a teenager. But I also know from interacting with many adults that this issue of living in a way that’s consistent with who we now know ourselves to be, of filling the shoes that we can’t pretend aren’t big, doesn’t stop when our teenage years are behind us. It goes right into adulthood, and that’s the point for me.
Under many circumstances, we aren’t willing to stand up for living a transformed life. In some circumstances, we tell ourselves that’s not important to us, that it’s enough just to get by.
If somebody had a magic powder to come and sprinkle on us, in those moments, and just through that, we could be transformed, we might say, “No, thanks—I don’t want any!”
We might hear ourselves saying, “Don’t let anything different, or even great, happen to me. Let me stay just like I am.” And then we might spend a lot of time building up a justification for where we are—afraid to give up the leaky life boat that’s so familiar, to take a chance on getting in one with no leaks. And our justifications will be rational and intelligent—just like my step-daughter’s initial response, and like all the thousands of reasons people use every day to justify staying where they are.
Living a transformed life takes courage. People often think of courage only as what is called for in a moment of crisis, but that’s not the case. Courage is called for on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, even when there’s nothing urgent at stake. It is up to us to create our lives consistent with who we know ourselves to be—making what’s at stake that which we say is at stake. It’s the stand we take on ourselves. That stand then becomes who we are. Saying that something is at stake is always a purely existential act. This business about freedom, this business about power, is really a product of a place to stand—not something that is out in front of us, that we’re working on or measuring ourselves against. When we live consistent with what we say, we are being true to ourselves.
To choose living a transformed life requires us to wrestle with our resistances, small and large, to come face to face with the angst of giving up our self-imposed limits, our mediocrity—but most important, to live consistent with what we know is possible. Transformation carries with it a wisdom and a knowing that we have a choice about who we are and the full range that is available to us in being human. With transformation comes big shoes.
“Yes” extends boundaries, establishes new playing fields, moves possibility from ideas to actuality. Actress and improve artist Tina Fey points to the opportunity yes affords us when she says, “the first rule of improve is agree—agree with whatever your partner has created. The second rule is yes, and—agree and then add something of your own. If I start a scene with ‘I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,’ and you just say, ‘Yeah…’ we’re kind of at a standstill. But if I say, ‘I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,’ and you say, ‘Yes, it can’t be good for the wax figures,’ now we’re getting somewhere.”1
In our recurring dialogues, patterns of conversation, the habitual ways that we listen and speak, our first response often defaults around a “no” or a “but.” Toss in a few intricately constructed reasons justifying that response, and we find ourselves limiting the future in front of us.For anything creative to show up in life—not accidental, not manipulated, not figured out—it shows up in our stand for possibility, in the “yes.” Standing for possibility comes from nothing and creates a generative field; “yes and” extends that field and broadens the game. Nothing is the foundation for possibility—from nothing we are able to create with a freedom that’s not available when we create from something. In creating possibility, we get to know what’s available to us in being human.
Communication, conversation, language are predominately thought of, anchored in our minds, as an expressing, a speaking, a vocalizing. That outward expression goes far beyond talking, far beyond describing or representing reality—it is in fact what allows for “who” and “how” we are in the world. It’s what allows for the futures we create, where we evoke experience in others, where our ideas become clear and possible, where we share ourselves, and where others are expanded by our participation with them. But speaking is not where things get handled—it’s not powerful enough. The possibility that there’s an edge, the possibility of impact, lies in our listening.
Listening, we often think of as more passive—important, but somehow lesser or secondary. But listening is the clearing in which speaking can occur—without it, there isn’t any speaking. Listening is an action. It’s way more active than it is passive—it creates speaking. Listening doesn’t receive speaking, it isn’t a receptacle for speaking—it gives speaking. Listening is the possibility for meaning, for understanding. The possibility for being loved lives in one’s listening; the possibility for learning lives in one’s listening. Listening is what allows others to be—it’s where both the speaker and what is spoken come alive, exist, and flourish.
The instant the ball rolled between Bill Buckner’s legs New England broke into a collective moan. Mets fans uncontrollably squealed with glee. Then it was over and there was only silence. Local taverns packed with people watching Game 6 of the 1986 World Series suddenly filled with malice and fans walked away leaving money on the table. Boston’s long awaited world championship was there—and then it was gone. All that remained for Red Sox fans was the grim certainty of an inevitable loss in Game 7 and more proof that this was not the year.
The Red Sox didn’t have a chance. This team and its fans didn’t recover from such defeats. Never had and never would.
