Author: Tenneson Woolf

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It has arrived in Utah. And now to stay. Six inches in the valleys. One to two feet in the mountains.

You can take the boy out of Canada, but you can’t take Canada out of the boy. There is something cozy about this to me. I like the way it makes people pay attention to each other just a bit more.

Like slowing down the driving. Slowing down ourselves. As I tell my daughter when she plans on driving, “twice as much time, three times as much distance between cars; pump your brakes, don’t slam them.”

Like shoveling a bit extra of the sidewalk to help the neighbors. Of course they can do it themselves, but it is a kind of code in winter hospitality.

And hospitality always matters, right.

Cozy, indeed.

 

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I’m not quite able to take this complete rest at the moment, but feel very aware of how utterly attractive it feels.

I’m like many. I have to justify a rest as being abnormal. Or worse, get sick in order to feel it is legitimate. Crazy, right.

Thanks Margaret Rode, for including this in her recent email, foretelling a shut down time for her business of the end of the year.

It was Christina Baldwin that I first heard speak that, “it is not possible to be curious and judgmental at the same time.” It wasn’t a grand announcement. It was a simple aha kind of comment, the kind of thinking out loud comment that I’ve appreciated with Christina many times. That was in the about ten years ago, I believe.

I’m not unfamiliar with being curious as an approach to life. When I allow myself to simplify it as much as I can, I hold a basic mantra — be present, be curious. This curiosity is a disposition, perhaps that comes from another set of assumptions:

• all is not as it seems
• there is always more unseen than there is seen, no matter how good we are at speaking it
• there is always another way

These are three of my favorites. They lead me to the basic stance and practice of, “I wonder…?” This doesn’t mean that a snap judgment doesn’t show up every now and then. Yet, wonder, raises regular questions — I wonder what I might be missing here? I wonder how this makes sense to this person in a way that it does not make sense to me? I wonder if there is another way to think about this or to connect it differently?

Judgment has a different tone. And no, I’m not advocating a life without judgment, or it’s many cousins that include choice of way of living. The basic stance of judgment often sounds like, “How could he / she!” Or, “How dare they!” The question mark of curiosity is often replaced by the exclamation mark of judgment.

If I flip the above curiosity assumptions, uncertainty becomes trumped by certainty. All becomes exact with words being clear objective descriptions rather than symbolic words. All becomes clear with complexity either dismissed or replaced by convenience. Myopic view becomes the norm — this is the way.

I’m overstating the difference a bit. Yes. So that the difference can be seen and that the nested absurdities can be brought to light even for a moment.

I would advocate that curiosity is a key skill needed in these days. In organizations. In families. In teams. To help us move from the divisiveness of “how could you” to the inclusiveness of “I wonder.” It’s an aha waiting to happen most every moment.

 

Chris Corrigan is one of my best pals. He’s a kind soul. A generative designer of participative process. A welcoming colleague. And a very good thinker. One of the ways that I know him is for his ability to apply good theory to absolutely practical work, whether with a small team or as societal way of being.

Below is a snippet from one of his posts on “pattern entrainment.” It’s how we get stuck in our thoughts and misapply solutions that seemed appropriate in one system, but are so misguided in other settings.

Pattern entrainment is the idea that once our brains learn something, it is very difficult to break that knowledge.  And while we may be able to change our knowledge of facts fairly easily – such as admitting a mistake of a factual nature “you’re right, there is no 7:30 ferry after all!” – changing the way we make sense of facts is surprisingly hard.

Have a peek at the full post. It’s really good material.