Tag Archives: metaphor

Stretching my back and my mind

Stretching my body has always been a chore. I find the discomfort of stretching tight muscles painful rather than uncomfortable. But I need to do it. I was 4’11 at the end of Grade 9, and grew to 5’6½” at the end of Grade 10. That growth spurt included a torque in my back that left me with mild scoliosis and back issues that persist to this day. Add hamstrings that are tighter than a piano wire and I’m a walking corpse with rigor mortis set in, when I don’t take the time to stretch.

But I hate the feeling of stretching.

My challenge now is to stretch my mind before my body. I need to re-evaluate how I think about stretching. I need it to be part of my routine, rather than feeling like an add-on that I don’t want to do.

Both stretching my mind and my body in this area feels unnatural. Just saying that tells you I’m failing at stretching my mind. I realize there is a knowing and doing gap here, but telling myself this doesn’t seem to help.

I wonder what mental roadblocks other people have that are similar? Is there something you do that you know is bad for you, or don’t do and know that you should? Where do you need to stretch?

And if you made that stretch… what’s your secret?

How safe would you want everyone to be?

It’s raining heavily and you are driving home. Windshield wipers are going as quickly as they can giving you the best view you can get given the weather conditions. You see car headlights heading your way and before you know it you are in a head on collision. Set aside who’s fault it is for a moment, just know your front bumper hit their front bumper, with both cars travelling at 65km/hr (40mph).

Cars today are designed to take a lot of the impact of a crash away from the people inside them. The front end of the car will buckle in front of the passenger cabin, and take the worst of the impact. That said, two things will help ensure greater safety for the drivers and passengers. First, there are seatbelts, and then there are airbags. But despite safety precautions, an impact like this could easily be fatal.

In this scenario, how safe would you want everyone to be? Would you like to know that both you and the person in the other car both had their seatbelt on, and that the airbags were present and deployed as expected?

Wouldn’t you want to know that you both did the best you could to protect yourselves?

Well, for all you anti-maskers out there, here is a simple analogy:

Poor weather = Pandemic, less than ideal conditions.

Car safety measures = Hospitals

Airbags = social distancing, protective distance between you and danger.

Seatbelt = Mask, personal protection.

The difference between a seatbelt and a mask is that your personal protection of a seatbelt in a car protects you, while a mask protects those in the community around you.

No one plans to get into a serious car accident, but they happen. When they do, the safety precautions you’ve taken might not be the same for the person or people in the other car. No one plans to spread a virus that might inconvenience some people, and kill others. No one wants an elderly family member or friend to die unnecessarily from something that could have been prevented, by something as simple as wearing a seatbelt or wearing a mask.

Don’t be an idiot. Buckle up. Mask up. Do it for your family, for those you love, and for those in the community that you live in. It’s your community. Do you want to be a good community member who shows that you care for those that are less fortunate than you? Or do you want to be thought of as reckless and stubborn? What kind of neighbour do you want to be?

Red pill - Blue pill quote - David Truss

Red pill, blue pill

The Terms Red Pill and Blue Pill refer to a choice between revealing an unpleasant truth, represented by the red pill, or to remain in blissful ignorance, represented by the blue pill. These terms are in reference to the 1999 film The Matrix. ~ Wikipedia

We are living in a red pill/blue pill moment, except people are colour blind and everyone thinks they are taking the red pill.

I’d rather be a sheep than a lemming

Dear anti-masker,

Go ahead and call me sheeple. You might think of me as easily influenced or docile. You might think I’m willing to give up my rights to follow the crowd. Sheep find comfort in community, and the herd helps others to be safe, not just themselves… kinda like masks do.

At least I’m not lemming, running off a dangerous cliff because others are doing the same. I’m not willing to endanger others with my choice of behaviour.

Now in reality lemmings aren’t really suicidal, and people thinking about their community doesn’t make them sheeple. In fact, most communal animals are very community minded and they do their part to keep their community safe.

It pains me to see something like this happening in Toronto. This isn’t community minded, it isn’t considerate of others. It’s metaphorical lemmings, except they aren’t just jumping off the edge, they are pulling the weakest and most vulnerable along with them.

The best they can with what they’ve got.

I’m sure if I go looking, I’d find a similar post I’ve written before, but this idea is worth exploring (again) and it was inspired by Aaron Davis’ comment on yesterday’s Daily Ink.

I don’t remember where I first heard this, but it was decades ago, before I became an educator: “People do the best they can with the resources they have.”

