What do you do with “What do you do?” January 14, 2009
Posted by Yvonne in Distinctions, Power of Dialogue.add a comment
The standard formal greeting used to be “How do you do?” Followed by “Very well, thank you … and you?” Now, it seems to be “What do you do?” … for which my consternation at devising an appropriately terse and common response leads to this post.
Something must have happened with the turn of the New Year.
I’ve had several recent occasions to meet new people and have encountered some difficulty in responding to this inevitable and perhaps innocently posed question: “What do you do?”
So far, my odd and unsettling response is something like: “About what?” because I can’t help thinking: perhaps I didn’t hear them correctly or completely. Frankly, somehow I can’t tell whether they are asking: what do I do …
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.)
—————
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.
—————
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.
Tossing the Sofa: Productivity for 2006 + 8 months August 11, 2006
Posted by Yvonne in Dynamics of Resistance, Power of Dialogue, beginner blogger.1 comment so far
After reading today’s Best Blog’s Unconventional Blogging Advice and Dorai’s post on subject blogging just now, I don’t feel so bad skipping out for the last two months!
But now I have a problem:
How to “recapture” for publication the thoughts and happenings that have enlivened my life during time which has passed?
I have snippets I’d caught and trapped now and then along the way, but the development of those ideas can now happen only minus the authentic verve and clarity of the moment of their birth. Mostly because I’m not the same person who had those ideas back then.
Get Naked, Get Free: Blogging Toward Better Business February 21, 2006
Posted by Yvonne in Power of Dialogue, beginner blogger.add a comment
I started reading Naked Conversations last Saturday after the TechCrunch5 event. I’d only met co-author Scoble less than 2 months ago and have been blogging unsteadily since then.
But I’m already recommending the book to CEOs and business owners I know because it does such a good job of clearly relating the possibility of blogging and the benefits of the porous membrane for businesses of all kinds. And I’m only half way through it.
But mostly I’m just relieved, really, to be reading writing that’s so fresh, straight, relevant and common sense.
These guys are real people, just sharing about what works: being in communication with people. And that includes dealing with all the squishiness of being human, working with humans, being in unpredictable and uncontrollable business environments, and being unpredictable and uncontrollable humans themselves. They present a refreshingly real conversation and invite everyone to jump in. And that’s completely doable. (more…)
You’re Happy, What’s Wrong With You? January 27, 2006
Posted by Yvonne in Evolution of We, Power of Dialogue.3 comments
It was only a few minutes conversation. I was sitting in a coffee joint last evening, reviewing some papers submitted for the upcoming Conference for Global Transformation.
The young woman a seat away, was fumbling in her backpack. She’d spilled something and needed to wash it out. “Would you watch this stuff for me? I’ll be right back.” “Sure,” I said, “Will it do anything interesting?” We laughed. When she returned, there was a bit more banter in fun, then she said, “You’re happy, what’s wrong with you?”
That Dead blog that hasn’t let me alone since I wrote it, and I replied, quite deliberately and with a big smile, “I’m alive.”
She stopped cold.
“Right. You’re alive.” she replied. Then, after a bit, said, “I’ll never forget that. ‘I’m alive.’” Then, while gathering her things to go, confided, ”You know, I wasn’t feeling so well today, but I’m feeling better now. I think I’ll go home and take a bath.” “And it will be good for you, and you’ll enjoy it.” I said quietly. She didn’t say more, and left the place surrounded in her own thoughts.
I was astounded. Another gal who had witnessed this, and I looked at each other. The young woman told us: “I’ll never forget that: ‘I’m alive.’” And we wondered together for a moment: Who will she be?
One connection, one comment. A life transformed. Wow.
As a dear friend has said:
“One conversation can transform a life. A transformed life will transform the world.” – B. Regnier, CGT 2005
Pratice: Lift someone with your words or smile today. See someone.
