Shel Silverstein - Magic

I absolutely adore Shel Silverstein!  I guess his poems are written for children, but his wisdom is universal and so beautifully accessible.  He is whimsical and light and sweet, while he often deals with challenging subjects.  I loved reading his books to my sons when they were young, and then to my grandchildren in more recent years.  But I’ve also used some of his poems in speeches on leadership topics and for life lessons among friends.  He has a lovely ability to touch that special note of lightness and fun and then end with something serious or really important---an unexpected twist.  And his books are filled with his drawings that are crazy and funky, so even if the subject is a hard one, the drawing makes it seem lighter so the message can be delivered without a glancing blow.  Children get that; adults often need that too. 

You can tell by all this that he truly is one of my very favorites.  And, having said that, I cannot choose only one poem.  Many of his poems are quite short anyway.  So, here is my very carefully selected version of the best of Shel Silverstein, curated for what I hope will tap your interests at this point in your journey.  I do wish that you enjoy these delicious poems.

Magic

Sandra’s seen a leprechaun,

Eddie’s touched a troll,

Laurie danced with witches once,

Charlie found some goblins’ gold.

Donald heard a mermaid sing,

Susy spied an elf,

But all the magic I have known

I’ve had to make myself.

MAGIC CARPET

You have a magic carpet

That will whiz you through the air,

To Spain or Maine or Africa

If you just tell it where.

So will you let it take you

Where you’ve never been before,

Or will you buy some drapes to match

And use it

On your

Floor?

THE VOICE

There is a voice inside of you

That whispers all day long,

“I feel that this is right for me,

I know that this is wrong.”

No teacher, preacher, parent, friend

Or wise man can decide

What’s right for you---just listen to

The voice that speaks inside.

THREE STINGS

George got stung by a bee and said,

“I wouldn’t have got stung if I’d stayed in bed.”

Fred got stung and we heard him roar,

“What am I being punished for.”

Lew got stung and we heard him say,

“I learned somethin’ about bees today.”

TIRED

I’ve been working so hard you just wouldn’t believe,

And I’m tired!

There’s so little time and so much to achieve,

And I’m tired!

I’ve been lying here holding the grass in its place,

Pressing a leaf with the side of my face,

Tasting the apples to see if they’re sweet,

Counting the toes on a centipede’s feet.

I’ve been memorizing the shape of that cloud,

Warning the robins to not chirp so loud,

Shooing the butterflies off the tomatoes,

Keeping an eye out for floods and tornadoes.

I’ve been supervising the work of the ants

And thinking of pruning the cantaloupe plants,

Timing the sun to see what time it sets,

Calling the fish to swim into my nets,

And I’ve taken twelve thousand and forty-one breaths,

And I’m TIRED!

Rumi - The Guest House

Jelalludin Rumi was a 12th century Persian poet who was raised Muslim in the mystical Sufi tradition.  He had a certain following during his lifetime but has had an amazing re-birth of interest and almost reverence recently.  So much so that he is the largest selling poet in the United States. 

Some of the people who have translated his works seem, to me, to create rather murky sounding poems; others almost present a slangish style.  I like this poem both for the quality of the translation which feels respectful and honest and for the message that resonates with me. 

I’ve had occasion this week to remind a dear friend of the value of Garth Brooks’ song “Thank God for Unanswered Prayers” and, oddly enough, this poem caused me to think of that again.  Not all things that enter our lives are pleasant, that’s a certainty!  But some of the most difficult events or incidents turn out to be just what we need to wake us up to a more important reality or some other truth that we might have been avoiding or simply not seeing as we doggedly pursued a path that we felt sure was the right one.   

I definitely don’t wish a “crowd of sorrows” on anyone.  But having experienced such visitors in my own life, I know that there is often more than sorrow to be experienced and learned.  It’s often not until this particular ‘guest’ leaves that it’s possible to realize what else there was of value in the painful or difficult time.

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent,
As a guide from beyond.

A.R. Ammons - Corson's Inlet

This poet, A.R. Ammons, is a treasure! I discovered him way too late in my life but have been playing catchup for the past 12 years. And the joy I have derived from that work has been enormous!

This is a gentle man. I am attaching a YouTube audio of him reading one of his very famous poems Corson’s Inlet, so you can hear him recite it in his lilting southern accent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDwfdNT-ym4

Much of his poetry is based in nature---at least the poems that have resonated strongly with me have seemed that way. And Corson’s Inlet is a perfectly lovely example of that. But he brings so much more than merely gorgeous words about the natural world to his poetry. He manages to entwine a spiritual element, it seems to me, that isn’t sappy or preachy but strikes me as solid and also paradoxical. It’s really amazing.

