While I was in Sydney I attended a Landmark Education class on the weekend. It’s part of a 7-month course to train participants to lead introductions to the Landmark Forum.
I’m finding this course very difficult. I’m so confronted and challenged by my habitual ways of being that I keep running away from the course. And running away when things get tough is, as I’ve discovered, one of my most habitual ways of being. Which is really funny because I’ve spent my life thinking that I’m strong and courageous and quite a nice little risk-taker. Oh, the delusions.
Anyways, for now I’m back in the course because I managed to stick with my fear long enough to front up to the Sydney weekend after missing the equivalent Melbourne weekend (because I ran away).
And I’m glad I did front up. Because I got an important breakthrough, and interestingly, it’s one related to language and writing, and even this blog.
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I saw on the weekend that I’ve been living my life as a long series of trade-offs. “If I have this thing, then I can’t have that thing” is basically the way I’ve been living my life. And God forbid I should have many things at once.
Which is why my life looks like a series of episodes, and also why I have such trouble choosing things. How can I choose anything — let alone choose lightly and freely — when the very act kills off so many other things? The one chosen option has to be so right, has to supply the satisfactions of many.
When I saw this way of being I was amazed, as with all Landmark breakthroughs, how I could have overlooked such an obvious thing. It was under my nose the whole time.
And this time there was an interesting addendum. A bit later on in the course I was sitting next to a girl from Canada and I was telling her about how I’d been doing this in life and she said,
Oh yes, I used to do that too. And then I went to India and I saw a guru and he noticed it and told me the following, “Give up the word ‘but’ and replace it with ‘and.’”
Give up the word “but” and replace it with “and.”
And guess what? I frequently use the word “but” in my speech. And one only has to read a post or two of this blog to see it everywhere in my writing. It’s been becoming so frequent in my writing even I had started to notice it.
Yet it’s not merely a tic of speech and writing; it’s been all through my thinking and being. In short, I’ve been a walking “but.” Killing off options, undermining choices, statements and commitments.
All for want of a word that, under its modest little journeyman trappings, is a world that unites and expands and enriches. The truly glorious word: AND.
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Image: The Sun
I’m with you in a Kumbaya-sort of way. But isn’t your habitual view of the life as trade-offs …. correct? Indeed, inevitable?
People like you and me (I am confident in this assumption) are different from our ancestors in even recent history in that our material needs are taken care of. So what we lack is TIME.
You cannot (I am about to use a lot of ANDs) feed a blog every day AND hold down a challengind day job AND be a parent, with hourly “emergencies”, AND train to run marathons AND re-read the Classics AND volunteer for your local homeless shelter AND …..
Something’s gotta give. Those people, often women, who try to “have it all”, in the jargon, (ie, family AND career AND social life AND glamour AND…) end up killing themselves from stress.
So, I’ve been trying to simplify my life, which, I’ve discovered, means cutting certain things out. Not AND but BUT.
That, of course, may not have been at all how you guys at Landmark were talking about this issue….
I’ve probably been coming from quite a different view of life than you because I don’t do such multi-tasking (how do you do it????). I’ve only ever been doing one thing at a time, usually with lots of time either side (eg, preparation time and then debrief/contemplation time … hehe).
What underlies this is a set of beliefs that’s all about scarcity (like Phil said) or fragility or that I don’t deserve things, etc. The major trade-off that’s been affecting my life for many years is the trade-off I make between creativity and thinking and self-expression (all the stuff I love to do) and earning a living. I saw on the weekend I’ve always been setting those two things in antithesis.
Mmm… thinking about it further. Actually for you too possibly it’s about scarcity: scarcity of time. Under which there’ll be some “context” (as opposed to “content”), some set of beliefs, that has this showing up in your world.
What you say about being diff from our ancestors is so true. We had a major shift in the last 100 or so years when our material needs began to be met and we started to acquire the notion of self-determination. And thereby hangs a tale … ;)
PS. Had a laugh at “feeding the blog.” So true. SGx
Scarcity, for sure. Scarcity of time, of energey, of mental and emotional “bandwidth” (a terrible word, which became a cliche in record time)
…”The major trade-off that’s been affecting my life for many years is the trade-off I make between creativity and thinking and self-expression (all the stuff I love to do) and earning a living….”
I read that sentence to mean that creativity, thinking and self-expression are all on one side, and earning a living is on the other.
That’s the problem for 99% of people today, I am guessing. their job/career does not allow them to express themselves.
I may be lucky in that I don’t see this particular trade-off. I can be creative through my job, during “office hours”. So the trade-offs move to other areas of life.
Very interesting topic. I’m quite curious about this Landmark thing…
Yes, you read the sentence right. For me, up until the weekend, creativity, thinking and self-expression were all on one side, and earning a living on the other. Now it’s going to be different.
If you were in Melb I’d invite you along to an introduction to the Landmark Forum so you could find out for yourself how you could have more power and freedom in your life.
Hey, maybe you could come anyway. (After all we had a lady from San Diego at our course on the weekend who’d flown over just for the weekend. She was quite an amazing woman. She was a retired fire-fighter and somehow she also found time on the weekend to go to the nearest fire station and invite several of the local fire-fighters to an introduction to the Landmark Forum).
Or if flying to Aust doesn’t work for you at the moment you could always go to an introduction in California, or you could just choose straight off to do the Landmark Forum. They’ve got a special deal on at the moment. Check out the Landmark site for more info:
http://www.landmarkeducation.com/landmark_education_home.jsp SGx
Alas, too short of, ahem, time in my present situation to take these courses. But I’ve bookmarked it….
:)
From coming out of “scarcity”, will you now be coming out of “abundance”?
Got it in one :)