This is such an empowering position to hold when dealing with an upset person. They are trying, they are doing their best, they are hurting and need compassion. This shifts the direction of the conversation, especially when your own buttons are pushed by the person or when they are showing their upset by going on the attack.

If you go into a conversation with an upset person believing they are only there to attack you, that leaves you only with a choice of being defensive or going on the attack yourself. If you go into the same conversation thinking this person is upset and doing the best they can, suddenly you can shift to helping them, even when their strategy isn’t ideal.

This isn’t always easy. Here is an example from a while back at another school: Student does something very inappropriate. Parents are invited in. Parent has heard the student’s ‘creative’ perspective on how they are not at fault. Parent comes in with metaphorical ‘guns-a-blazing’ to defend the kid.

Whether it’s a father or mother that comes in, I call this ‘mama bear’ behavior. Mama bears will do anything to protect their cubs. So, what’s the worst thing that you can do with an angry mama bear? Attack the cub in front of them.

The easy, but unhelpful reaction to hearing a parent defend a kid, who has fabricated a story to the parent about the innocence of their behaviour, is to call the kid out. The harder thing to do is to remember that the kid is scared and doing the best they can, and the parent is angry and doing the best they can. A counterpoint at this juncture can easily lead to an unhealthy argument. So, a softer approach is better.

It’s a matter of remembering that we want the same thing… to take care of a student who has in our eyes done wrong and in the parents eyes has been wronged. And so that parent is doing the best they can with the knowledge and resources they have.

This doesn’t mean that you let the kid off. It does mean that you can take an approach that is more aikido than karate, more deflective and less of a direct attack.

Without going into specifics, I talk about how more than one kid was involved in the situation. I talk about how intentions aren’t always known and that two people can see the same situation in different ways. I ask the parent to remember that the other kid has a parent too, and might ask what they would think of the situation if they were the parent of the other child (this is delicate and not something to do early on, only when the parent is less angry than when they came in to defend their cub).

It’s only when the parent can see another perspective that I then discuss their kid, and the approach is that ‘we both want the same thing’. Without saying it bluntly, the approach is asking ‘Do you want your kid acting this way?’ or more subtly, ‘Do you want your kid being perceived they way they are being perceived?’

In essence, it’s about giving the parent more information and resources than they arrived with, to deal with the situation better than an angry mama bear has defending a cub from danger. It’s about saying, ‘Your kid made a bad choice’, and separating their behaviour from their identity and the parent’s identity too. And then it’s about helping both of them get the strategies and resources they need to make the situation better.

It’s not easy. But when a mama bear sees that you want what’s best for their kid… and that’s really what you want even though the kid made a really bad choice… then the outcome becomes what you intended it to be. That same mama bear parent has, at times, even wanted to go harder on their kid than I do. If it comes to this point, they are still operating under the same pretence, they are doing the best they can with what they’ve got.

Responses to change

I’ve been working on rehabilitating a couple injuries. One is a shoulder injury that I’m not sure how I injured it? This has been frustrating because it seems to come back every time I go beyond what I’ve already done. The other is my knee, that I broke in February. It has responded really well to me pushing it, but still reminds me every now and then that it’s not 100% (although these reminders don’t set me back).

My shoulder doesn’t respond to doing something new very well, my knee accepts new challenges and seems to be able to withstand new feats of strength even when I’m panting from the effort.

I don’t benefit from pushing my shoulder hard, but I also can’t stagnate and not give it small pushes. I don’t benefit from being reckless with my knee, but it won’t get stronger if I don’t thoughtfully push and push hard when I do.

I think sometimes we push a group to all change in the same way at the same time. We add something new: a new system, a new approach, a new process, and we expect everyone to respond similarly. But some people are like my shoulder, some like my knee. We need to support the changes we want in such a way that we don’t expect the same responses and results from everyone, and realize that some people are ready to be pushed hard, and others need to go slow.

I think this is one of the biggest challenges that any leader faces when implementing change. No matter how ready the team is, not everyone is equipped to change at the same speed. And the ones that are most resistant or least equipped to change aren’t effective if they aren’t supported in a way that meets them where they are at, or if they are pushed beyond capabilities.

My shoulder has reminded me of this frequently, and comparing it to the progress of my knee doesn’t make my shoulder any more ready to take on the next challenge.

Make your world small

I love the advice from Kevin Cameron to #MakeYourWorldSmall. This summer I got way too involved in following world news, and pandemic numbers, and popular events on social media… most of which were two things:

1. Negative in nature.

2. Beyond my control to have any influence.

This is a time to look inward. To focus on my small community and the things I can influence. I can make a difference at work and with my family… and with myself!