We’re defining context here to mean “a fundamental set of assumptions”—assumptions that are not recognized as assumptions, and that go unquestioned—in which the world happens. When people thought the earth was flat (an analogy that grows old but never dies), that was a context or worldview that limited perception and behaviour—how those folks saw the horizon, how far toward the edge they sailed, and so on. Similarly, our way of being a man or a woman, and the possibilities available to us, are given by the assumptions embedded in our culture, our language, and times in which we live. A girl born in the U.S. today would likely inherit a very different possibility for being a woman than a girl born in the 1930s or ’40s—would she be a dot-com mogul or running for president?
So if you consider the premise that the whole world happens inside of the assumptions we hold true (and if you do the math), what becomes apparent is that contexts are a mighty and decisive force. Contexts come to us by default, and we live our lives essentially unaware of their existence and of their far-reaching influence. It’s like wearing blinders—we don’t see the contexts themselves, we see only what they allow. These default contexts determine our worldview: what’s possible and not, what’s true and false, what’s right and wrong, what we think we can and can’t do. They travel with us—wherever we are, they are—shaping our behaviour, our choices, our lives.
Just as these default contexts can be what keeps us limited and stuck, created or invented contexts can allow for freedom and power. We’re not talking, however, about substituting one context over another, or finding a better context or the right context. Rather, it’s about becoming aware of and responsible for whatever context we are functioning inside of, and realizing that we have the power not only to invent contexts, but to move freely among them.
History is strewn with examples of times when major advances happened as a result of new contexts being created. Democracy, equality, relativity, human rights—new ways of understanding the world—were at some point, newly distinguished contexts. The Copernican revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the centre of the universe, ushering in modern astronomy and the scientific revolution. Newton invented gravity (certainly, before Newton, there was a physical force, but he transformed the possibility of that force), enabling us to understand and interact more powerfully with the physical universe. Einstein created relativity—a context that catalysed modern physics and tells us how nature behaves on the scale of apples, planets, galaxies, and on up. At one time, human rights, as we think of them today, simply didn’t exist. Kings had rights, priests had rights, and the ruling class had rights, but the majority of human beings—and often, certain specific groups within a society—did not. In each of these examples, some person or a group of people saw through or past “the way things were,” or the way they “seemed to have to be.” The act of doing so, and saying so, reshaped the course of events and redefined human experience from then on. And we then began living into those possibilities and the “truth” of the world was transformed.
And so it is with being human. We take for granted that things are a particular way; we think it is our circumstances, our cultures, the content of our lives that determine our experience. And if we want some kind of change in our lives, we usually go to work on changing the circumstances—essentially moving the content around. (Not surprisingly, we then end up living content-driven lives.)
Living from an invented context has just as much impact and command value as living from a default context—the difference, however, is the difference between a life of predictability and a life of possibility. The answer to the question “what’s possible in being human?” doesn’t need to be looked at through a default lens. Seeing past our old assumptions about “the way things have been” or the way we thought “they had to be” and creating a context of our own choosing alters the very nature of what’s possible—and the truth of “our” world gets transformed.
An invented context is essentially a realm of possibility. And we have the wherewithal to create that realm simply by our saying so. Language—what we say (silently or aloud, once or repeatedly, to ourselves or to others)—has the power to shape reality. When we know our conversations constitute who we are, it shifts our relationship to the world. The shift does not necessarily get rid of the lens or filters or mindsets per se, but what occurs is that those old assumptions simply stop defining who we are. Context known in that way is never inherited, never a matter of acculturation, never a matter of something we picked up, never a matter of accident—it’s always and only a matter of our choosing. Choice is a uniquely human condition. “The stone and the tiger have no choice of life: the stone must gravitate and the tiger must pounce. Only human beings are faced with the mind-boggling responsibility of having, at each and every moment of their lives, to choose what to do and what to be. It is both a necessity and an invitation.”
We commonly think of freedom as “freedom from,” “freedom of,” or “freedom to” do or be something, or as the ability to define alternatives and select among them. But freedom far exceeds anything on that spectrum—it’s being able to redefine ourselves and reality at large, generating whole new sets of possibilities. History is punctuated by such redefinitions—creative acts that open new worlds. In this sense, we can call creative acts the edge of freedom—the faculty by which, down through history, we have redefined our world and ourselves.1
Freedom is not like other phenomena. It’s closer to “being” than it is to some “thing.” It has nothing to do with options. It requires dimensionality—if we try to move freedom through a world of limited possibility, it can never show up as itself, it’s always distorted as something else. Freedom doesn’t live in a temporality like past, present, and future—it doesn’t stop, in the same way that “number” doesn’t stop giving numbers or that art is not repeating, in a new way, the past. There’s nothing pulling one way or the other, there is just this awesome freedom. Freedom is about choosing—it’s about the profoundly human ability to create.
