Everything Else, a Poem from Peru May 9, 2008
Posted by Yvonne in Continuity of Source, Dynamics of Resistance, Evolution of We, Indirect Approach.add a comment
Recipe for a Curdled Family March 27, 2008
Posted by Yvonne in Evolution of We.Tags: family
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I heard back from both mom and one sister that they didn’t know where to start with the mathematical formua for a life, so I’m offering this option: You could also try it as a recipe, vis:
1 mom + 1 dad
1. Mix mom and dad liberally early, often, and with love and enthusiasm. This will begin to produce some of the brothers and sisters you will need for the step 3.
2. Continue the previous step as you can, but probably only on Sunday mornings for two hours while the first batch of kids are off to church and mom and dad have a bit of time to themselves. This will produce the rest of the brothers and sisters until you get a good amount.
Then several years later, when the youngest have grown to a not-easily breakable size and spirit:
1 empty refrigerator box
4 sisters + 3-4 brothers
3. Take all ingredients to the top of your nearest backyard hill. Open the ends of the box.
4. Place in box the largest of the brothers and sisters, then gently fit in the smaller ones around the edges. Make sure all limbs are mostly inside the ends of the box.
5. On a synchronized signal, mix the brothers and sisters well by starting the box rolling down the hill.
6. When the whole mess gets to the bottom, if there have been any sisters or brothers or body parts that have fallen out, collect them all, go back to the top of the hill and begin again.
Repeat from step 3. until laughter subsids or someone has a better idea. This could take most of a Saturday afternoon, but will produce a lovely curdled, if slightly bruised, family.
A Starting Mathematical Formula for My Life: YMB t2008_0326 v1 March 26, 2008
Posted by Yvonne in Distinctions.Tags: algebra, individuality, life, matching algorithms, mathematics, symbols
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Last Saturday I was taking a time out at the local Starbucks, just catching up on reading material from “The Folder”, (being currently a collection of obscure writings on action, language, language action, deadline busting, elliot waves, wise organizations, management practices, and a doctoral course), when entered a sprightly local mathemetician, whom I’d not yet met, to share the couch.
And a wonderful conversation ensued in which I was returned to my enthusiasm and joy for the topic of mathematics. A topic that although I do have a degreed specialization in, I didn’t quite take to a zenith … but I’ve a respectible library (including Dynamical Chaos, which i have read - at least a portion) and a brain that can actually follow and visualize the referred reality which proofs purport to prove. So it really is an area I dip into from time to time. Purely for enjoyment, that is.
Now, not quite a week later from that chai induced connection, I was updating my Professional (about) page here, and in doing so referenced a note from over dinner few weeks back when JW told me how he saw me professionally. He expressed that special combination of traits he perceived, which I happened to capture on a nearby scrap … as an equation.
Well of course, one thing led to another, and so here I am now with the (don’t try this at home) formula for a particular view of a “me” … vis,
[SF:{1/9 nuclear family + 14(dance + drama + music + art)} * {SoCal(mathematics/computer science)^systems + (5*systems:design, 5*business:project management)} + Berkeley{(2*manager:product dvlpmt, 3*consulting services manager:design/modeling tools, 3*entrepreneur:advisor, 10*consultant:facilitator)^(28*meditator) +SF(2.5*dialogue host) + Worldwide(6*transformational program participant)–>5*focus:BoostingBrilliantPeople}] ^female
= an insight generator, effective with groups, under pressure, and at any interface … with a listening that opens vast new territories for thinking and exploration … and an ability to call new creations into being.
I assure you that it didn’t start like this - the first rendition had only 5 terms and of course, the math is very simple - mostly arithmetic. Since Mom didn’t understand the notation, for clarification I offer: * means multiplied by, / means divided by, ^ used for the exponent, -> expresses yields, : indicates function of and here numbers are mostly years). So I’ve probably butchered the expressions of logic which I can’t quite remember or didn’t take the time to find proper symbols for. (Will definitely have to send the link on this post to MK for correction.)
I wonder: are there already in the world much more elegant or complex logics and algebras for documenting such interacting characteristics? Has anyone tried to document a particular life in a formula? How would I show the important influences in the train of my thinking such as the incident of meeting MK in the Starbucks?
In the title to this post, I just added “t” for time and “v” for version. Perhaps if we review the formula and refine it over time, we’ll have a few data points and can begin to discern pathways of development. Or maybe such a elemental expression of skills and interests can be used in some kind of matching function, for e.g. candidates and opportunities.
I’m curious what the formulas for my friends would look like. I’ve since sent this to my family and requested their various submittals (the other 8/9ths), wondering if we can put these together and somehow come up with 1 or a maybe even a predictive expression of “whither the next generation?” Maybe we’ll only get input from the analytic side of the family and then have an unbalanced view that excludes the artistic. We’ll have to stick a variable (alpha)in for the artistic side of the family. Maybe put a log on it for the pronounced influence of their undeclared status.
What would each person choose to highlight about their lives? Like all modeling exercises, something important is always left out - like that I really like a good cup of chai or that grandma taught me how to thread a needle.
So here’s a challenge for your spare time, exploration, and re-creation: create a mathematical formula that captures the important features of your life, or who you are professionally, or what your mix of interests are, or where you spent your time today … and be sure to indicate the meaning or function of the symbols by which the terms are related.
