Writing

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?

The sky is a shirt wet with tears,

the road a vein about to break,

and the glass of wine a mirror in which

the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Before You Came

After 2021, I swore that I would not start 2022 with a resolution. I was planning to let the year be and make of it what I could and what it allowed. Helen Blunden provided the perfect theme for my year on Twitter – Flow.

Thank you. I think that perfectly describes my approach to 2022. I’m going to take Flow as my theme and revel in its many meanings.

— Simon Terry (@simongterry) December 31, 2021

Flow opens up a range of meanings that resonate with me now. The first is the recognition of the passage of time which I feel keenly these days. Isolation, deferred plans and as yet unrealised dreams sit uneasily on me as time passes. In a global pandemic, it is hard not to consider that the sand may flow out before I get it all done. When I get the chance, I will make the most of my urgency against this flow.

In contrast, I am also much more inclined to ‘go with the flow’. Expectations and plans are tyranny when the circumstances are so volatile. I lost a third of my New Years’ Eve guests when a rapid antigen test showed the wrong stripe for one party. We make do and we make the most with what is possible without regret. We are carried along by circumstances and must recognise they limit our influence. We do what we can, not what we wish.

This is not water running here,
These thick rebellious streams
That hurtle flesh and bone past fear
Down alleyways of dreams.

Countee Cullen, Harlem Wine

Water flows and always finds its level. It’s the same way our dreams and desires push us along even when the circumstances are against us. Even when we go with the flow, we are still carried to the sea. We merely choose how we arrive there. The force of our desires is a source of energy and momentum for our lives if we let it flow. Damming this flow is so often counterproductive.

Flow is rarely a straight line. Water (& air) flow involves swirls, eddies and all kinds of curves along the path. Another reason why airborne Covid infection is so random. Turbulence is an everyday experience in these complex dynamics. We can be carried a long way of path or trapped in circling for a while before the passage resumes. These swirls can change the course of great rivers cutting off some destinations as isolated billabongs, even as we still move forward.

Flow in the sense provided by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly reminds us that there are many rewards to be had in the efforts along the way. Balancing challenges with growing skills and living intensely absorbed in the present moment feels called for in this time of ours. As 2022, progress I want to choose to spend my time in flow when I can for the satisfaction and the productivity despite whatever circumstances surround me.

My thirst, my desire without end, my wavering road!

Dark river beds down which the eternal thirst is flowing,

and the fatigue is flowing, and the grief without shore.

Pablo Neruda, [Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs]

Flow also reminds me of the practised deliberate movements of Qi Gong combining slow motion with mindfulness and breathing. As I launch into 2022, I want to preserve as much rest, relaxation and mindfulness that I have been able to create between Christmas and New Years. I also want to recognise that all the skills I wish to develop take deliberate, consistent and careful practice.

My last theme of flow is to recognise that some solids like glass are actually flowing, just on time scales beyond our perception. For someone who works in and drives change in large systems, it can be a comfort to know that what looks solid may be amenable to change in the right circumstances. So much of my work is engineering circumstances where change can flow in the hands of those with agency.

So as I amble into 2022, I have chosen to go with flow.

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Robert Burns, Afton Water

PS the story of glass flowing is largely a myth on any reasonable timescale or range of temperatures.

The Rope-a-Dope Year comes to a Close

I noted at the end of 2020 that the pace of change would continue and the feels would not go away. Sadly, I was right. For much of this year it felt as if we were playing Rope-a-Dope with digital change, new variants and our emotions.

So much happened this year and it stretched us in new ways, not all comfortable or desired. We found our strength in communities, in the magic of science and in our relationships with each other. For that we can be grateful. We leaned too heavily on resilience and discovered it is a spring, not a buttress. Too much force and it will compress. We also found the weaknesses in the mob, anger and ill-informed debate, those will be challenges we need to tackle for some time.

So here is a year in review.

Most Popular Posts for 2021

The most popular posts on this blog are often determined by others with far larger audiences and far greater influence. Some things catch and sustain themselves or find an ardent supporter. I can never pick what people will share. I am grateful for their support.