The stuff of wars, soap operas, divorce courts, Hamlet, and more all borrow on that equation, as do we. While we might wish we’d left that even-numberedness to our childhood and adolescence, it’s not to be. The dynamic of dealing with issues that are unwanted, yet persist continues to play out in board rooms, neighbourhoods, marriages, and between nations—we justify, we blame, we complain.
Issues that are unwanted, yet persist can be a powerful impetus for change, as evidenced by the progress of human rights, for example. But there’s another world of things that are unwanted, yet persist—things that we complain about over and over, like some aspect of our relationships or jobs that is not working, and yet we find ourselves keeping around.
If we put what’s “unwanted, yet persists” together with “fixed ways of being,” we get what we call a “racket.” It’s a “mash up” of sorts (a web buzzword). In a mash up, one web application is combined with another, making both applications more productive and robust—you get something greater than the sum of the parts. If you mash up what’s unwanted, yet persists (which is most likely occurring as a complaint) and a fixed way of being, you also get something greater than the sum of its parts, but in this case, the yield heads in the wrong direction—the combination is unproductive or more accurately, counterproductive.
A complaint is some kind of opinion or judgment of the way things “should” or “shouldn’t be.” The evaluative component isn’t a commentary on facts that are true or false, accurate or not, but again how we think things should be. By fixed way of being we mean acting in a predictable and repetitive manner (like always frustrated, always upset, always angry, always nice, always annoyed, always suspicious, always confused, etc.). Whatever our fixed way of being is, it’s not something we have a choice over. It’s just there—it shows up automatically when the complaint shows up. It’s also worth noting that a recurring complaint doesn’t cause the way of being, nor does the way of being cause the recurring complaint—they simply come together in one package. The whole point here, though, is that it’s a fixed way of being, not a possible way of being.
The term “racket” comes from the days of big-city gangsters and street-level criminals who conducted questionable activities—loan-sharking, bribery, larceny—usually set up to get some kind of payoff, camouflaged by an acceptable cover above suspicion. In a “racketeering” operation, the efforts at concealing what’s going on behind the scenes can become quite elaborate so as to protect and ensure the success of the operation. We borrow the term racket as it’s applicable to our contemporary lives and because it carries with it many of the same properties—deception, smoke screens, payoffs, etc.
Sometimes persistent complaints originate with us, other times they come at us from someone else. It’s harder to see that we’re in “racket mode” with complaints that come at us, because it looks like somebody else is the persistent complainer, and we’re just an innocent bystander.
But under closer scrutiny, it turns out we too have complaints—complaints about their complaints. Our matching complaint might show up like, “don’t they understand, don’t they know how it is for me, why are they nagging, don’t they see everything I’m doing for them?” When we complain, we feel quite justified that our response is appropriate to the situation.
We explain the rationale behind our complaints to interested (and uninterested) parties, and point out how pleased we are with ourselves for taking the necessary steps to sort things out—we have a certain fondness for our attempts, for “trying.” We might get our friends, family, or co-workers to agree that we’re dealing with our complaints the best we can. If they point out that perhaps we’re the one perpetuating the problem, we could feel misunderstood, put out, even busted. Seen from a distance, there can be something almost endearing about how we go about all this—as if it’s part of our authentic and sincere spirit—but actually, our rationale for doing what we do is another thing entirely. This is the camouflage or cover-up part. The deceptive nature of a racket and the allure of the payoff keep us from realizing the full impact rackets have in our lives.
The payoffs for keeping rackets around usually show up in several ways: being right and making others wrong (not the factual kind of right, but thinking that we are right and the other person is wrong), being dominating or avoiding domination, justifying ourselves and invalidating others (attributing cause to some thing or person other than ourselves), engaging in the win/lose dynamic (not “winning” like a celebration with trophies, applause, or congratulations to the opponent, but winning such that someone else is the loser or is lessened in some way). These payoffs are like facets of a diamond—although one facet might be more dominant than another (and we might deny or not be aware that some aspect of a payoff is active in our case), they’re really all at play.