How You Know You’re Dead, Part 5 March 26, 2008
Posted by Yvonne in Distinctions.1 comment so far
Continuing from part 4 … this download came in the middle of Valentine’s Day night - when I was sooo present to life, really. It filled 25 little pages in my notebook (I was travelling otherwise it woulda gone right into the blog) and this is about half the items. More to come …
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When you look, you don’t see.
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The scenery never changes.
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The soft parts of you are really hard to find.
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Your peripheral vision yields little new information.
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Darkness is just fine with you.
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Noone hears your voice, and you don’t really hear anyone else’s voice either.
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Days of the week are indistinct.
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You are neither warmer nor coller than you were yesterday.
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The future is quitepredictable.
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Singing is pretty much out of the question.
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Children fail to inspire you.
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The coffee just doesn’t do it for you anymore.
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You can’t get it up.
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You have the same hairdo year after year.
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The color scheme at your place never changes.
Success Factors for Implementing Change February 22, 2008
Posted by Yvonne in Dynamics of Resistance, Frameworks and Focus, Power of Dialogue.add a comment
A friend asked this question via LinkedIn :
Question Details:
——————–
How do you implement changes with 100% success?What are the most frequently overlooked change success factors?
And here’s my off-the-top-of-the-head response:
Authorship: When someone feels the change is theirs, they will make it work.
Partnership: When people feel they are pulling for a common goal, they will make it work.
Ongoing sensing and adjustment: When we keep in touch with a changing reality, we have a better chance of having things go the way we wish them to. “Strategy disolves when the first shot is fired.”
Oh! re: “frequently overlooked” -
Select to change something in the direction it is already going - anyone who wants to have the ice caps melt may win right now. Easier to find a parade and get in front of it.
Say you want as the change what is already the case but just hasn’t been seen yet. When we call out an existing but hidden reality, then it comes into view, we say there is a “change” but not in reality, only in viewing. Sometimes that is much easier than changing reality.
So what is interesting is that I at first, missed the full question, assuming I knew what he was asking. Then what’s interesting next is that both my tips in response to the actual question he asked were about being in touch with reality in a way that when that insight is shared with others the recognition of the “new” fact or reality occurs to them as a “change”.
A Limited Life: A Purpose for a Living Literature October 11, 2007
Posted by Yvonne in Evolution of We, Power of Dialogue.1 comment so far
Interesting to me that in my most recent post, I left out a key learning:
Just a day after I’d heard about Mea’s death, and before I’d gone back east to be with the family, I was at home, just in the kitchen doing some mindless domestic chore - cooking or doing the dishes - and this mild sort of beautiful sadness of an ache came over me. There was emotion, and it was the first time I regreted not being a mom. Odd really, that the reason I should have that regret is because I’d never be able to experience having my heart broken by my child. Most people regret not having the joys of a parent, but for me - I missed the sorrow. Very odd.
Then I realized: as I have a spiritual teacher and when he passed I had a particular human experience of what the loss of that kind of relationship is. Anyone who didn’t have that kind of relationship in life would never experience that kind of human experience.
A human life is so limited. We can only experience what we setup and provide for ourselves. We can only get the kind of surprises and joys and sorrows that we put ourselves in the way of.
So I do sometimes envy those who have the possibility of experiencing the surprises and joys and sorrows that I haven’t set my life up for, and may never be able to experience.
So please everyone, would you have those experiences really, really fully? And then share with others how it is? Because if you don’t, we are going to miss them completely … and we really only have you to give us a glimpse …
Suicide Sister: A Child Chooses To Go October 9, 2007
Posted by Yvonne in Power of Dialogue.1 comment so far
(I started this post in early August; just getting it up now.)
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One Saturday in July, I got the call that my 16 year old niece had hung herself the night before. My sister was barely able to speak. Her son helped pull the body down.
For the next 4 days, I was the communication hub for the family. Relaying messages, helping people make travel arrangements, and buffering communcations for my sister. Then flying off to the east coast, attending the family before/during/after the funeral. With my strong spiritual orientation and my training in handling upsets and all kinds of difficult communciations, with my capability to think clearly and produce results under pressure, it was natural and actually pretty easy to go through those times being of service, a contribution, just help things keep working.
I was glad to be there. I was glad to have a body to hug the rest of the children and my sisters.
Then back in my life, home and at the office … the world isn’t back to normal yet. Feeling like it’s time to write … lo energy = gotta get something out.
Knowing what I’d been experiencing, a friend sent me this:
I read an article today in the [SF] Chronicle about a Berkeley man who just completed a documentary on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He said to film it he had to just take a deep breath and do it. When he came back from filming in Japan, he said he collapsed in a kind of depression for 2 months where he could hardly move becuase of the strain of staying focused and not letting the content get through to him during filming.
My current condition and my experience:
- a floating non-specific emotion, sometimes tears, feeling very internal
- Monday night, I had to leave my seminar, just to get outside and breathe. I realized that I wasn’t my “usual self”, I wasn’t able to generate possibility, to be there for another, to listen or be present much at all.
- inability to really generate anything new, i can respond sometimes, but not much creation is available
- have not unpacked
- today I realized that it feels like I just got out of major surgery and will have to recouperate for some time to come.
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Now, another month and a half later, the emotional dip has passed, though there was more to come since beginning of August, and it impacted each family member differently in turn. I feel greatful for being alive enough to feel and participate with my family as I did.
I am more clear that now is the only time we can really live. People will go, and we cannot recover time lost in unconsciousness, being out of communication or in activities which deaden us. And I could see from my attempt at making the post more than a month ago, I had an inkling that being in communication enlivens.