The way he sees the world is completely lovely, even when he’s describing things decaying----entropy. This is because his connection to life and all its stages is his purpose, not any need to paint ugly or shameful.

So, even though Corson’s Inlet is a completely wonderful poem, and I hope it will resonate with you and fill your heart with delight, I am also including another of his poems as a special treat. This one is entitled “STILL”. In this, he is a seeker, trying to look deeply to find something of real worth to put himself into. Is he looking for external validation? Is that what you read in this poem? I’m not sure about this----I’ve used it in many of my classes in Leadership to spark discussions----what does it say, if anything, to you? I don’t think there’s a definitive answer to this question---and that makes it a great jumping off place for conversation and personal musings. Is this a hopeful poem, after all? (https://poets.org/poem/still)

I hope you enjoy this poem and perhaps seek out more of A.R. Ammons poetry. I think he’s a gem!

I Love Poetry - Marge Piercy

I’ve always loved poetry. I memorized all the typical ones when I was younger…

“I think that I shall never see A poem lively as a tree . . . . “

Joyce Kilmer, TREES

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works ye Mighty and despair!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley, OZYMANDIAS

“I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils;”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, DAFFODILS

“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

So, like many of my peers, Kilmer, Shelley, Wordsworth and Shakespeare were trusted and happy companions in my youth. But I’ve found other poets more recently that I’d like to share with you.

One of my very favorites is Marge Piercy. My Blog about Perpetual Migration was strongly influenced by her poem of that name. Piercy is an American poet, novelist and activist. I went to the 92nd Street Y in New York City about 10 years ago to hear her speak. The day was cold and stormy. I took the train from New Haven CT into the city. My life was extremely busy at that time and I had not one spare moment to make this trip, but it seemed like a very important thing for me to do since I had recently discovered her poetry and had really been affected by her words. So . . . off I went. When I got there, the place was crowded; I can’t recall if there were reserved seats or not. In any case, I found a seat. And in a few minutes this little woman with long black hair walked quietly onto the stage. No fanfare---not even a proper introduction even. And she sat down in the chair that was waiting in the middle of the stage. Some person came along and sat in the other chair and the audience erupted in applause and people finally realized that the little person was Marge Piercy.

The other person proceeded to ask interview questions to draw Marge out. Truthfully, there was no need to try to draw her out---she was extremely forthcoming and candid. And charming, and funny and self-effacing. She talked a lot about her life---and that is quite a story indeed! Much of her experiences have found their way into her poetry. Her strong feminist poems, her discovery or re-discovery of her Jewish roots, her adamant rejection of women being ignored and/or disempowered, her delight in the natural world, the seasons, life on Cape Cod, and her cats; and her sensual and deep love for her husband Woody.

So, Marge Piercy is someone that I strongly recommend to you as a human being and as an author (she’s also written several novels, none of which I’ve read as yet---I can’t seem to get beyond her poetry), and as a poet. She is someone who has lived a complex but full life, and made a life on her terms. She is a real person---completely real---and accessible. When I initially wanted to include her poem The Perpetual Migration in my website because it had made such a profound impression on me during my own journey, I emailed her and asked her permission. She responded the very next day saying she thought it was a fine idea but it was the publishers who needed to give their permission. That began several weeks of correspondence with 2 or 3 different publishers who needed to check with lawyers and while they were all very nice, no one ever said yes. I finally just gave up and decided I would simply direct anyone who was interested to the YouTube video in which Marge recites that poem. Hearing her voice is particularly personal for this poem. And it seems to me that YouTube makes it in the public domain. So, here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZYEggLFiYo

Perpetual Migration

Some of the people who are drawn to this website are those who, perhaps, have not entirely identified it for themselves, but are engaged in some form of perpetual migration. What I mean by that term is that when they make changes in their lives, they do it in ways that seem, at least some, to be more than transitions. I think of transitions as somewhat episodic and disjointed---changes without a real flow from a prior place to the new place. When I talk of migration, I mean movement and development with a purpose, even if that purpose isn’t entirely clear to the mover. The migration I’m talking about comes from a deep-seated place that calls the mover to make a change in their lives---and this change sometimes looks like its off-the-wall to friends and family but it feels solid to the maker.

If these people---these perpetual migrators---aren’t supported in their development, they can become confused, unsure of that which they feel sure of; they can lack confidence in their deep sense of rightness; they can be dissuaded and pulled off course because others don’t see that there IS a course. This can cause people to choose a path that appears safe but is often a wrong turn or misplaced energy; they can settle for something that promises to deliver a form of security but often just provides mediocrity and feelings of being stifled and undervalued.