The pull of these payoffs is often compelling enough to get us to give up love, vitality, self-expression, health, and happiness. That’s a ridiculously strong force. Those costs are the standard fare of a racket. It’s pretty obvious that we can’t be happy, vital, and loving while we’re making someone wrong, dominating someone, being right, or justifying ourselves—one displaces the other. This is where choice comes into the picture.
Rackets, although one thing, have two forms of existence (somewhat like ice and steam are two forms of H2O). One form of a racket shows up as “I am X, Y, or Z.” The second shows up as “ahhh, I have a racket that is X, Y, or Z.” When we are the racket, it shapes and determines our way of being. But when we have a racket, it has very little power over our way of being. We have a choice about what’s at play—about giving up our rackets, our positions, our unproductive ways of being. When we elect to transform our default ways of being—being right, coming out on top (the even-numberedness, so to speak)—we move to a place of freedom, a place of possibility. The question then becomes: How do I express my life? What would be, for me, the most extraordinary, created, invented life? It becomes a matter of art, of design. How extraordinary are the everyday aspects of our lives; how rich our lives are, how full of opportunity, when we act on the possibility of living life fully.
If we’re going to create a possibility, it’s a matter of choosing, a matter
of saying, and that’s the whole deal. It’s about discovering what’s possible in
being human beyond the places where, unknowingly or knowingly, we might restrict
or limit ourselves.
When we create “something missing as a possibility,” we set a point of
choice, a point of commitment-things show up as openings for action.
What marks a visionary is dedication to a possibility, a dedication that rejects outright the complacency of those who prefer the status quo and insists that there has to be another way. Instead of reaching for the nearest, most convenient conclusions, their commitment causes them to push hard against the limits of what others might see as possible.*
When we are up to something, we are called to step forward, to be and act in wholly new ways, to risk what we already know for something beyond the predictable. To be up to something calls forth strength and creativity—it generates energy and excitement that attracts and invites the participation of others. When we are up to something, we step outside the constraints of our circumstances, and stand for a possibility. We don’t reference what’s possible against who we’ve been or what’s been done in the past, what’s predictable or expected, but rather against what we stand for and see as possible. Conditions and circumstances begin to reorder and realign themselves inside of what we stand for. Our relationship to possibility moves from an abstract ideal or remote objective to a viable, living reality.
Mistakes. If you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living… Make glorious, amazing mistakes—mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life… Make your mistakes.*
When we set out to do or be something and we’re thwarted or something “goes wrong,” there’s a disparity between what happened and what the possibility was. But instead of sorting out whatever happened, we often relate to it as some shortcoming, some deficiency about ourselves. Our identity, (who we consider ourselves to be), jumps to front and center. Refrains like “What’s wrong with me?” “What’s wrong with it?” “What’s wrong with ‘them’?” are the litanies we hear in our heads. When we operate on top of disempowering assessments, our ability to be gets diminished—it’s the “failing to be” that takes us off course, not that “it failed.”
If we can consider that what we see as failures (given they live in language) are a making up, an invention, a declaration of something missing, (not necessarily followed by a “therefore” or a “because,” but just existing as themselves) instead of a “failure of being,” what’s there is the possibility of “inventing being.” Breakdowns, mistakes, failures as an invention, a saying, a making up, afford us a larger opening—power and freedom have room to emerge.
It can alter that way you feel and the way you act.
It’s what gives life to our deepest aspirations and our wildest dreams.
It has the power to create and alter the very nature of what is possible.
Choice. It’s the word that allows yes and the word that makes no possible. It’s the word that puts the free in freedom and takes obligation out of the mix. It’s the word upon which adventure, exhilaration, and authenticity depend. It’s the word that the cocoon whispers to the caterpillar.*
We tell ourselves, sometimes, that living a transformed life isn’t that important, that it’s enough just to get by. We get wrapped up in our own concerns, particular points of view, or positions, and the idea of getting ourselves to a place where things can be great seems too big an undertaking. If somebody had a magic powder to come and sprinkle on us and just through that we’d be transformed, we might say, “No, thanks—I don’t want any! Let me stay just as I am.” It takes courage to live in a transformed way—to wrestle with our resistances, to give up mediocrity, to live consistent with what we know is possible in being human. It’s always and only a matter of our choosing.
The why not is mostly because people don’t know it’s really possible—and because we don’t know that, we play for low stakes. If we took our day and divided it up between the stuff that really made a difference, and the rest of the stuff (not between what was important and what was unimportant, but the stuff that really made a difference and all the rest), what would we see?
