Work – Page 17 – Achilles & Aristotle

Ad Fab

This week, something reminded me of the old British Airways ad which used to run when I lived in Hong Kong in the early 1990s… I was immediately transported back in time.

The music, the choreography, the landscape, the scale, the people, the hugs and the gently smiling cabin crew – it used to make me long for home. And the final schewooowsh, at the end, of a BA ‘speedbird’ taking off would send a shiver down my spine and bring a tear to my eye… Still does.

There may never be an ad which ‘gets’ to me more. The context – being on the other side of the world in a strange and different land, with that imagery and the soundtrack of my young life – planes taking off.

Stunning, moving, inspiring, fabulous.

Art, Life, Work

Still Life

Water Jug, Patrick Caulfield: Tate

In a slow meander of a large management meeting, I found myself contemplating a jug of water… How many colours therein? Such scintillations of light; and patches of shade.

How pure. How clean. What pipes and processes got it to this table. How rare in the history and geography of human existence to have water to hand in such pristine abundance. How much rarer – in the universe – to have the temperature and circumstances to sustain this elixir of life?

Art, origins, progress, luck and gratitude – all in a jug. And then back to tasks and voices and faces and work. But a wistful smile at the corners of my mouth perhaps betrayed I’d briefly escaped the mundane – and enjoyed a moment of wonder at the natural world. Life is in the small details sometimes.

Achilles, Poetry, Psychology, Work

Avoid Big Egos in Small Numbers

A recent if obvious discovery (all the best ones are), is the very worst things in working life happen behind closed doors, in small numbers. Here’s some verse, to keep reminding me of that.

Avoid closed doors
Between rocks and hard places.
Unreasonable wants
And impossible asks
Come together in confined spaces

The acceptable is found
Not by arm-wrestling,
Shutting down or going to ground.
But by careful crowd-sourcing
And sharing the love around.

When being pressed to do something you don’t think is right, won’t work or will go wrong, it often feels like it would be worse in the company of others. But I’m finding if you can get others in, get it out and let the task hang in the air a moment – very often, the reasonable middle ground prevails.

The art is to fight the instinct to defend, avoid or close down. When bad things look likely to happen, it pays to ensure there are others in the room. Sometimes it seems, the more egos the better.

So my new motto is: ‘avoid big egos in small numbers’, one-to-one being the very worst format of all. Share the love around.

Children, Life, Odysseus, Work

Tree of Life

Instead of ‘keeping plates spinning’, I’m coming to the conclusion that a better metaphor for my middle years, is a spreading oak, full of twittering birds.

Many feathered, they can’t be tethered; birds come and go and freely choose your branches. Some stay a while, some just pass through. Some coexist peacefully with the rest of the tree. Some scare others away. Some sing beautifully, others cheep incessantly. And quieter birds just appreciate the support and shade.

Right in the centre of my tree is the ramshackle but solid nest which is my little family: cheeping, pecking each other and squawking periodically for food. Sustenance delivered, this nest is the driving purpose of my whole tree.

Sadly my oak – like so many urban trees – suffers regular vandalism. A couple of people regularly urinate on it. Every now and then a f#ckwit carves “I am a f#ckwit” on it. Periodically someone tries to strip the bark and make my branches droop.

But my tree is home to a good many happy singing birds most days. From the smiling faces in the coffee shop, via the cheery waves from security and the cleaners to the rather more demanding nesting birds of the people who work for me. And of course the noisy but life-filled family nest, bursting with love, at each end of the day.

My tree of life ain’t a bad habitat. And seeing its many occupants cheeping, twittering, singing and flitting in and out is a happier picture than the pointless spinning of plates.

Keeping the vandals away, the ravens at bay, the roots deep and the branches strong, is all I need to do to enjoy life-filled and happy days. That, and a heart of English oak.

Death, Life, Poetry, Work

Darkness

What a spectacularly rubbish week. The kind of week which makes you almost believe there are Greek gods toying with your life.

No-one died, no one got hurt, but the needless jostling of egos and the triumph of the selfish over the selfless leaves me flat as a pancake. Awful.

Clive James explains, forewarns and laments a good deal of what has driven my week in his poem Leçons des ténèbres:

But are they lessons, all these things I learn
Through being so far gone in my decline?
The wages of experience I earn
Would service well a younger life than mine.
I should have been more kind. It is my fate
To find this out, but find it out too late.

The mirror holds the ruins of my face
Roughly together, thus reminding me
I should have played it straight in every case,
Not just when forced to. Far too casually
I broke faith when it suited me, and here
I am alone, and now the end is near.

All of my life I put my labour first.
I made my mark, but left no time between
The things achieved, so, at my heedless worst,
With no life, there was nothing I could mean.
But now I have slowed down. I breathe the air
As if there were not much more of it there

And write these poems, which are funeral songs
That have been taught to me by vanished time:
Not only to enumerate my wrongs
But to pay homage to the late sublime
That comes with seeing how the years have brought
A fitting end, if not the one I sought.

I should have been more kind. It is my fate
To find this out, but find it out too late.

I hope that a time will come when those who have made my week so dire come to contemplate alone the ruins of their faces – and might come to wish they’d also played it straighter in more cases and not just when forced to.

Faith has indeed been broken far too casually. My challenge is not to lessen myself in how I respond.