Here are the most viewed posts of the year:

• Ten Counterintuitive Principles of Change Agents: Exploring the way change really works and why it isn’t about what you want. Struck a deep chord in those working for change
• Anticipatory Obedience: A sleeper from 2019 on organisational resistance that caught fire in 2020 for all the wrong reasons. It was widely shared by anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers and others who loved the title and didn’t read the post. First time I have been tempted to delete a post. Instead let’s help people challenge the uniformed networks by drawing them out into the rest of the blog.
• Liminal Spaces: A late 2020 post that struck a chord throughout 2021 about the opportunities that come from exploring boundaries and thresholds
• Breaking Down the Value of Collaboration: Another 2019 slowburn on drivers of value in collaboration. Is everything old new again? See below in Work Ahead for 2022
• Resignation: Why the Great Resignation is hardly inevitable and we can’t rely on resilience. Maybe in 2022 we can look after each other better.

Like this blog, a hodgepodge of interesting topics across a wide range of domains but reflecting echoes of our challenges this year.

The Posts I loved for 2021

The following posts are those that dug deeper into themes or challenges that resonated with me in 2021:

• The Expectancy is Over: There has been enough waiting
• The Game of Thought Leadership: Don’t be part of someone else’s monetisation strategy.
• Crazy Brave: We get nowhere with mediocrity.
• Freedom from Consequences: We’ve spent a lot of 2021 listening to discussion of freedom but we don’t get to escape the consequences of our actions.
• Romance: Don’t forget real human relationships and the magic that can flow. Also related to a post on Collaboration is a Relationship
• Performance: Why we need to allow for the dramatic in our workplaces
• Five Questions for Work Today: Questions are Powerful. Changing mindsets matters in our new world of work
• The Other Collaboration Patterns: Not everything need be a meeting or a chat. If we continue new ways of working we need to broaden our perspectives

And as a bonus there is Listing 100 things that make someone special – a little exercise that might just make someone’s day.

Cool Things that Happened in 2021

• Rebecca Jackson invited Ben Elias and I to chat on a great series of videos around things Microsoft and the workplace technology we now need everyday.
• I facilitated a great series of chats for AIDH and Cerner on Digital Health that I summarised here
• Mark LeBusque asked me on his Simply Practically Human podcast for a chat about leadership, thought leadership and change.

Work Ahead in 2022

In 2022, I expect a range of new adventure many of which will stretch me to learn new things and to grow in new and likely unexpected ways. The topics you can expect me to explore include:

• Growth and Strategy: particularly as I continue to work on growing the LanternPay health payments business
• Agency and Potential: how we enable others to realise their potential and exercise their agency. I still believe this is the path to better performance and sustainable change. In this topic lies my long promised and not yet started book.
• Relationships, Collaboration and Yammer: Old things are new again as Yammer plays a more prominent role in Microsoft Viva and as people realise that community is a missing part of their future of work strategy.
• Boundaries and Liminality: To succeed in a portfolio life, you need effective boundaries to shape focus and stay sane. Not there yet.
• Poetry: expect the poetry dropped through posts at random to continue. Another strategy to stay sane.

I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions and traumatic events that come with being alive. —Gregory Orr

— Gina Manola (she/her) (@GinaManola) December 20, 2021

Be safe. Follow the best public health advice you can get from experts. Enjoy the celebrations that bring a year to an end. Let’s do this all again in 2022.

The last two years have put us deeply into our own heads. We need to re-engage with the world and the relationships that the world brings, as difficult as that is in a continuing pandemic.

Headspace

Judgment is in the head somewhere; it keeps sums
Of pleasure and pain and gives belated warning;
This is the first place everybody comes
With bills, complaints, writs, summons, in the morning.

William Meredith, Thoughts on One’s Head

I did something unusual last weekend. I travelled to Adelaide to spend two days with friends and family at the Adelaide Test of the Ashes. After two years of isolation, there was something quite magical about one of the greatest cricket ovals in the world, the uneven pace of test cricket, the adventure of travel, the hum of crowds, and the banter of great company. At the end of two days I felt like a much newer human.

What made the difference? Getting out of my own head.

I felicitate the people who have a Person from Porlock   
To break up everything and throw it away
Because then there will be nothing to keep them   
And they need not stay.

Stevie Smith, Thoughts about the Person from Porlock

The last two years have been time for introspection, time for obsessions, time for anxieties and much more. They have not been easy and a source of all kinds of new and different stresses. What we have lacked most of all is the distraction of company and community. Sadly, our digital communities can substitute for the connection of physical gathering but they are often designed to reinforce our introspection, obsessions, anxieties and more. Their business models depend on our engagement.