You might have to go back in your life a few years to consider this matter. Remember, for example, when you were a teenager, the stuff that was REALLY IMPORTANT. Remember when your parents said you couldn’t go to a dance, or you had to be home at a certain time and couldn’t stay out an extra hour. Remember how really, really important that was? Now, as adults, most of us forget that “important” things are pretty much just like that—they seem important at the time, but a week or two later, a month or a year later, what was the big deal?
This brings up for me something about my teenage step-daughter, Alex that she, my wife, and I wanted to share in this piece. Alex has taken The Landmark Forum for Young People and for Teens. She knows what it takes to play powerfully in the game of life and she has created very big shoes for herself—mostly.
Once in a while she likes to pretend the shoes aren’t hers. I remember a fight she had with my wife, Diane, over a curfew agreement. Afterward, Diane and I both thought the issues had been sorted out, that they had been discussed fully, and agreed to. Alex went off to school the next morning, but she did not come home when we expected her. It got later and later. We were upset and enormously concerned for her safety and well-being. Once she did get home, we all sat down together and talked about it. For her, the issue was more than merely a conversation about a curfew. It was about things that were HUGELY IMPORTANT in her world—her peers, how she looked to them, her sense of independence, and being in control of her own life.
Everything got sorted through—and what was left was that she knew that all of this could have been sorted out without a struggle, or any looking bad with her peers, or any upset with us—but to do so, she would have had to live up to the person she knew herself to be. She, however, chose not to go down that path. She preferred to be part of the same conversation her peers were having, to not communicate, to be defiant even when she knew that it wasn’t necessary and wouldn’t get her what she really wanted. When it was all over, we talked about the courage it takes to live in a transformed way, to know what it requires, to know that under any circumstance we each have a choice, to act and live from that reality.
That’s the story of a teenager. But I also know from interacting with many adults that this issue of living in a way that’s consistent with who we now know ourselves to be, of filling the shoes that we can’t pretend aren’t big, doesn’t stop when our teenage years are behind us. It goes right into adulthood, and that’s the point for me.
Under many circumstances, we aren’t willing to stand up for living a transformed life. In some circumstances, we tell ourselves that’s not important to us, that it’s enough just to get by.
If somebody had a magic powder to come and sprinkle on us, in those moments, and just through that, we could be transformed, we might say, “No, thanks—I don’t want any!”
We might hear ourselves saying, “Don’t let anything different, or even great, happen to me. Let me stay just like I am.” And then we might spend a lot of time building up a justification for where we are—afraid to give up the leaky life boat that’s so familiar, to take a chance on getting in one with no leaks. And our justifications will be rational and intelligent—just like my step-daughter’s initial response, and like all the thousands of reasons people use every day to justify staying where they are.
Living a transformed life takes courage. People often think of courage only as what is called for in a moment of crisis, but that’s not the case. Courage is called for on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, even when there’s nothing urgent at stake. It is up to us to create our lives consistent with who we know ourselves to be—making what’s at stake that which we say is at stake. It’s the stand we take on ourselves. That stand then becomes who we are. Saying that something is at stake is always a purely existential act. This business about freedom, this business about power, is really a product of a place to stand—not something that is out in front of us, that we’re working on or measuring ourselves against. When we live consistent with what we say, we are being true to ourselves.
To choose living a transformed life requires us to wrestle with our resistances, small and large, to come face to face with the angst of giving up our self-imposed limits, our mediocrity—but most important, to live consistent with what we know is possible. Transformation carries with it a wisdom and a knowing that we have a choice about who we are and the full range that is available to us in being human. With transformation comes big shoes.
“Yes” extends boundaries, establishes new playing fields, moves possibility from ideas to actuality. Actress and improve artist Tina Fey points to the opportunity yes affords us when she says, “the first rule of improve is agree—agree with whatever your partner has created. The second rule is yes, and—agree and then add something of your own. If I start a scene with ‘I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,’ and you just say, ‘Yeah…’ we’re kind of at a standstill. But if I say, ‘I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,’ and you say, ‘Yes, it can’t be good for the wax figures,’ now we’re getting somewhere.”1
In our recurring dialogues, patterns of conversation, the habitual ways that we listen and speak, our first response often defaults around a “no” or a “but.” Toss in a few intricately constructed reasons justifying that response, and we find ourselves limiting the future in front of us.For anything creative to show up in life—not accidental, not manipulated, not figured out—it shows up in our stand for possibility, in the “yes.” Standing for possibility comes from nothing and creates a generative field; “yes and” extends that field and broadens the game. Nothing is the foundation for possibility—from nothing we are able to create with a freedom that’s not available when we create from something. In creating possibility, we get to know what’s available to us in being human.
