Work – Page 13 – Achilles & Aristotle

The Lost Jockey

This week, I have adopted Magritte’s ‘Lost Jockey‘; I found him a home on my iPhone ‘lock’ screen.

Painted in 1948, the ‘Le jockey perdu‘ has lost his racetrack and is charging through an other-wordly sepia forest.

“Racing nowhere fast”, is what the jockey says to me. And that’s why I put him on my home screen. Sometimes I do things faster that than I should. Sometimes I try to do tomorrow’s work today. Sometimes I do good things, but don’t take the moment to enjoy them.

The jockey – whom I have to swipe with my thumb, to open up the brightly lit iPhone world of action, reaction, email, work, stimulation, art, literature, music, aggro and time commitments – has reminded me several times this week not to ‘swipe’ – just do the thing I’m doing; not start something else.

Life, Odysseus, Work

Mighty; Fallen

Scooting along – reminding myself that whatever else may be wrong, fitness and health are one thing I can be proud of. Then, BANG!

Ooof, skinned palms, knees and blood-dripping chin; hands not working and a limp, bent and seemingly useless right arm. In an instant broken, bloody, battered and hurting.

It’s all got slowly better. But last Saturday, I literally couldn’t fork my wallet out of my pocket, get a shirt over my head or do up my own buttons. The simplest things – the kettle, doors, even sleep, all too hard.

A painful reminder that past 40 you don’t bounce, you crumple.

I have been slow, laboured, distracted and reduced – spending the week trying to warn (and avoid) people who wanted to vigorously shake the limp hand, of my slowly straightening right arm.

Take care of these bones, I conclude. Keeping a happy head has been very hard; without a happy body to carry it around. Health and fitness are a gift, not an entitlement.

Life, Psychology, Work

Climate Change

As I said to several people, this week, at work: nine tenths of navigating organisational life (it seems to me) is about discerning the difference between weather and climate.

On any given day they look the same. But when it’s been raining on your parade for months, it may be time to accept that the climate has turned for the worse. Still, there’s never any shortage of aggro in any workplace, so just as important is to spot the coming of better days.

My mother-in-law favours the nautical saying: if you can see a patch of blue as big as a ‘fisherman’s trousers’, even in a gunmetal sky, then the weather is set to turn. And despite some very heavy and sustained rain this week – I have spied the proverbial fisherman’s trousers.

I fancy the worst is over, and the climate is about to change. A few more heavy showers, and some wintry months remain. But, a quiet smile, a more cheerful élan and a spring in the step are called for – even if Spring itself is some months off. I forecast good days ahead.

Achilles, Art, Life, Work

The Farm

Funny how life throws things together… I got a book from the library on Joan Miró, finally got round to reading it; then he appeared in my DailyArt App – and thus ‘The Farm’ (above) came to symbolise my week.

According to DailyArt:

Miró wrote “The Farm was a résumé of my entire life in the country. I wanted to put everything I loved about the country into that canvas-from a huge tree to a tiny snail.”

Miró spent as many as eight hours a day for nine months working on this painting, for which he then struggled to find a buyer in a Parisian modern art market crazy for Cubism.

Much like Miró, I sometimes think of my working life as being like working a farm. It has its annual rituals, seasons and festivals – planning, budgets, conferences etc.

It also has its fair share of the features of Miró’s farm: cockerels crowing, structures we all talk about but haven’t actually built yet (like the red frame of the non-existent barn) and hard working folk like the washerwoman in the background – who are easily missed, but quietly getting things done.

Miró’s farm, like mine, has lots going on. But the most important thing, is to recognise the blue sky and solid structure to the left. It’s easy to forget; the fundamentals of the farm aren’t bad, especially when you look at the big picture.

Achilles, Life, Work

Broken Wings

A great many birds with broken wings or ruffled plumage, have come to perch in my tree in recent weeks. Human beings are fragile and so easily damaged – usually by each other.

We all like to believe life is fair. So, in the end, very few people are able to cope well with anxiety or things going badly for them.

We were taking about this at home the other day, asking the question:

“Is it possible to communicate to other people you are stretched, stressed or tired yourself, without being pissy, shirty or sad with them?”

Probably not. Because ‘pissy’, ‘shirty’ and ‘sad’ are exactly the ways we communicate stress. To do it any other way just confuses people – or they simply don’t hear.

So for the various birds; small and large, young and old; who have come to unburden themselves on me, there are only really two ways to be:

1) ‘pissy’, ‘shirty’ or ‘sad’; and quickly break both their wings so they never come back to my tree again.

2) reach for patience, tolerance and kindness; give away some all-too-precious time, and hopefully help them a little, to fly onwards.

I’ve mostly managed the latter. Some are still chirruping in my branches. Some are permanently nested there; so they are to be lived with.

But at least a few have gently flapped away with splinted wings or smoothed feathers. And that’s a success of sorts. Kindness is always the best answer.