Humans are social creatures. We need to be out of our own heads and in the world interacting with others with all the complexity and challenges that brings. We also need time outdoors whether that be sitting in the sun, walking through a different city or lying by the banks of the Torrens watching the Christmas party boats.

Of course, we need to stay safe. The group I travelled with were all vaccinated, we took care, followed the public health guidance and we wore masks. Safety can be a part of engaging with the wider world and resetting our heads.

Rue, Not Rage

Too much time in our own heads brings about an intensity of emotion. Our thoughts have nothing to feed off but other thoughts. We lose perspective and it can lead to the kind of intensity that brings on rage, unconstructive thinking and other negativities.

“Sit in the shade, / Look at the sky”

– Samuel Menashe pic.twitter.com/wXX5Ph5y93

— Maja Lukić (@majalukic113) December 18, 2021

We can all do with some time sitting in the shade staring at the sky and finding ways to convert our rage into other emotions. We can rue what is lost while still finding the presence of mind to engage with the here and now. Perspective comes from the world outside, not within our own heads.

A weekend away out in the world with company has helped me to better see my privileges, my opportunities and my challenges in a better light. None are diminished. They just sit in a more comfortable and at times more rueful relation to each other. For late 2021, deep in the second year and the fourth or fifth wave of a pandemic, that itself is an achievement.

Take yourself out into the world (armed with all the best public health protection). Sit in the shade of a glade somewhere. Leave the chats, tweets, socials and video calls for another day. Chat aimlessly with friends and strangers. Most importantly of all get out of your own head. Give yourself that break.

Welcome to the Expectancy! We understand it’s all due to be resolved shortly. Yes, we have been wrong before…Any minute now… Just wait.

— Simon Terry (@simongterry) December 8, 2021

We have always waited. Now in our post-lockdown phase of life as things return to their urgency, waiting has a new dynamic. We have entered the Expectancy.

How much of our life is waiting?

Research in the UK estimates between a year and five years waiting in queues alone. Americans spend 13 hours annually waiting for customer service. Anyone knows these kinds of stats are rubbish. They are projections off averages. We know the real answer is that we spend all of our life waiting.

I was waiting for something
to arrive. I didn’t know what.
Something buoyed, something
sun knocked. I placed my palms
up, little pads of butter, expecting.
All day, nothing.

Jane Wong, The Waiting

simplebeautifulthings pic.twitter.com/A5Q474CeZf

— White Owl (@white_owly) December 10, 2021

Waiting isn’t a task that is exclusive. We get on with things and we wait at the same time. Every minute we aren’t wholly absorbed in the present is waiting time. Waiting to wake up or go to bed. Waiting for a cup of coffee or toast. Waiting for that call or that email or that text. We live in the Expectancy because it has trained us to ever look forward and to calmly or wildly wait.

Waiting is our best achievement and our best excuse. Why hasn’t something happened? Well we are waiting for…[insert anything]. The more complicated our organisations and their process have become the greater the Expectancy’s grip on our lives. It’s just not possible to complete that until the end of the day, this sprint, another quarter or our next prioritisation.

Waiting is a solution.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

CP Cavafy, Waiting for the Barbarians

Overthrow the Expectancy

We have become so used to waiting that we hardly notice it happening any more. A pandemic slid into our readiness to wait and took hold. Lockdowns came and went. We waited for vaccines and test results. Our futures were delayed. Our tasks stretched out. We held on. We adapted to new time cycles. We added more waiting onto our lives full of the Expectancy. We started to become experts in the Rope-a-dope of waiting out the storms.

We need to overthrow the Expectancy. We need to rediscover Now.

Being present is the beginning. Making sure that this minute exists for us and we are here in it. The Expectancy will fight back. It will bring us things to wait for in every moment of the day. Our job is to be present enough to see them for the imposters they are.

But being present is not enough. We also need to start creating the lives we want now without waiting, without hoping others will bring it to us on a platter. They won’t. Owning our own actions is the start of us moving beyond waiting. Whatever we do today creates new options for tomorrow. Instead of waiting for gifts from the future, let’s plan to control our own options.

Out of your whole life give but one moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it, – so you ignore,
So you make perfect the present, – condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense –
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above me –
Me – sure that despite of time future, time past, –
This tick of our life-time’s one moment you love me!
How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet –
The moment eternal – just that and no more –
When ecstasy’s utmost we clutch at the core
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!