I know this course because I’ve lived it. It has often afforded me an interesting if challenging life. I’ve entered more U-turns than I care to remember, but they usually managed to help me eventually find a better path to a clearer way forward. The people I met along the way were either incredibly helpful or alarmingly hazardous. Fortunately, the helpful ones far outnumbered the dangerous ones, and I came to be able to recognize hazardous ones before they caused me real harm or, better still, before I allowed them into my life at all---- VERY VALUABLE lessons to learn!

After multiple migrations, my most recent ones have reinforced my intellect, my experience and my ability to make a valuable contribution in the world. I am proud of my sons and their families, as well as the work I ‘ve done and that I hope to continue doing. And I’m looking forward to helping perpetual migrators and other interested people to navigate these complicated waters so they can arrive at places of substantial value, contribution, respect, and satisfaction.

If it seems as though you might be a perpetual migrator or an interested other, I invite you to contact me and together we can see if there is synergy between us that will serve to help you create the navigation plan that will lead you to the next place on your migrating journey.

You Can Re-write Your Own Origin Story

Dear Friend,

Stories of superheroes and goddesses often begin with an insight and then a realization followed by a decision to take back power and re-imagine who they were meant to be. That got me thinking---we can do that too!

Whatever happened that formed us as children, that other people did to us or with us or for us, good or not so good, influenced us; but we can choose not to let it control us now. Decisions that we make as younger versions of ourselves fall into that same category. These decisions may have built a foundation for ourselves that doesn’t need to be all that defines us for the future. We can always re-emerge as a new/different version of ourselves. We have in the past. We grew and developed from a toddler to a school-aged child to a teenager to an adult---those were all stages of maturity that held versions of us but hopefully with increasing intelligence, confidence, empathy, and knowledge of the world and our place in it. We learned valuable lessons from each stage that helped us to navigate to the next phase. So, we are familiar with these passages---it’s just that once we reach adulthood, we have more or seek more control over what we choose and prefer as we change.

From our grown-up viewpoint, the end of each phase can morph into a place where we begin to imagine our next origin story. What are the passions, ideas, challenges, desires, and wishes we think will accompany us into the next stage of our life? What will be satisfying? What do we want to accomplish? Where does love fit into this story? What gives us joy and delight? What do we want to learn about ourselves and others? What is it we believe we can contribute, understanding that this may be where surprise enters the picture?

Sometimes we want to move in this direction but feel too pulled by our other responsibilities to do it. If this is so, it’s valuable to work on believing that we’re as important as our other responsibilities, and we’ll be able to give more to others if we learn to care for ourselves and keep our own story current first.

Transition places are often rich in commotion. The act of becoming a new version of ourselves, whether remarkable or lesser in scope, demands extraordinary effort, focus, determination, and response to whatever inducements are prompting this change. For some people that transition struggle is visible, like a sword being wrenched from the hand of some force in a dream. For others, the effort is no less arduous, it just takes place on an internal sphere, hidden from prying or sympathetic eyes. Both challenges to become the newest version of ourselves require courage, confidence, and fortitude.

So, how do we know when we’re ready to take this on? When is the right time? This is where we need to learn to trust our inner knowing. When does it feel right? And what is the change that we’re moving toward? What does our honest self tell us about what’s best for us at this exact moment? I don’t have a slick answer for this. The usual responses direct us to meditation, yoga, and spending time in quiet practices to shut out the noise and get in tune with our authentic selves. I agree with this. It’s not slick but rather honest and demands attention and real intention on our part. We need to learn to trust ourselves and develop that part of ourselves that cares enough about our well-being to nurture and keep us.

Then we can choose to emerge as a new/next version of ourselves offering gifts that we may have been too shy or self-conscious or fearful to give in the past. We can choose to continue to provide better self-care, and support others in their endeavors to do the same. And we can live that journey until we are called to re-imagine our next version of ourselves---until we feel that familiar unease or imbalance that forces us to wonder what else there is for us to learn or make or contribute or become. We can continue to grow and change and question and develop---and re-write our origin story as a new chapter . . . . . .

If we get confused or feel too challenged by any of these re-imaginings, we can always find a friend, a coach, to help us sort out our feelings and set ourselves back to heart intention and nurturing our soul.

Can One Bad Apple Really Spoil the Bushel?

Well . . . it turns out that it can - from a biological/botanical perspective anyway. But does that metaphor apply to the workplace?

It seems that there’s reason to be very cautious about casually allowing people with bad attitudes to enter and remain in a workplace. Consider the following stats from LeadershipIQ:

• 87% of employees say that they have wanted to change jobs while working with someone who had a terrible attitude

• 93% of workers say they’re less productive when they work with folks who have poor attitudes

• 89% of new hires who fail within 18 months lose their jobs not because of their performance, but because of their attitude issues.

