I was at a social justice conference once when a well known storyteller got up to speak. I settled comfortably into my chair, preparing to be inspired.
He told a great (and very short) story, and then sat down. I thought he was just taking a break – maybe a musical interlude or dramatic pause – and then he’d get up to tell us what the story meant or how we should apply it to our lives.
Nope. Nothing. That was it. End of story.
I felt cheated. It was, after all, a social justice conference. We’d come to be inspired, to take home a toolkit full of take-aways and lessons-learned. If I remember correctly, his story didn’t even seem to have a social justice lens. It was just a story.
But was it?
The truth is, it stuck with me throughout the day, and into the week – long after I’d forgotten the take-aways from other talks or workshops.
One of the things I learned from his story is this: we don’t always need to hear the moral of the story. Sometimes, in fact, there is no moral. There’s just story. And the story becomes what each of us needs it to be. (Kind of like Jesus’ parables, right?)
I am a meaning-maker, a metaphor-finder, and a teacher. I like to follow story threads to their natural conclusions and then wrap the threads into neat little bows that allow you to take the stories home in pretty little packages to unwrap later. I’m used to shaping my ideas into teaching tools so that you have useful takeaways. It’s what I do and it’s often what I expect others to do.
But sometimes I try too hard and sometimes I do the story a mis-service by giving it only one shape when perhaps what you needed was a different shape entirely. Perhaps the story is still what you need, but through your lens it looks different and I’ve just ruined that for you by prescribing my own shape to it.
I’m finding lately that I’m growing somewhat weary of blog posts and social media updates, mostly because there seems to be too much expectation that we make sure every story has a moral, and every thread is tied.
We want to make sure we’re offering “good content”, and so we tie those threads. The blogging professionals remind us of how many extra hits we get when we can give “helpful tips for an easier life” or “do-it-yourself advice for ending the story as successfully as I did”, and so we give every story a nice juicy moral that readers can apply to their lives.
In doing so, sadly, we lose some of the messiness (and beauty) of life. We take out the really raw bits, because they don’t fit into neatly tied packages. We don’t tell the stories that end unhappily or not at all. We ignore the journeys that don’t conclude in simple and profound destinations.
This is one of the blocks I’ve had lately. This blog is now part of my business, and so I should be giving you good content that will keep you coming back for more. I should be offering you neatly tied packages. And I should do that on a regular basis so that you’ll come back often. And I certainly shouldn’t post this blog near midnight on a Friday. It’s blog suicide.
Unfortunately, many of my stories are messy and rarely do they come to me at appropriate blogging times of day. And often they don’t fit into clean frames or end with simple-to-communicate morals. Many of them are just little pieces of my journey and so the end is simply the beginning of something new. Sometimes (like when a man climbed through my window and raped me more than twenty years ago), it takes me years and years to process the lessons I’m meant to take away from a story. And even when I think I’ve learned all there is to learn, something new shows up a few years later and I realize the story hasn’t finished unfolding itself in my life.
And yet… I know those stories, as messy and unfinished as they are, are worth sharing. So I’ll keep offering them to you, but sometimes I won’t bother tying the threads together. I’ll let you find your own threads and see how those threads weave into your stories.
I am reminded, once again, of one of my favourite quotes.
“I’m not a teacher, only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.”
– George Bernard Shaw
Traveling is what I do. It’s what we all are doing. I haven’t reached the destination, so I can’t give you the “moral of this life-long story”. But maybe I can help you navigate some of the rocks that tripped me up.
Where am I going with all of this? I don’t know for sure. I haven’t figured out a way to end this post with a neat little moral either.
So I’m just going to leave you with what it is… some of the thoughts finding space in my head.
It’s no secret that I like labyrinths. I visit them often and am very happy that the beautiful Carol Shields labyrinth (in the photo above) is just across the river from where I live. It was at the centre of that labyrinth that I stood with my candle in a small circle of women, welcoming 2012.
It’s also no secret that I love metaphors. I’m a meaning-finder, and I love to wrap the complexity of life around the simplicity of a good metaphor.
