Spirit, Life, and Work
A half year review
As those of us in the lands of summer head for an August break, I will share some reflections on the first half of the year.
Spirit Life
I began the year in low spirits. Like many people, the experience of COVID living had caught up with me. My energy was low and my mojo not firing. Perhaps I was suffering tiredness from long COVID, as I got hit heavily last year. Or was it the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that played heavy on my heart and soul?
This terrible and unnecessary war triggered personal memories of the pain of losing my son to violence, and my thoughts went to all the young men on both sides (and their families) fighting a war, not of their choice. I previously had worked in Russia and was made an Honorary Professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. I also worked and visited Belarus. I felt a personal connection and remembered the hope of warmer, collaborative, and non-violent relations that were real only a few years ago.
Early in the war, I wrote an essay titled Taking a Stance to try and clarify what I experienced as muddy and misplaced thinking from some leftist, psychodynamic, and systemic voices in our field. These voices claimed that taking a stance was an act of splitting, and that systemic thinking meant we couldn’t and shouldn’t take a stance. I was dismayed by this, believing that if systemic, psychodynamic thinking and studying group relations don’t enhance our capacity to see clearly and call out dictatorships, imperialism, authoritarianism, and other misguided acts of aggression, then our field lacks credibility and we live in a bubble of our own making.
As a Quaker, I am part of a community that is called to ‘speak truth to power’. I have campaigned against the Falklands war, the Iraq invasion, apartheid in South Africa, and many other unjust causes. This is not about taking ideological sides saying "West good, Russia bad". While some jingoistic nationalists will play this line, those of us who critique NATO when it acts in imperialist ways also have the right to critique a corrupt, authoritarian regime that acts in its own interests to kill, maim, and destroy abroad, while simultaneously acting to increase oppression and totalitarianism at home. Here's a snippet from my essay:
“Taking a systemic perspective reveals this is not a Russian-Ukrainian conflict. This is a conflict between a despotic regime that represses free speech and opposition in its own country and has attacked what it considered an easy target in order to further its own power base and aims. It is having systemic impacts around the world, and to help stop those impacts from becoming ever-more dangerous and traumatic, we all need to take a stance”
The essay accumulated over 40,000 views. I found myself on podcasts and webinars discussing the war, increasing my emotional engagement. While I am not as active online today, I continue to support Ukraine in other ways: we host a Ukrainian refugee in our home and I am in discussions with a leading not-for-profit to help them develop leadership for their teams in Ukraine working with children.
Movement and Stillness
COVID illness & the war. Maybe it was a combination of these factors that left me struggling. Also the entrapment of doing so much computer-based interaction and missing the rich human and non-human inspiration I get when I engage in face-to-face work in diverse places. The pleasures of being still are not to be underestimated, and I relished much of the stillness and being at home: a chance to gather myself, find routines, be more with the family, and discover the simple pleasures of drinking coffee from a thermos flask in the local countryside during lockdowns.
Yet the pleasures of movement and engagement are also important to me. When I go to London, Krakow, or New York, it is not just the face-to-face work engagements that enliven, inspire and energize me. It’s the buildings, the parks, the diverse architecture, the art galleries, and graffiti, the music, the humidity, the food, the smells, the sounds, the diversity of people I meet, and the diversity of things around me. My creativity and mojo are dependent on creative engagement with the environment around me.
At home, I engage fully in the wonderful nature, local arts, and the people I meet. I swim in the sea each morning, do yoga under the trees, listen to the rain, delight in growing vegetables and watching the children excitedly dig our potatoes. I visit the woods and cafes on my bike, and yet I am a traveler at heart - my family comes from Irish traveling fairground peoples. I recall my late youth when I escaped the claustrophobia of suburban east Bristol, going into the city center to Rastafarian and punk gigs…life had started anew!
In my early adulthood, my curiosity and urge to travel took me to faraway places. The magic of hitch-hiking to foreign lands, and taking long bus rides from London to Istanbul and Bristol to Berlin and Krakow filled me with the enchantment of adventure and desire for more.
Mojo Return
My mojo returned when I did my first gig in London after a 2-year break. I recall walking in the city, jumping on a hire bike, cycling to the bank I was consulting, riding through the financial district, and staring upward at the awesome buildings reaching into the sky like a child who had never seen a city before.
Since then I have been animated by my work, trying to balance and adjust to my engagements in such diverse workplaces as world-leading car manufacturers in the USA, the Church of England, engaging with a Jesuit-led leadership project in Rome, and with a global not-for-profit working in crisis zones.
So that is my half-year reflection. I will follow up this blog with more reflections on the rich and diverse work I am engaged in.