Communication, conversation, language are predominately thought of, anchored in our minds, as an expressing, a speaking, a vocalizing. That outward expression goes far beyond talking, far beyond describing or representing reality—it is in fact what allows for “who” and “how” we are in the world. It’s what allows for the futures we create, where we evoke experience in others, where our ideas become clear and possible, where we share ourselves, and where others are expanded by our participation with them. But speaking is not where things get handled—it’s not powerful enough. The possibility that there’s an edge, the possibility of impact, lies in our listening.
Listening, we often think of as more passive—important, but somehow lesser or secondary. But listening is the clearing in which speaking can occur—without it, there isn’t any speaking. Listening is an action. It’s way more active than it is passive—it creates speaking. Listening doesn’t receive speaking, it isn’t a receptacle for speaking—it gives speaking. Listening is the possibility for meaning, for understanding. The possibility for being loved lives in one’s listening; the possibility for learning lives in one’s listening. Listening is what allows others to be—it’s where both the speaker and what is spoken come alive, exist, and flourish.
The instant the ball rolled between Bill Buckner’s legs New England broke into a collective moan. Mets fans uncontrollably squealed with glee. Then it was over and there was only silence. Local taverns packed with people watching Game 6 of the 1986 World Series suddenly filled with malice and fans walked away leaving money on the table. Boston’s long awaited world championship was there—and then it was gone. All that remained for Red Sox fans was the grim certainty of an inevitable loss in Game 7 and more proof that this was not the year.
The Red Sox didn’t have a chance. This team and its fans didn’t recover from such defeats. Never had and never would.
We’re defining context here to mean “a fundamental set of assumptions”—assumptions that are not recognized as assumptions, and that go unquestioned—in which the world happens. When people thought the earth was flat (an analogy that grows old but never dies), that was a context or worldview that limited perception and behaviour—how those folks saw the horizon, how far toward the edge they sailed, and so on. Similarly, our way of being a man or a woman, and the possibilities available to us, are given by the assumptions embedded in our culture, our language, and times in which we live. A girl born in the U.S. today would likely inherit a very different possibility for being a woman than a girl born in the 1930s or ’40s—would she be a dot-com mogul or running for president?
So if you consider the premise that the whole world happens inside of the assumptions we hold true (and if you do the math), what becomes apparent is that contexts are a mighty and decisive force. Contexts come to us by default, and we live our lives essentially unaware of their existence and of their far-reaching influence. It’s like wearing blinders—we don’t see the contexts themselves, we see only what they allow. These default contexts determine our worldview: what’s possible and not, what’s true and false, what’s right and wrong, what we think we can and can’t do. They travel with us—wherever we are, they are—shaping our behaviour, our choices, our lives.
Just as these default contexts can be what keeps us limited and stuck, created or invented contexts can allow for freedom and power. We’re not talking, however, about substituting one context over another, or finding a better context or the right context. Rather, it’s about becoming aware of and responsible for whatever context we are functioning inside of, and realizing that we have the power not only to invent contexts, but to move freely among them.
History is strewn with examples of times when major advances happened as a result of new contexts being created. Democracy, equality, relativity, human rights—new ways of understanding the world—were at some point, newly distinguished contexts. The Copernican revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the centre of the universe, ushering in modern astronomy and the scientific revolution. Newton invented gravity (certainly, before Newton, there was a physical force, but he transformed the possibility of that force), enabling us to understand and interact more powerfully with the physical universe. Einstein created relativity—a context that catalysed modern physics and tells us how nature behaves on the scale of apples, planets, galaxies, and on up. At one time, human rights, as we think of them today, simply didn’t exist. Kings had rights, priests had rights, and the ruling class had rights, but the majority of human beings—and often, certain specific groups within a society—did not. In each of these examples, some person or a group of people saw through or past “the way things were,” or the way they “seemed to have to be.” The act of doing so, and saying so, reshaped the course of events and redefined human experience from then on. And we then began living into those possibilities and the “truth” of the world was transformed.
And so it is with being human. We take for granted that things are a particular way; we think it is our circumstances, our cultures, the content of our lives that determine our experience. And if we want some kind of change in our lives, we usually go to work on changing the circumstances—essentially moving the content around. (Not surprisingly, we then end up living content-driven lives.)
Living from an invented context has just as much impact and command value as living from a default context—the difference, however, is the difference between a life of predictability and a life of possibility. The answer to the question “what’s possible in being human?” doesn’t need to be looked at through a default lens. Seeing past our old assumptions about “the way things have been” or the way we thought “they had to be” and creating a context of our own choosing alters the very nature of what’s possible—and the truth of “our” world gets transformed.