Robert Browning, Now

What if thought leadership is just a game played for the experience and the attention?

Last week on Twitter, I came across a discussion of NFTs as a potential online game. That discussion led to an intriguing analysis of the Qanon phenomenon in the US from a game designer. Reading the latter piece I could not miss the similarities to the practice of thought leadership.

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/simon-terry-thoughts-arent-leadership/id1465071720?i=1000544128526

I am critical of thought leadership as an abstract practice of influence. As I note in Mark LeBusque’s Simply Pratically Human podcast, much of that thought leadership has a bubblegum flavour, sweet and satisfying at first but ultimately bland and discarded. Thought leadership when practised at its most viral feels like a game. We see the characteristics of a game replicated in some of the common experiences of the genre.

Apophonia

So much of thought leadership depends on the connection between random things to build narratives of meaning. All the ex-post facto expositions of the value of strategies and actions that weren’t used are examples of this. Importantly, highly effective thought leadership often works because it sends people out in the world to make connections that aren’t there.

Eureka Effect

One reason that thought leaders rely so heavily on platitudes is that they want people to have the warm comfortable glow of recognition. Plus as you take your platitude out into the world you will discover lots of people that endorse it. Social proof is comforting.

Looking at the World Differently

If a thought leader can get you to see the world through their lens, then their influence grows. You will confirm the value of their vision as you go forward checking the world against their tests. Confirmation bias is real so there’s a great chance you will find what you looking for.

Proving what doesn’t exist

Pop psychology may have a reproduction crisis, but most good thought leadership is unfalsifiable. Try proving that it doesn’t work. The tests are either impossible or too complicated for the average person to be able to check.

A Knowing Inside Community in an Outside World

Thought leaders gain influence as the gain acolytes. It is therefore essential to distinguish the knowing inner community of followers from the wide world that has not yet realised the value of the thought leadership. The greater this distinction the more compelling the thought leader’s influence and the greater their ability to sustain a following. Stepping into some of the discussions from followers of common thought gurus can be an alienating experience. Harold Jarche has highlighted this in his discussion of ‘knights and mooks’.

The Payoff

Games have their rewards. For thought leaders the payoff is the ability to monetise their influence with a community of followers. There is always another book to sell, a course, a membership, or some next level of monetisation.

For that community, it can be an experience, a feeling of belonging, a sense of superiority or a degree of comfort that the world is more easily knowable and that success is more easily attainable. In large part the payoffs for followers are illusions, comforting illusions, but illusions nonetheless. What drives and sustains thought leadership industry is the returns to the thought leader and their facilitators.

Leading More than Thoughts

In a world that infinite scrolls on digital devices, it can feel comforting to be absorbed in compelling thoughts. Sharing these thoughts can reflect positively in one’s reputation and influence. However, leadership in our world demands more than thoughts. We need action and we need action at a collective scale. Entertainment will never take the place of real agency.

We are in desperate need of moving beyond stages, audiences, acclaim and all the other games. Let’s go and make changes to make this world a better place.

Most strategy fails for want of execution. However, under that lack of execution there are two related root causes, lack of differentiation and lack of focus. If your strategy does not feel crazy brave, you have to question hard whether you have one at all.

Differentiated

No organisation starts in the same poisition as another. Capabilities, funding, customers and markets all differ. Yet, so much of our strategic conversation is about following best practices, copying competitors and trying to match historical success stories from wildly unrelated circumstances.

None of this works. What works is a differentiated strategy that takes advantage of your unique organisation and its strengths. The real lesson of all those strategic case studies is that successful organisations developed their own path and relentless executed against that even when everyone thought they were wrong.

If you are doing the commonly accepted thing in your industry to succeed, then you aren’t trying hard enough. Attackers need different strategies. Copying the leader is just ensuring you end in second place.

Focused

Too many strategies I see have the nub of something differentiated but then they hedge their bets. Instead of focus on what would make them unique, the organisation throws in what everyone else does just in case.

Every minute you aren’t executing against your unique strategic advantage you are losing. You are playing someone else’s game and that’s exactly what they want.

If the difference is between losing in 2 years trying your own strategy and losing in 4 years hedging your bets was it worthwhile? You have just taken longer to learn what does not work.

