Month: September 2010

Work

Curling

I was talking today to a nice person who cares a lot about the organisation I work for about how we are doing. We face some big challenges in the next few months, but I’m pretty confident we know what we need to do and we’ll be stronger for it.

She was anxious that we might not seize the opportunity, and that people and personalities might get in the way. I said after a good break in the summer I realised there are somethings you can’t fix or tackle until the moment comes and rather than worrying sometimes it’s best to save your energy and trust yourself to perform ‘in the moment’ and do what is needed when it’s needed. She looked at me with some empathy, but I suspect was also wondering ‘is he ducking some stuff here’.

I then said to her that since my excellent summer holidays with the family I’ve found myself caring a little less about my work. I still care, and I still work hard, but it’s a bit less all-consuming. I don’t think about things so much, worry about them or try to arrange and fix things – especially around people. I’ve started saying what my gut tells me, not worrying so much about being right, asking for help and admitting to uncertainty and irrationality. It’s working a treat.

She said she sometimes realises she’s guilty of curling – the game with the stones on ice where you polish and polish and polish the ice furiously with what looks like a garden brush to get your stone to the target. I said to her I’d felt she’d been really effective in a meeting with us recently when she ‘bowled’ and said exactly what she thought and cleaned out all the skittles or smacked clear the blocking bowls depending on your type of bowling.

The conclusion was sometimes by caring a bit less at work you can be a lot more effective, more spontaneous, less anxious, more authoritative, and more able to seize the moment. I find I also have a lot more mental energy left for me and my loved ones at the end of the day.

Here’s my quick list tapped out on the iPhone of problems I’m not currently suffering by caring a little less about my work:

Gripping too tightly
Being anxious
Focusing on what I might lose not what I could gain
Driving not attracting
Running down my batteries
Sweating the detail
Overdoing
Interfering
Been seen to meddle
Taking the responsibility away from where it lies
Confusing people
Strobing (rapid jerky interventions with no linking narrative)
Appearing tricksy or political
Guessing not asking
Overpreparing
Not seizing the moment

Best of all though I simply feel better and that’s reason enough.

Death, Life

Death

I saw that larger than life parliamentarian Cyril Smith had died yesterday. He was a big big man. I think I heard he peaked at 29 stone. I was a little surprised to hear he made it to 82, just goes to show being a gourmand won’t necessarily kill you.

What struck me though was the report of his memorial service. How he had spent his last days planning exactly how it would be – including hand written notes to people he cared for to catch them by surprise and delight them after he had gone. A warm-hearted joker to the last [albiet subsequent reports in have strongly suggest otherwise].

I’ve often thought mistily about death and the final taking stock of my life I will do. Who will be there smiling at my rosy faced cheeks. But reading about the actual reality of death as I did in Anti-cancer made my heart race, my chest tighten and my anxiety levels rise.

David Servan-Schreiber sets out the most common fears, it will hurt, I will be alone, my story will be unfinished, important things will be left unsaid etc. These are very real fears for me. He also writes that some people close on the moment with grace and tranquillity.

Our dog is dying. He has a big and growing lump on his side which will surely kill him in weeks not months. He’s had a good long life and I’ve noticed he’s sleeping more, I can see he’s chasing bunnies – he is running in his sleep, catching and mouthing and happy. A friend told me his dog walked slowly out into the garden one day curled up under a tree and gently floated away.

Much of my attraction to eudaimonia or flourishing (and the ancient Greek version of ‘happiness’ as the product of a life lived) is tied up with this final account. But on my bike this morning it came to me that maybe it will hurt, maybe it will be sudden, maybe it will be banal, maybe I won’t get to write handwritten notes.

So the time to achieve the eudaemonia is here and now, and the right moment to assess my happiness is today and every day.

Achilles left no handwritten notes.

Ethics, Life

Guts

I studied philosophy at Oxford, and in ethics was drawn to John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism.

Human happiness as a basis for morality seemed more attractive than rules and commandments, and all the thought experiments seemed to suggest the ‘right’ thing to do drops neatly out of weighing all the consequences of your actions and choosing the course with the best or least worst consequences. Great.

