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Living
On Purpose:
Landscapes of the Soul
by Dawna Markova, Ph.D. |
"Is the life I’m living the
life that wants to live in me?" ~Parker Palmer
If you took a blue spruce tree and planted it in the
desert, it would obviously perish. How do we forget that
we too are living systems, and each of us have unique
environments, needs, and conditions within which we
flourish or wither?
~~~~~
I am in a group listening to Dee Hock, a founder of
the Visa corporation in Wellington, New Zealand. He
stands in the center of a circle of native Maori people
and business leaders, saying, " It doesn’t matter
so much who we have been to each other historically. The
only questions that really matter are, ‘ Who are you
becoming?’ and ‘What kind of a world are we leaving
for all of our grandchildren?’ His words move like a
fire across all of our hearts. Silence gathers in the
room and hovers. I wonder, How do I even dare begin to
think about those questions without feeling despair?
Two years later, I am walking along the ocean’s
edge at dawn, in Santa Barbara, California. I am walking
behind Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese teacher, poet, and
monk. He wears a loose brown jacket and pants, with a
brown knitted hat pulled down over his tea-cup ears. A
thousand others walk behind him, a herd of strangers
when we start, a flock that fans out slowly along the
sandy cliffs, an undulating school of us, following this
one small man who breathes in rhythm with the ocean, in
and out, where the shoreline meets the sea.
Each of his feet, encased in wooden-soled clogs
presses slowly into the wet sand of the beach,
synchronized with both the waves and his breath, leaving
momentary emblems of his presence. Then they are washed
away.
Joggers bounce by in the opposite direction, staring.
Seaweed tangles around my ankles. Black globs of oil
wash ashore from the derricks on the horizon. Two
thousand feet follow his, in no obvious order, all in
rhyme with breath and tide.
I breathe to carry myself across the void which I so
meticulously avoid, the tiny black holes in my mind
where there is nothing. No place to go, nothing to do,
to have, or to be.
Someone brings a small brass bell out of a pocket and
strikes it gently. He stops. We all stop. I feel
something pulsing in both feet. Blood. The river of my
life standing in the ocean. My periphery widens, the
emptiness opens. I settle down into myself.
And it is enough. The seaweed, the runners, the sea
gulls floating by, the thousand people standing still on
a beach in Santa Barbara, breathing with a small man
dressed in brown, breathing with the waves, under the
bluegray sky that holds the clouds, the mind that holds
the thoughts, that holds us all, that holds me.
Hours later, while we sit listening to him in a
drafty sports arena, he says, "I walk for you.
Every day. When you are lost in chaos or despair, I will
be walking in peace and harmony some place in the world.
You can know that I am walking for you."
Meanwhile, the other monks and nuns placed small
turquoise paper circles in our sandals that were lined
up neatly outside. Each one said the same thing: "I
walk for you."
I’m sure he is walking for me now, months later, as
I sit rocking in this cabin, thinking about what kind of
environment I need in order to return to the world of
needs and demands without losing myself or my sense of
purpose. What are the conditions that will help me to be
as I was with those thousand people, a part of the
community, and yet apart from the community? How do I
stay true to myself? How do I stay aligned with the
natural rhythms that nurture my body and soul? How do I
help create a community of connection rather than
fragmentation? How do I live in a way that brings out
the best of who I am?
I float in the space between my questions. I know
they can’t be answered. I need to ask them, again and
again, to use them to find my way on this path. I rock
in wonder at this sweet and peaceful moment when the
aspen trees all around me now, blaze greengold in the
late afternoon light. They are such a wonder, connected
by invisible roots, yet separate as they emerge from the
soil, reaching, thrusting themselves into this
impossibly wide blue-violet sky that holds everything in
its embrace.
I rock here thinking of the invisible roots that
connect me even now when I am alone to a community
larger than I can even imagine. The deeper I go into
myself, the more interconnected I realize I really am. I
rock in the peace of this moment for who I have been
when life was only a long trail of tears, and for who I
will be again when I forget what really matters. I rock
for my son and the daughter of my heart. I rock for my
grandmother, for my adopted granddaughter, for the
mother in China who had to abandon her. I rock for Dee’s
grandchildren. I rock for my father who beat me. And I
rock for my husband who has such exquisitely clean
hands. I rock in the wide serenity of this clear
afternoon for all who are in offices under fluorescent
lights, tangled in traffic, or trapped in the agony of
conflict. I rock for those of us entombed in numbness
and despair.
~~~~
If you took a blue spruce tree and planted it in the
desert, it would obviously perish. How do we forget that
we too are living systems, and each of us have unique
environments, needs, and conditions within which we
flourish or wither?