If these people are poor performers terminating their employment may not be a difficult decision. But what if they are high performers working with bad apples? Is it worth it to risk the loss of high performers who work for or with these people with poor attitudes that can very negatively impact others? Even if the bad apple IS a high performer, the risk to the entire company is the same and the remedy should be the same—-remove them before their bad attitude can impact everyone.

Just like real apples, these people manage to infect those around them with the venom of their negativity, their complaining, their bullying, their gossiping, their spreading of untruths, their lack of support for company values - and on and on. The least negative thing that happens is that other people lose their enthusiasm, their engagement lessens, and their team spirit is reduced. They show up in body but the spirit that made them valuable employees dissipates. The worst thing that can happen is that they leave the company altogether, and are replaced by workers who find the toxic atmosphere to their liking. Then the negativity takes hold more dynamically and the entire company is in danger of being taken down by it - eventually.

So . . . what could be done to counteract this difficult situation? There are many things. Number 1 is that the initial Leader would understand the threat at the outset and remove the first negative person, thus restoring the company to its historical balance. However, the learning from this event ought to be that there had been an invasion - someone had been hired who would never have meshed with the values of the company; and how had that happened? Perhaps it would be time to re-evaluate hiring practices. Or, 2 - create a Task Force of multi-level employees to review existing hiring practices, the company mission and values, and present initial options for more in-depth discussion at a Town Hall type meeting, to involve a broader range of employees in this issue. All it takes is one bad apple, unidentified as such, to eventually ruin a fine organization that’s not alert enough to foresee the danger and deal with it effectively.

Embracing Your Incompetence

I love Seth Godin. I subscribe to his Blog and read it daily. His contribution to the world of thinking is enormous, and I treasure it, in all its many forms. Every once in a while, something he writes particularly catches my fancy and causes me to actually want to respond. I’ve recently had just such an experience.

I am of an age and gender that was told---both directly in a classroom (I can still feel the terrible embarrassment and shame as my sincere attempt at what I thought was higher math was met with ridicule by my very unhelpful/unkind 3rd grade teacher---UGH!) and indirectly by society that girls weren’t good at math. So, I proceeded to fulfill that prophesy and develop a painful math-phobia. To this day numbers scare me---I just don’t trust them, or deal with them.

Despite that, I managed to pass multiplication and fractions in grammar school---YIIIPPPEEEE! I succeeded with Algebra I and II in high school, plus Geometry--- but going beyond that was not for me! When I needed to calculate the dosages of medications in nursing school, I was totally frightened, but managed to figure that out---with a great deal of help from classmates and support from much more accommodating faculty. After all, lives were on the line there! I even passed statistics during my graduate work---which totally amazed me. Just don’t ask me anything about Stat now---it went into short-term memory only long enough for me to need it!

Like most people, I’ve learned to function in the world where numbers are concerned. If I really wanted to, I could manually balance a checkbook. But it’s so much easier to let the bank and automation do it for me, as long as I keep track of what I’m spending---OK, so I keep up my end pretty well. I can manage budgets for projects in business. I use technology to help me as much as I can, without getting crazy with spreadsheets---that feels too much like math again, and it puts me right back in the 3rd grade with that terrible teacher---a place I never like to remember!

So really, anything that has to do with numbers would generally be something I would shy away from---EXCEPT when it comes to analyzing stuff. I love trying to make sense of the numbers so I can put them into a word picture that then makes even more sense to me. I know that numbers pictures can be useful all by themselves, but TO ME it’s the words that hold the greatest power. So even though I fear and shy away from numbers, I’ve figured out how to make peace with them. I guess I’m not interested enough in them to become competent in using them or learning how best to manipulate them or best use analytics---other people are far better at that than I am. But once the picture of the numbers is created, and I can see clearly how the raw numbers created that/those views, I can use my word skills to take it from there.

Now, back to Seth Godin’s Blog about Embracing Your Incompetence (#embraceyourincompetence). I say ABSOLUTELY!!!!! There are many areas where many of us don’t have the “commitment, time or skill to become exceptional.” I, for one, am not the least bit interested in becoming any more skilled with numbers than I am at this moment. But I am deliriously happy to work with others who find numbers and analytics to be their passion. In fact, that kind of collaboration is exceptionally powerful and satisfying! And I’ve discovered that there’s something truly magical that happens when I’m working in that way. Without even realizing it, I come away with just a bit more understanding about how the numbers work; and sometimes my collaborators detect new ways to see how the words augment the numbers picture.

And, for me, it all happens without that awful 3rd grade memory---I remain a competent adult with gifts to offer and skills to share.

I’ll embrace that experience every single day!

(www.sethgodin.com)