Crazy Brave

Differentiated and focused strategies work. They work because they are unique and clear enough to drive unusual levels of engagement in employees. They are unique and clear enough that people can decide what to do and what not to do. What not to do is as important to strategic success as what to do. Unique and clear strategies attract those employees who want to make a difference in the ways you want to make a difference. These things get lost in strategies that are all encompassing and me too.

The best differentiated and focused strategies are seen by others as likely to fail. If your industry thinks what you are doing is crazy brave, then it is a really good signal. Nobody will be copying your plans until it is too late. Most likely it means that others can’t see your advantages or understand how you can execute them to advantage. Often it means your measures of performance success aren’t on their radar deepening your competitive advantages.

If your strategy is risk free, then are you differentiated or focused enough to succeed? If you can’t see the risk, you will lack the energy and the decision making to consistently deliver execution that differentiates your performance.

Change agents often struggle during the process of bringing about transformation. The process of facilitating change is one that requires a great deal of individuals and ongoing effort across a wide range of stakeholders.

What makes this process hard is that many principles of change sit in contrast to change agent’s initial naïve enthusiasm and some of the key principles of change thought leadership. Things just don’t work the way you expect. From the battlefields of my career in change, here are my somewhat counterintuitive principles.

1. Every time you want someone else to change check that you don’t need to change yourself first: Some times change isn’t required. You might be the issue. Some systems won’t change you might need to move systems. Some times you need to be the first person to change.
2. Those aren’t flaws. The system is working as intended: It is obvious to you that this is wrong and things need to change. That’s not the case for everyone. The errors and flaws you see aren’t accidents. People choose to let those things happen. Some are even deliberate trade-offs.
3. The change wouldn’t be possible without you but you are much less important than you think to the change required: You might have spotted the need for change. You might be the champion of the need for change. Despite all that others need to join you to make the change come to life. Your contributions and your ego aren’t at all important in the end.
4. Some change is better than no change: You are so excited about the potential. You have worked so hard. Get something for your efforts even if it is soul crushingly disappointing. Some times real change takes multiple efforts of incremental change.
5. No change happens in meetings, PowerPoint, change templates or the mind of leaders: The path of many change initiatives is very familiar. You can see it in Kotter’s 8 steps. Those domains might be where you need to do a lot of work to be allowed to make change. That is not where the change happens. Change happens when people do things differently.
6. You have to meet every standard. Your opponents have to meet none and need to find only one flaw. You won’t be perfect: Opponents of change have an easy job. They just need to delay. They don’t have to meet the standards you meet. They don’t have to act or respond or work at anything. They just delay. You will be delayed.
7. Resistance is Success: You want people to push back. You need people to push back. Tension helps change. If nobody pushes back then nothing is changing. Resistance tells you that the change is biting and also what you need to do next.
8. You need a perfect rational case for change but it is your emotional case that matters: The people asking you for a business case or a risk assessment haven’t bought in emotionally yet. If they had, they would wave you through.
9. You can’t do it alone, but you can’t do it with everyone either: If you want to be loved do something else. Not everyone will get on board. You don’t need everyone (see Resistance above) and that might well include the CEO or the Executive team. You need enough of the right people to change behaviours.
10. You don’t understand the change until someone else describes to you the simple different behaviours after the change: Your nose is pinned to the pane of glass. You can see the glory on the other side. You are too close to the problem, too deep in the change and its worst exponent. Your glorious communication documents and your high falutin’ concepts are in your way. You need someone to tell you the simple behaviours after. When you have that change can start.
11. Bonus general life principle: Failure is a Success: It is. They get to choose. You get to learn.

I hope this list helps one other person survive, foster, accelerate or even develop their change. I hope some of these principles help unravel the confusion and sustain resilience. Change is hard but incredibly worthwhile. Making a difference as a change agent is incredibly rewarding.

Life has lived us for the last two years. Now we need to live our lives again. We will face and embrace new uncertainties.

At the end of last year’s series of lockdowns in Melbourne, I wrote a post about how we need to take up the mantle of creating our own change as we emerge from our liminal state. We need to reconsider our five boundaries as we set our projects for the years ahead.

You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.

Heraclitus

We now move out of lockdown again and we find that we can’t step back into our old rivers of activities. The world has changed through time and new challenges. We cannot even go back to who we are.