An invented context is essentially a realm of possibility. And we have the wherewithal to create that realm simply by our saying so. Language—what we say (silently or aloud, once or repeatedly, to ourselves or to others)—has the power to shape reality. When we know our conversations constitute who we are, it shifts our relationship to the world. The shift does not necessarily get rid of the lens or filters or mindsets per se, but what occurs is that those old assumptions simply stop defining who we are. Context known in that way is never inherited, never a matter of acculturation, never a matter of something we picked up, never a matter of accident—it’s always and only a matter of our choosing. Choice is a uniquely human condition. “The stone and the tiger have no choice of life: the stone must gravitate and the tiger must pounce. Only human beings are faced with the mind-boggling responsibility of having, at each and every moment of their lives, to choose what to do and what to be. It is both a necessity and an invitation.”
We commonly think of freedom as “freedom from,” “freedom of,” or “freedom to” do or be something, or as the ability to define alternatives and select among them. But freedom far exceeds anything on that spectrum—it’s being able to redefine ourselves and reality at large, generating whole new sets of possibilities. History is punctuated by such redefinitions—creative acts that open new worlds. In this sense, we can call creative acts the edge of freedom—the faculty by which, down through history, we have redefined our world and ourselves.1
Freedom is not like other phenomena. It’s closer to “being” than it is to some “thing.” It has nothing to do with options. It requires dimensionality—if we try to move freedom through a world of limited possibility, it can never show up as itself, it’s always distorted as something else. Freedom doesn’t live in a temporality like past, present, and future—it doesn’t stop, in the same way that “number” doesn’t stop giving numbers or that art is not repeating, in a new way, the past. There’s nothing pulling one way or the other, there is just this awesome freedom. Freedom is about choosing—it’s about the profoundly human ability to create.
The stuff of wars, soap operas, divorce courts, Hamlet, and more all borrow on that equation, as do we. While we might wish we’d left that even-numberedness to our childhood and adolescence, it’s not to be. The dynamic of dealing with issues that are unwanted, yet persist continues to play out in board rooms, neighbourhoods, marriages, and between nations—we justify, we blame, we complain.
Issues that are unwanted, yet persist can be a powerful impetus for change, as evidenced by the progress of human rights, for example. But there’s another world of things that are unwanted, yet persist—things that we complain about over and over, like some aspect of our relationships or jobs that is not working, and yet we find ourselves keeping around.
If we put what’s “unwanted, yet persists” together with “fixed ways of being,” we get what we call a “racket.” It’s a “mash up” of sorts (a web buzzword). In a mash up, one web application is combined with another, making both applications more productive and robust—you get something greater than the sum of the parts. If you mash up what’s unwanted, yet persists (which is most likely occurring as a complaint) and a fixed way of being, you also get something greater than the sum of its parts, but in this case, the yield heads in the wrong direction—the combination is unproductive or more accurately, counterproductive.
A complaint is some kind of opinion or judgment of the way things “should” or “shouldn’t be.” The evaluative component isn’t a commentary on facts that are true or false, accurate or not, but again how we think things should be. By fixed way of being we mean acting in a predictable and repetitive manner (like always frustrated, always upset, always angry, always nice, always annoyed, always suspicious, always confused, etc.). Whatever our fixed way of being is, it’s not something we have a choice over. It’s just there—it shows up automatically when the complaint shows up. It’s also worth noting that a recurring complaint doesn’t cause the way of being, nor does the way of being cause the recurring complaint—they simply come together in one package. The whole point here, though, is that it’s a fixed way of being, not a possible way of being.
The term “racket” comes from the days of big-city gangsters and street-level criminals who conducted questionable activities—loan-sharking, bribery, larceny—usually set up to get some kind of payoff, camouflaged by an acceptable cover above suspicion. In a “racketeering” operation, the efforts at concealing what’s going on behind the scenes can become quite elaborate so as to protect and ensure the success of the operation. We borrow the term racket as it’s applicable to our contemporary lives and because it carries with it many of the same properties—deception, smoke screens, payoffs, etc.
Sometimes persistent complaints originate with us, other times they come at us from someone else. It’s harder to see that we’re in “racket mode” with complaints that come at us, because it looks like somebody else is the persistent complainer, and we’re just an innocent bystander.