The labyrinth is a great metaphor for life. Here’s why…
1. The journey to God is a path that leads along many deceptive twists and turns to the centre.
2. Though it often feels like we’re getting lost, if we keep following the path, we’ll eventually end up where we’re supposed to be.
3. When we’re weary and feeling lost, all that is required of us is that we put one foot in front of the other and carry on.
4. Sometimes we get really close to the centre, and think our journey is done, but suddenly we round the corner and there’s a whole new lesson we need to learn before we can rest.
5. Each time we pass a familiar place, we wonder “haven’t I been here before?” Those moments offer us the opportunity to lean even more deeply into the lessons we’re meant to learn and the beauty we’re meant to see at those places.
6. God is both the centre we seek and the path that gets us there. What we need is to trust the centre and to trust the path that leads us to it.
7. The path to God requires that we commit our body to it, not simply our minds. Get up and walk – God is in the movement.
8. To hear Spirit whisper, we have to be willing to be quiet.
9. Like all rites of passage and initiation ceremonies, walking the labyrinth is structured as a pilgrimage with three parts. First comes the journey inward, toward the sacred space where change happens. Next, time is spent at the centre, where the new life begins. Finally there is the journey outward, the return of the transformed person to the world, often with a new identity.
10. We don’t get straight paths in life – only winding roads that never show us the final destination and that keep taking us to places we don’t expect to go.
Last week was full of teaching. LOTS of teaching. In four different subject areas.
I taught six hours of writing for public relations, six hours of effective facilitation, six hours of tools for social media visibility, and two and a half hours of creative discovery.
And in between all of that teaching, I had to create curriculum for all of those courses – from scratch. And I had to mark papers for two of the courses.
That, my friends, is some serious teaching exhaustion.
And then, on Friday evening, at the end of it all, I had to muster the energy to go on the radio to talk about some of the teaching I do (on mandalas, creativity, and community-building). By then, my head was spinning with all of the subject matter my head has been dabbling in. (To hear the interview, click here, enter March 16th at 8 pm, and then wait about 15 minutes before my interview starts.)
Needless to say, I had to spend much of the weekend recovering my energy. Fortunately, the weather was lovely, and I had a chance to wander in the woods, walk the labyrinth, do some mandala journaling outside, and have a wiener roast in celebration of my youngest daughter’s tenth birthday.
Yes, I was exhausted and needed to fill my tank, but underneath that exhaustion was an even stronger current, helping me to sustain the energy to carry on.
More than anything, I feel deeply privileged.
I am privileged:
– to be part of the learning journey of so many interesting students.
– to be able to “pay it forward” and share the wisdom that I’ve gained from many wise teachers who’ve inspired me on my own learning journey.
– to have students who come from all over the world (in one class, there are 8 countries represented) to study in Canada.
– to be able to dive deeply into topics that interest me, so that I can learn enough to inspire my students.
– to be on the receiving end of many, many stories.
– to have had so many vast and interesting experiences and learnings in my life that I can now be qualified enough to teach.
– to be able to help people find their unique paths in the world.
– to learn as much from my students as they learn from me.
– to have this much variety in my life to keep my inner “scanner” happy.
– to sit in circle with interesting people and find community in the classroom.
This is a good life.
It’s exhausting, and some days are very, very hard. But most days, it’s a privilege to teach.
This weekend, when I wasn’t wandering around outside, I finished making personalized mandala journals for the people who’ll be participating in Mandala Discovery. Happy that I soon get to connect with another circle of interesting people in yet another course, I poured a little love and goodness into each journal. It was a privilege to make special gifts for each person and know that they will soon be in my life, and I will get to sit in another circle (albeit a virtual one) and hear more stories. I only hope that receiving these journals is as special for them as making them was for me.
After finishing the journals, I edited the following video where some of the wise women who I got to learn from each week in my Creative Discovery class (that is sadly now over) share their experience. Watch it, and you will understand just how privileged I am.
“But… I don’t have coloured markers. Or pencil crayons.” Pause…
“In fact, I have nothing in my house that I can write with in any colour other than black or blue.”