The problem is, I’ve increasingly realised, for me, it doesn’t work…

Why? In truth I have to admit I first realised I had a problem because utilitarianism simply ‘looks bad’. When people see you weighing ‘secular’ values, like money or resources against ‘sacred’ ones like values or rights or fairness it ‘feels’ wrong to them. And here is the clue I think. Utilitarianism does ‘feel’ wrong.

Listening to a Philosophy Bites podcast, I heard someone say the job of ethics is to accurately describe our innate ‘felt’ sense of what is right.

When I first heard this, I thought it was plumb wrong. I had always thought that the job of ethics was to lay down a rational, internally consistent code of behaviour, and then to win everyone round to living by it.

The trouble is like bills of rights and codified legal systems and indeed utilitarian calculations it’s all too hard; there will always be exceptions and situations and messiness in human affairs are important and don’t always fit.

So I’m coming round to the view that it’s a lot simpler than I thought…

Our minds are Bayesian probability engines. We take the sum total of all we know, have seen and done and form instinctive ‘gut’ judgements on things, which we then test against new data. That’s how we work.

Following your gut on something you’ve never seen, done or know anything about may not be the best approach – get some data or ask someone else.

But on things you know a great deal about, people, what’s right and wrong, what you should do and what you shouldn’t, we all have an amazing storehouse of knowledge and experience accumulated over a life, plus the cultural and biological inheritance of the entire human race since we evolved.

On the great moral questions and the big ethical choices in our lives, the ‘right’ thing to do is follow your gut; ignore utilitarian calculations and rationalism – your gut gives you answers to the big questions.

Life

Achilles

Within hours of setting up this blog and posting my first post I was gripped with a pang of pure fear.

What if someone mad, bad or sad takes an interest in me, seeks to contact me, meet me or hurt me or my family?

Natural human reaction to unknown unquantifiable risk – flight. Must put privacy around the blog, make it invite only or better still just write for myself and only let others see any of it when I’m 100% sure it’s safe and correct and good.

But then Achilles came to me. When I thought of the concept, Aristotle was the Greek for me. Achilles – like Brad Pitt in Troy – was too flashy and reckless and gym-toned and beautiful.

But on reflection Achilles has qualities I value too. Bravery, action, leadership, courage and the capacity to stand tall and be counted.

So I changed the name of my blog to Achilles and Aristotle not or. I may not have his looks, torso or divine protection, but I can have some of his courage, boldness and strength.

The desire to retreat to the purely cerebral, to my own cave and away from the uncertainty of people is strong within me. But the rewards of family, work and friends require constantly stepping out from the shadows.

So what’s to hide? If I attract some spam, some barbed comments, even some people I don’t want, I can have the strength within to ignore, forgive or say no.

So I’ll follow Achilles, set aside fear and just write.

Life

Day one

Where to begin. I’ve blogged elsewhere for a couple of years now, so I know the score. Write what’s in your mind and go with the flow. It’s the day before my 42nd birthday and I’m typing (a little clumsily) on my brand new iPad which I’ve waited over 9 months for. Lovely.

As Arthur C Clarke said the only thing which differentiates any sufficiently advanced technology from magic is the ability to understand the technology. The iPad like the iPhone is magic.

I decided to start writing because I’ve been thinking about it for a year or more. But I feared starting, and in any case could never get my hand on the laptop – an iPhone is too fiddly for WordPress. So today is day one and what is in my mind? Mainly cancer.

Just thinking the word is enough to create tension in my chest. I had malignant melanoma over 15 years ago and had a big chunk of my left thigh chopped out. Strangely I can say melanoma more easily than cancer – I’ve said it more often to explain covering up in the sun or the large scar I have which shows in shorter shorts.

Cancer riddling me is the sum of all fears. And one I’d long forgotten. But David Servan-Schreiber has reawakened my angst with his excellent book Anti Cancer. I think everyone over 35 should read it.

His curse is to scare me into going to the doctors. In rare cases melanoma returns and I have a couple of things to get checked out. His gift is to make me see – as I’ve been working up to for months, that looking inside yourself, caring for your own wellbeing and writing it down are all well worth doing.

I had started a ‘to do’ list for my 50th birthday. The advice of a good friend, Anti Cancer, and the fear of not making it to 50, suggests just getting on with it.

Writing this is a start.