But under closer scrutiny, it turns out we too have complaints—complaints about their complaints. Our matching complaint might show up like, “don’t they understand, don’t they know how it is for me, why are they nagging, don’t they see everything I’m doing for them?” When we complain, we feel quite justified that our response is appropriate to the situation.
We explain the rationale behind our complaints to interested (and uninterested) parties, and point out how pleased we are with ourselves for taking the necessary steps to sort things out—we have a certain fondness for our attempts, for “trying.” We might get our friends, family, or co-workers to agree that we’re dealing with our complaints the best we can. If they point out that perhaps we’re the one perpetuating the problem, we could feel misunderstood, put out, even busted. Seen from a distance, there can be something almost endearing about how we go about all this—as if it’s part of our authentic and sincere spirit—but actually, our rationale for doing what we do is another thing entirely. This is the camouflage or cover-up part. The deceptive nature of a racket and the allure of the payoff keep us from realizing the full impact rackets have in our lives.
The payoffs for keeping rackets around usually show up in several ways: being right and making others wrong (not the factual kind of right, but thinking that we are right and the other person is wrong), being dominating or avoiding domination, justifying ourselves and invalidating others (attributing cause to some thing or person other than ourselves), engaging in the win/lose dynamic (not “winning” like a celebration with trophies, applause, or congratulations to the opponent, but winning such that someone else is the loser or is lessened in some way). These payoffs are like facets of a diamond—although one facet might be more dominant than another (and we might deny or not be aware that some aspect of a payoff is active in our case), they’re really all at play.
The pull of these payoffs is often compelling enough to get us to give up love, vitality, self-expression, health, and happiness. That’s a ridiculously strong force. Those costs are the standard fare of a racket. It’s pretty obvious that we can’t be happy, vital, and loving while we’re making someone wrong, dominating someone, being right, or justifying ourselves—one displaces the other. This is where choice comes into the picture.
Rackets, although one thing, have two forms of existence (somewhat like ice and steam are two forms of H2O). One form of a racket shows up as “I am X, Y, or Z.” The second shows up as “ahhh, I have a racket that is X, Y, or Z.” When we are the racket, it shapes and determines our way of being. But when we have a racket, it has very little power over our way of being. We have a choice about what’s at play—about giving up our rackets, our positions, our unproductive ways of being. When we elect to transform our default ways of being—being right, coming out on top (the even-numberedness, so to speak)—we move to a place of freedom, a place of possibility. The question then becomes: How do I express my life? What would be, for me, the most extraordinary, created, invented life? It becomes a matter of art, of design. How extraordinary are the everyday aspects of our lives; how rich our lives are, how full of opportunity, when we act on the possibility of living life fully.
How we describe, label, hold things, think things—it’s within those
frameworks that our lives unfold. There are no “facts” that limit possibility,
there are only “conversations” that limit and constrain, or those that create
and forward, what’s possible.
The “glass-half-empty” folks lean toward the idea that something’s wrong,
something’s not there, something’s missing-as in problematic. The “half-full”
folks are attending to what’s actually in the glass-as in what could be brought
to the party-as in “missing as a possibility.”What marks a visionary is dedication to a possibility, a dedication that rejects outright the complacency of those who prefer the status quo and insists that there has to be another way. Instead of reaching for the nearest, most convenient conclusions, their commitment causes them to push hard against the limits of what others might see as possible.*
When we are up to something, we are called to step forward, to be and act in wholly new ways, to risk what we already know for something beyond the predictable. To be up to something calls forth strength and creativity—it generates energy and excitement that attracts and invites the participation of others. When we are up to something, we step outside the constraints of our circumstances, and stand for a possibility. We don’t reference what’s possible against who we’ve been or what’s been done in the past, what’s predictable or expected, but rather against what we stand for and see as possible. Conditions and circumstances begin to reorder and realign themselves inside of what we stand for. Our relationship to possibility moves from an abstract ideal or remote objective to a viable, living reality.
1 Glenn Stout, Boston Baseball, September 2004
2 Harry Eyres, “Tyranny of Choice,” Financial Times, 11/2/07 (citing Jose Ortega y Gasset, in his essay “The Mission of the Librarian”)
2 Harry Eyres, “Tyranny of Choice,” Financial Times, 11/2/07 (citing Jose Ortega y Gasset, in his essay “The Mission of the Librarian”)
3 Grudin, R. “The Grace of Great Things: Creativity & Innovation.”
* Adapted from Daniel Gilbert, New York Times,
7/24/06.
*Adapted from
Denise Shekerjian, Uncommon Genius