~~~~
Recently I read of an experiment where a scientist
raised some baby fish in a small glass tank, which was
inside a larger tank that held with adult fish. The
little fish in the smaller tank could see the fish in
the larger tank, but because of the glass barrier could
not swim out. Once the small fish had grown up, the
researcher removed the glass walls of the small tank so
that they could swim out. But instead they stopped at
the exact place that used to be their walls. The habit
and memory of the edge of their world was more real to
them than the freedom that was possible now that the
glass had been removed.
Like these fish, we’ve been accustomed to swimming
in a limited environment, convinced that this is the
only way we can survive. We don’t have to accept the
environments that have been given to us, however. We can
give ourselves much more space to expand by asking
ourselves what the conditions are that bring out the
best in us.
Since we can only feel fulfilled when we are sharing
our gifts in community, purpose insists that we be
connected to both the interior and the exterior world.
But, but, but…how can this be possible? How can we
support both our inner and outer lives? For so many of
us, living with an external orientation has become a
deeply ingrained habit. Our culture insists we
compartmentalize our inner life, wall it off behind the
technical skills necessary to manage "out
there."
But, as Annie Dillard writes, "If you go far
enough inward, you find ‘the unified field,’ our
complex and inexplicable caring for each other and for
our life together." On the beach in Santa Barbara,
I found this to be more than some abstract idea. Turning
inward, I found myself in a place that was beyond ego,
beyond even the notion of "I." I found myself
caring and connected to what Parker Palmer calls
"the community we share beneath the broken surface
of our lives."
What are the living conditions that empower us
instead of imprison us? What are the "no matter
whats" in our environment that we need to grow an
authentic and generous life? What I share here now is as
illustration, since it is only true for me. Because we
are each unique living systems, each of us has a unique
environment in which we flourish. But it is my hope that
reading my "no matter whats" will help you tap
into your own:
No matter what, I need to be living and working in a
spacious natural environment that encourages me to
expand. Since my habit is to contract in uncertainty,
and since uncertainty is the soup of modern life, I can
most easily remind myself to expand when I am surrounded
by a wide horizon.
No matter what, I need to be moving at a rhythm that
allows my body, soul, and heart to be in alignment.
No matter what, I need to work both as a part of and
apart from the larger community. I need to work with my
family. Work has meant dividing me from them for so many
years. Now I need work to unify us, to join us in the
task of bringing shining and useful things to the larger
community.
No matter what, I need a balance of language, images,
and lavish silence, so I can be guided by the inner
voice of my intuitive mind, and balance insight and
outreach. I need the space to think thoughts all the way
through until they open into wonder.
No matter what, I need a human atmosphere that
constantly challenges me to be sane, thoughtful,
wholesome, and present in the moment. If I am not
present, there can be no meaning. If I am, everything I
do has meaning.
No matter what, I need to be living and working in an
environment that stimulates, pleases, and enlivens my
physical being.
No matter what, I need to work in a climate that is
interdependent, where the norm encourages us to use each
other’s strengths so no one of us has to carry more
than our part.
And lastly, no matter what, I need to work in a
creative atmosphere that encourages us to let die what
is finished and foster new life that is trying to
emerge.
Now it’s your turn, dear reader. What are the
influences, activities, and people that cause you to
shine? What is a metaphor you would use to describe the
environment that fosters your wisdom, and helps you to
bring the best that is in you out to the rest of us who
are waiting? What are the circumstances? Are you at your
best inside of an organization or outside or with one
foot in and one foot out? Do you light up working alone,
in a team or both? Leading, following, or both?
May we all find the soil in which the seeds of our
dreams can germinate into lives that are lives that are
free of the limitations of our previous history, lives
that are full and warm and rich with amazement.
Excerpted by permission from I
Will Not Die An Unlived Life: Reclaiming Purpose and
Passion, Conari Press ©
2000. 800-685-9595
Dawna Markova, Ph.D., is
internationally know for her groundbreaking work in
helping people learn with passion and live on purpose.
She is the CEO of Professional Thinking Partners, Inc.,
cofounder of the Worldwide Women's Web, and former
research affiliate of the Organizational Learning Center
at MIT. Her books include I Will Not Die an Unlived
Life, The Open Mind, and No Enemies Within; An Unused
Intelligence, co-authored with her husband and business
partner, Andy Bryner; and How Your Child Is Smart and
Learning Unlimited, co-authored with Anne R. Powell. She
also co-edited Random Acts of Kindness and has been a frequent guest on National Public Radio.
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