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed right now. It’s easy to feel powerless. However we can make our worlds smaller and empower ourselves with energy currently being expended on things beyond our small sphere of influence.

It’s time to expend my daily mental and emotional energy in places where I’m empowered to make a difference.

Fair weather leadership

We’ve all seen movies where the captain of a boat or a sheriff in a town (who aren’t the stars of the movies) appear to be doing a good job, and everything is going smoothly. Then the crisis hits, the boat starts to sink or the bad guys ride into town, and suddenly chaos ensues. The captain abandons the ship before the passengers and the sheriff either cowers or puts his life on the line recklessly leaving the town at the mercy of the bad guys.

In the movies, the hero emerges or arrives and saves the day. In the real world, these good in fair weather leaders create chaos and upset, and undermine the productivity and well being of their team, and possibly other teams around them. There isn’t always a hero standing by to help.

It’s often difficult or impossible to foresee a crisis. In the case of a sinking boat, there are drills that can be run, but they aren’t ever run when the boat is bouncing up and down in a storm. Some things can be planned for, but others come out of nowhere… like an iceberg in the fog. When a surprise comes along, that’s actually when leadership matters. That’s when lines of communication matter. That’s when people management becomes a priority. Who can help lead? Who needs direct instruction? What can be delegated rather than added to an impossible to-do list. And who can be asked for help?

It’s when a crisis hits that a leader needs to get the most out of their team. Often we think of crisis situations as making a leader great, but my thoughts align more with this quote:

“Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to our eyes. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become.” ~ Brooke Foss Westcott

Good leadership during the fair weather, before the storm, is preparation for when the storm hits… even if that leadership isn’t recognized as anything special. Not leading well, not pushing the team, when things are calm, may not harm the team during that calm, but it prepares no one for when things get rough.

Leading well in fair weather doesn’t bring much accolades, and may not bring recognition, but it is preparation for good leadership when leadership really matters.

Lessons from nature

Took a bike ride today on a trail near Squamish and passed this massive rock that sheered of an adjacent rock face. Three trees have grown around it, adapting to the shape of the rock. It almost looks like they are there supporting the rock from falling over, like massive pillars burdened by the weight of the rock.

That’s not the case. The rock was probably there long before the trees, and they have grown around the stationary rock. They adapted to the presence of the rock.

In the coming weeks, schools will need to make some major adaptations to the structures put in place due to Covid-19. Some of these changes will be challenging. Unlike the giant, unmovable rock, the parameters of the response will be fluid and changing. Similar to the rock, what we are going to be facing will be long-lasting. This school year will be one where outbreaks determine responses and communities will be impacted.

Covid-19 will be the immovable rock, and we will need to respond organically.

A forgotten dream

Last week I visited my uncle and he reminded me of a dream that I shared with him, 27 years ago, before my move from Toronto to Vancouver.

There is a saying: “To the fish water is invisible.” And that is what my dream was about. I grew up in a pre-Google era, but I had something better… I had my dad. It seemed that no matter what question I may ask, my dad had, and still has, a comprehensive answer. My only hesitation to ask him a question was that I needed to be sure I was interested enough to get his extensive and detailed answer.

The dream was that I was in my bedroom next to my dad’s office and everything was under water. It wasn’t scary, I could breathe. I knew the water was there but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.

What was right in front of me was all of dad’s books that I had never read. 1,000’s of books. My dad has read and given away more books than any 50 people would normally read in their lifetime. From my earliest memories I can remember our house containing numerous bookshelves with books double stacked, one in front of the other, with whole sections having books stacked horizontally, so that 6 or 8 horizontal books could take the place of 4 or 5 vertical books.

And I read almost none of them.

The dream was a dream of lost opportunity. Of being blind to the ocean of information that sat before me metaphorically unseen, and literally unread.

I didn’t enjoy reading until I was in my 30’s. I slowed down again after that, getting too busy, until recently in my 50’s when I discovered that I could listen to audio books while exercising, and walking, and waiting in lineups, and commuting in my car.

We often don’t see the opportunities right in front of us. We often take things, and people, for granted because they are right there.

About 8 or 9 years after I moved to B.C., my librarian at the school I was teaching at did an exchange with a teacher from Australia. That teacher and her retired husband went away almost every weekend during the exchange. In a single year they had visited more of B.C. than I had in almost a decade. In fact, more than I have in over a quarter century of living here now.

We are fish, blind to the water we swim in. Sometimes it’s worth stopping and paying attention to what is right in front of us.