Not so much hair anymore
Yesterday I had my first haircut in 24 years.
Since 1990 I have kept my hair in a braid that was probably 18 inches long, for all kinds of reasons. Yesterday, for all kinds of reasons, it was time for that braid to come off.
It’s been a bit of a conversation on my facebook page and folks here on Bowen Island are starting to get a look at my new head. News travels fast in small communities.
And commonly I am asked, does it feel lighter? And surprisingly, the answer is no.
Because when you chop off your hair that you have grown for 24 years, you do a lot of work before hand, and I would say close to three years of work went into this decision. It involved me asking myself some fundamental questions about who I am and where I am and what matters to me and how I choose to present my identity in the world. It was not an easy decision, and it took me all that time to think about it and work with it from many different angles.
But I didn’t engage in that work so that I could chop off my hair. I engaged in it because that is what we do as middle aged men in this culture. In your mid forties (I am 46) you have enough distance from both your past and projected future to think about what’s up. Questions of identity and meaning, both personal and professional present themselves. If you have a good practice and good and supportive friends, crossing this thresh hold is made easier. It has largely been easy so far, with no major crises other than some occasional dark and sad times.
So the truth is that much has already been chopped away in my life over the last three years, but nearly none of it has resulted in a change to my outward appearance. Cutting my hair yesterday was not the act that shed a lot of stuff, it was an act born of a new lightness. A little tender, but stable enough that it felt right to cut my hair.
Someone asked me why I chose yesterday to do this. My reply was that, because January 27, 2015 was the day I was ready to do it.
Shortly you will see another shift born of this lightness. My website is being totally redesigned as well. Same great resources, same old blog. Fancy new wrapper. Coming soon.
Excellent stuff.
Think about your thinking. Happy New Year.
A composite of missing and murdered indigenous women
Every year on this day I mark the remembrance of the 14 women that were killed at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989. It was one of the most transformational experiences of my life, to be alive and aware on that day.
Since then, the long gun registry that was put in place as a result of that murder has been disbanded and we aren’t making much progress on dealing with violence against women in this country
And so from now on my December 6 posts will include both the 14 roses and images that capture something of the scale of loss of more than 1200 missing and murdered indigenous women, some of them friends, many of them close relations of friends.
For a couple of years now I have been teaching myself how to SUP (stand up paddle board). It’s a pretty simple process. But like all simple things there is a depth to practice and technique that helps you get better and better. And the changing context of the ocean and the winds and weather means there is never a way to “win” at it.
The thing about SUP is that the conditions change radically all the time. One day is flat calm and the water is like glass. Another day – like today – it’s windy and the chop is sloppy and the currents are really strong. Almost every time out is a new challenge with new little victories and little defeats.
Mastery is like that. It’s about learning a technique and then applying it as the context shifts. It’s about getting good at something and then facing a humbling experience that teaches you something about yourself.
Today it was learning about the power of the currents whipping around Dorman Point. Lately it’s been about trying to offer quality process when there is fear and ego and expertise at play.
Mastery comes from a myriad of little learnings gathered from a myriad if different context. There is no flash of insight that makes you a master and there is no way you can ever feel you have arrived. That we are all human and always falling short of our ideal for ourselves and others is the great secret that helps us to connect, if we can see it. If we instead hold ourselves so far above or below this line of vulnerability that we can’t see our small tender selves in others then the benefit of our little learnings are lost, mere spindrift in the current of our learning lives.
I think it was my friend Toke Møller who said “never trust a sword teacher without scars.” Truly.
Crane Stookey on a kind of “I don’t know” leadership.
To keep the defenses down I rarely give the teenagers in the Sea School crews a straight answer, so that after a while their dependence on me as the “leader” breaks down. They need to feel that in the big picture I am trustworthy, that they are safe with me, but they also need to learn to distrust me and trust themselves, with a self-confidence that doesn’t depend on knowing. Rather than knowing on my terms, it’s better that they don’t know on their own terms, so they are inspired to find their own answers.
An overreliance on experts who claim to have answers depletes the capacity of groups. I love Crane’s idea of being trustworthy rather than providing a false sense of security.