That’s what I’ve heard from several of my mandala discovery clients after we’ve been through the coaching session at the beginning, we’ve identified some block or growth area they want to work on, and I’ve begun to explain a mandala process that will help them.
There’s always a note of something in their voices when they say it. Longing? Fear? Regret? Maybe even a little bit of shame?
“You can start with what you have,” I say, not wanting to push them too far outside of their comfort zone right from the start. “But at some point, I suggest you go out and buy some.”
A few days later, I get an email. “I bought coloured markers!” And sometimes (because buying coloured markers can take much more courage than one would imagine), “I had no idea what I was doing when I was standing in front of a wall full of art supplies, but I heard your voice in my head and I BOUGHT THEM!”
There is always a note of something in that simple email… Joy? Pride? Surprise? Permission?
You could say that I’m a coloured-marker-ambassador.
I believe that every home needs at least one set of coloured markers. Preferably two, or three… or more.
The more I do mandala discovery work, the more I believe in the power of coloured markers.
Coloured markers give us permission to play.
They strip away some of the seriousness that grown-up pens (in boring colours like black and blue) trap us in.
They remind us of the fun we had when we were kids, when a blank white page meant POSSIBILITY!
They help us get unstuck when we’ve been spending too much time in our left brains, trying to wrap logic and ration and order around everything.
They let us make mistakes and ignore linear paths and forget the rules and HAVE FUN!
They remind us that creativity means freedom. And freedom brings change, and from small changes, revolutions begin.
Just think of them as tiny colourful swords to be wielded in our battles against the fear gremlins.
There were many years when I didn’t have coloured markers in my house either. I thought I had to be a grown-up and put away childish things like markers and crayons and colouring books. I was a mom, a manager, a wife, an elder in my church, a board member… a serious, grown-up member of my community. Grown-ups didn’t play with coloured markers.
But then one day, after too many years of blue and black pens, I finally gave in to my silent longing and signed up for an art course. Throughout that first class, I choked back tears. Happy tears. I was in a happier place than I’d been in a long, long time. My love of colour and art and POSSIBILITIES had re-awakened.
I needed more art supplies.
I needed more swords.
And since then, I have filled my tiny office/studio with art supplies… paint, crayons, pastels, chalk, and especially markers. I have fat ones, thin ones, and medium-sized ones. I have every colour in the rainbow… and then some. I am well equipped for battle.
I do most of my journaling in colour – switching whenever the mood strikes me. I doodle, I play… and I make lots of mandalas.
And now I see it as my job to make sure other people rediscover their love of coloured markers too.
Because coloured markers – in a tiny revolutionary way – change things.
We need to stop silencing that part of us that wants to live in full colour. It’s time to stop being so darned grown up and responsible all the time!
When my friend Desiree – an amazing, bold, and creative woman, who’d forgotten just like so many of us – finally bought the markers I’d been cajoling her to get, she gave me the title of this blog post… “THIS,” she said, waving her coloured markers in front of my Skype screen, “is a revolutionary act! Buying these markers CHANGED me!”
If I do nothing more in my life than convince a few people to bring coloured markers back into their lives, then I have done well.
What are you waiting for? Go out there and buy some!
And once you’ve bought them, sign up for Mandala Discovery, and you’ll get to play with those coloured markers (and think revolutionary thoughts) every week!
My current time-waster/stress-reliever is a game called Mahjong, where tiles are stacked in various formations and the goal is to remove all of the tiles by finding matching pairs.
I’ve gotten to the point where I can win about half the games I play, but that meant a fair bit of trial and error had to take place before I could begin to understand the strategy. At first, I’d simply remove any matching pairs that appeared, hoping to get to the bottom. With that approach though, I never succeeded.
One day I had an a-ha moment while playing Mahjong.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
In other words, by removing the easy tiles at the beginning instead of saving them for later when one of them might match another tile that’s more important to remove, I ruin my chances of success in the long run.
The most valuable thing to do is to remove those tiles that reveal something deeper underneath.
The more I play Mahjong, the more I realize those lessons go much beyond a simple game.
Since I started my business last year, I have been doing a lot of things. Too many things. There are lots of things I CAN do, and I’m good at many of them, so when people ask me to do them, I think “I need to make money and I need to get my name out there, so I’d better do this thing.”