A Changed River

Many friends and colleagues are reporting a strange mix of emotions as we return to the world in flux. First, it feels as if our social skills have atrophied. We need to learn again to manage our many and diverse relationships, including the most challenging of all, the casual contacts that vanished from our lives over the last two years. Second, we have the shifting sands of what spaces and places that feel comfortable and safe. We move through the world with new and different practices and anxieties.

Lastly, our work, life and adventures is back, bigger, bolder and more challenging than ever as we race to the end of the year, unravel the losses of the last two years and adjust to the ever changing world. We have old habits and practices to restore and some better habits and practices of the last two years to sustain. The flux of life brings forth new choices and adventures even when we may not want any choice all.

when I am perfect, undone
by hope when hope will not
listen, the moon wasting
to where I need not worry

Afaa Michael Weaver, Flux

A New Us

Clumsy at first, fitting together
the years we have been apart,
and the ways.

Wendell Berry, Kentucky River Junction

The hardest part to grapple with in all this new flux is that we have changed. Every one of us is someone new in this time. Normally change happens gradually and we don’t notice the flux. However, the boundary between lockdown and not lockdown makes the point of transition more dramatic. This moment of reassessment, on top of far too much time for reflection, makes this point of change more evident.

Reassessment has become a theme with people discussing the Great Resignation or perhaps the Great Opportunity. At a personal level the world presents us more choices. We are confronted more often with a chance to exercise our agency.

We don’t often like to consider our agency, our personality and identity in flux. Many people go out of their way to avoid that experience in a lifetime. Perhaps we can find in our many current social ructions push back against even the possibility of flux.

Flux is not going away at a societal or a personal level. The river moves on and moves ever faster. We can only embrace the uncertainties and the discomfort. We need to support each other through these challenges of adaptation to flux. Most importantly of all we need to understand these are our choices, our actions and our communities. The work is making rafts in the flow of the river, piloting our way through the stream and building community as we travel along.

So we need to let go of old questions like “How can I get back to where I was?” and “When are you coming back?” and lean into newer more challenging questions like “What’s the right thing to do next?”. “Who do I need helping now?” and “How do we make a difference that matters?”

The light

above a neighbor’s porch
will be a test of how we tolerate
the half-illumination

of uncertainty, a glow
that’s argument to shadow.
Or if not that, we’ll write an essay

on the stutter of the bulb,
the little glimmering that goes
before the absolute of night.

Jehanne Dubrow, Syllabus for the Dark Ahead

The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to his love.

We don’t want work. Work is the compromise to pursue our true passions. Some times that compromise is small. Mostly, our compromises overwhelm us.

Our lives, our careers and our financial position are often centred and dominated by work. We pretend for furtherance of that work and its consequences that the work is what we love. Actually, we don’t. We want to be happy and love what we do every day. That is a passion, not work.

Passions aren’t defined by the role purpose statement, the performance scorecard or the benefits package. Passions are defined by different characteristics: Love, Purpose, Generosity, Creation, Exploration, Discovery, Community, Hope and much more. Passions are big bold abstract ideas with a meaning in real definable human relationships.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin, Aubade

Passions aren’t offered to us. They come from within and lead us without. We discover and nurture them so that we can take them out into the world to others. The rewards of our passions come back to us from all the others they embrace. Passions fill us up with emotions, address our yearnings, and make us complete.

Passions aren’t written on pieces of paper. They mean something to us and to the others who matter to us. Something from nothing. Something bigger than us. Something for others. Something enduring. Something we can share.

Now that I know
How passion warms little
Of flesh in the mould,
And treasure is brittle,—

I’ll lie here and learn
How, over their ground,
Trees make a long shadow
And a light sound.

Louise Bogan, Knowledge

Passions don’t fit the mould. They don’t fit in boxes or org charts or neat process diagrams. Taking energy and making energy, they are messy and combustible. Passions grow and fail. Passions suck others in or send them spinning away out into the world. Whatever they are, we can’t sit still in their grip or we fail the test of purposeful positive urgency that defines them.

Passions are precious. We may not find them often. When we do, we must cling tight and invite others to share them. There is nothing sadder than abandoning a passion before its course is run.

Work will always be at best a proxy for our passions. For many work is a distraction from what matters to their heart. We need to find ways to let passions run in and through our work. Before work takes over everything else.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

Anne Sexton, The Truth the Dead Know