I have been writing a book, editing other people’s books, tutoring people, coaching people, mentoring leaders, serving on the board of a women’s empowerment organization, teaching effective written communication, teaching writing for public relations, teaching effective facilitation, teaching emotional intelligence, facilitating community-building workshops, facilitating leadership workshops, teaching creative writing, teaching creative discovery, teaching social media skills, writing and selling ebooks on writing, wandering, leadership, and social media, serving on the organizing committee for an international women’s gathering, building a couple of websites for clients, doing mandala sessions and creating a mandala discovery course, doing a Skype interview series for a leadership gathering, hosting retreats… and… there’s more.
Some days, at the end of the week, I feel like my brain has been riding a merry-go-round for days on end. These past weeks have been especially challenging, since I’m currently teaching courses in three very different subject areas (writing for PR, effective facilitation, and creative discovery), and building a website for the event I’m helping to host this summer, and planning 2 upcoming retreats, and doing some mandala sessions. TOO MUCH!
I need to make money, I need to build my platform, and I enjoy variety, so I have a hard time saying no to the work that shows up.
Just like in the early days of playing Mahjong, I’m removing all of the tiles that appear, without consideration for whether or not they’re helping get to the deeper purpose.
Just because I can, doesn’t mean I should.
It’s time to apply that mantra to my life as well as my Mahjong board. I need more strategy. I need to trust that hanging onto some of the easy tiles will mean I’ll have them in reserve for when they help me get to the deeper stuff.
Yesterday, I took a baby step. Because of my skill-set and experience, I’d been asked to sit on the board of a really interesting organization doing international development work, mostly in Africa. It was SO tempting to say yes, since it so closely matches my values and interests and I knew I would be an asset to them and and it would give me a new circle of interesting connections. BUT I knew it would take time away from some of the other valuable work I’m committed to that’s even more closely aligned with my values and interests and long term business goal. So I made the difficult decision to say no. OOoooo… that was tough.
And I’m going to start saying no to more things, like some of the teaching that requires too much of my time and energy in areas I’m neither effective nor interested (grading papers, for example).
None of it has been a waste of time though. Just like all those practice rounds of Mahjong, before I started winning games, this past year has been incredibly valuable for me. I’ve learned so much more about what I’m good at, what I want to spend my time and energy on, and what offerings of mine people benefit the most from.
I couldn’t get here without the practice.
I couldn’t start saying no until I’d said yes a lot of times. I couldn’t find the work that was most meant for me, without a little trial and error that helped me eliminate the work that wasn’t meant for me.
Here’s what I’ve learned about myself this past year:
I love public speaking. I am often in my most happy place when I am speaking, leading, facilitating, or teaching. But I don’t really enjoy speaking on topics that don’t energize me.
I love engaging people in meaningful conversation, and I love helping them get to deeper levels of meaning. I even get energy from facilitating challenging dialogues.
I love encouraging people, but I don’t really enjoy being in a position where I have to judge their work. I’d much rather offer words of encouragement to my students and help them find their unique gifts than correct their papers and give them grades.
I love creative writing, and I enjoy teaching other people to write more creatively, but I don’t really enjoy teaching business writing.
I am a meaning-finder, a metaphor-maker, a big picture thinker and a non-dualistic processor. I thrive on creativity. I am much more comfortable outside the box than inside. I feel easily trapped when I have to teach or work in environments that feel too restrictive or systems-driven.
I can’t think of anything I love more than doing creative work (like mandalas) and encouraging others to grow in their creativity and self-discovery.
I keep going back to the personal mission statement I wrote about 10 years ago when I first started imagining this work.
“It is my mission to inspire excellence in people, to facilitate personal growth and the discovery of gifts, and to serve as a catalyst for positive change.”
It’s time to start saying no to more things so that I can say a bigger YES to my mission.
This week I woke with a new abbreviated version of my mission statement on my mind.
I am a catalyst for creativity, community, and change.
I was at a social justice conference once when a well known storyteller got up to speak. I settled comfortably into my chair, preparing to be inspired.
