Kashmir's Shak

Pity To Myself

"I will presently pen down my dilemmas, encourage myself in my certainty, put myself into my mortal preparation, and by midnight look to hear further from me."  All’s Well that Ends Well (Act III, Scene VI).

I came home and the family was watching some old family video, and there I was, in the video, dancing. Eeeeek! Why can't I ever look at myself in a photo, video or listen to myself on an audio tape, without feeling awkward? Without judging the event and that person with such a critical eye?

Here is the person who I have spent the most time with for my entire life, know the best, cared for the most? Here is that same nose, hand, chin, chest, lip and shoulder that I have always - known. And yet they look strangely unfamiliar.

When I see a video of myself I am overcome with a puzzling unease. It is difficult to ignore myself even though there are other more precious loved ones in the video than I, but my eye is constantly drawn to me.

Why is it that I am judging my self with such a critical eye, a lens that I would not even reserve for my worst enemies? I would take greater pity at a fool, be more gracious to a whore, less damning of a monster.

The other interesting phenomenon is that - the more recent the photo or video, the harsher the critique, the older the photo or video, the more the tenderness.

I would never judge anyone else so harshly as this person, and yet this is the person that I know better than anyone else.

Why do I go through this self annihilating ritual over someone who no longer exists?  Just like any loved one that has passed on, parts of this person is inside of me right now.

It is also interesting that the reverse occurs with my writing. When I read old writing (as I will perhaps these very words one day), my eye is not as cruel. I approach writing with a greater sense of empathy and compassion.

The more recent the writing the more I appreciate it, the older it is, the more embarrassing it becomes. I guess the difference with writing is that it is talking back to me from my past, it is addressing me, whereas a photo or video is just hanging out there like washing on the line, with no real purpose, just waving in the wind, waiting to dry out.

This experience of judging these 'old me's' is neither mundane or sacred. It all seems so irrelevant. I find this musing right now kind of awkward. Why am I wasting time writing about a life that I should be living- right now? Enough. This is -so over done and past.

"I am I.   
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:   
Then fly: what! from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What! myself upon myself?   
Alack! I love myself. Wherefore? for any good   
That I myself have done unto myself?   
O! no: alas! I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.   
I am a villain. Yet I lie; I am not.   
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.   
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,   
And every tale condemns me for a villain.   
Perjury, perjury, in the high’st degree:   
Murder, stern murder, in the dir’st degree;
All several sins, all us’d in each degree,   
Throng to the bar, crying all, ‘Guilty! guilty!’   
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;   
And if I die, no soul will pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself   
Find in myself no pity to myself?"
Richard III (Act V, Scene III)

Rooted Sorrow

Two mature, socially and cognitively intelligent, strategically capable people that I care for very much are both struggling with one individual.

They are two very different people but they are struggling with one issue: Their humour, rationality and vision all completely shut down whenever they have to deal with this one individual.

They have both turned this individual into their parent, worse still, they have created a ‘god-complex’ around this individual and have invested so much energy, for so many years, propping up their idealistic and demonic projection of what this individual is and might be that the very mention of this individuals name or presence in a room alters their chemistry. They cannot hold a straight conversation with their idol, I have seen them literally fall to pieces as they prepare to go speak to him. It is bizarre.

Where does this deep fear of another human being come from? Their rational explanation of their own bizarre behaviour is that they fear this individuals ability (inability?) to use their power properly. This explanation is true, but it is the symptom that masks what is really going on. For the truth we need to dig deeper. The root of this illusion is inside both of them.

Any person in power, be it a parent, a priest, a politician, a consultant, a CEO, a policeman, the invisible hand of a marketer or the golden aura of a celebrity, has the ability to draw power from the people around them. Why? Where does this power come from?

Today images (brands, reputations, job titles) and edifices (cars, homes, clothes, technologies) consume energy like there is no tomorrow. These “higher powers” grip the human heart with an undetectable ferocity.

The real question is not whether we have good parents, priests, politicians, marketers, bosses or celebrities around us, but whether we are awake enough to thank those in power for drawing our greatness to the surface and then using it to help others, or whether we lay our greatness at their feet, abandon power at the alter of their ego and then curse them later for being human and not living up to our foolish, childish, preposterous projections? Many people are looking to my two friends for leadership and they provide so much, but there is an elastic band that holds back their true greatness.

Any leader worth their salt knows instinctively that the chief purpose of their position in society is to draw the greatness that resides in people around them and give it back to them.

In the main however, most people in leadership positions do not know that they have to do this or even how to do this. Nobody has taught them. They did not have the parents or mentors to guide them on their journey and now are confounded by the irrational behaviour of the people that surround them. Some are so weak that they fall in love with the power others adorn upon them, to such and degree and depth that they begin to believe that this was their destiny. That they are superior to these dung beetles that serve their greatness!

Others are consumed by it because they know they don't deserve it but do not know what to do with all this power laid out at their feet. In the case of Elvis, Lennon and Johnny Cash, we gave them so much love that they did not know what to do with it, and it eventually killed them.

It is not rational, but we build myths and legends around these golden calves. We tell their stories (both good and evil), we quote their utterances as if they were the personal delivery vehicle for god or the devil himself.

We pour so much energy and time into propping up this fantasy that they (all but the very fortunate or very wise) get enraptured by the soup of supreme ignorance that we have fed them. Those who are humble are crushed by the weight of this false expectation. Those who are vain get so consumed by the worship that they begin to believe in the fantasy that others have wrapped them up in.

Our projection and need for them to live up to our fantasy is so strong that these mere mortals forget that just like the rest of us, they are bound by two majestic truths, they are imperfect and they are impermanent.

Rhetoric and discourse is a balm, a tremendous medication that can address many human aliments, but the creation of such idols, the projection of these god/devil aspirations is not something that one can talk another human being out of. You can make them aware of the stupidity of this situation that they have created, but the path out of this ignorance, the awakening has to occur inside them. We can hold up the mirror, but they have to look into it without shame and abandon the fantasy, open the knot that they tied inside their own belief system.

Idolatry does not come from the idol it comes from the person who pours their heart out. This is not something that we can talk ourselves out of because it is not rooted in rationale.

Two wonderful friends are locked in the pit of the idolatry. This is their pit. They dug it and they sit caged inside it. They wait in vain for their idol to pull them out. This is both fair and in many ways quite stupid of them. The idol did not create this situation, perhaps he is enjoying it and taking advantage of their stupidity, but he did not make this happen.

It only takes a minute to wake up. The challenge is to remain awake and not be lured back into the dozy attachment that has kept them snug and warm, safe from their own greatness. The challenge is to trust their own greatness, rather than use their idol as an excuse.

These two friends, both of them - reluctant geniuses - are afraid of their own greatness. The humility is charming but if they can mix this wonderful trait with some willful and fierce resolve, all will be well.

Until then, I sit by and watch them squander their greatness with an abandon that makes no sense, because this self inflicted wound goes beyond thinking or explanation. It all gets down to a very basic belief in the truth, the greatness that resides inside them. Once they tap into this greatness they will give it back to the people around them, the very opposite of the person they adorn with so much power. This is what makes them my friends.  If they persist in this irrational behaviour, then I, along with the people who report to them, will be thrown to the dogs. This is what makes this tragic comedy so absurd.

MACBETH. Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
DOCTOR. Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.
MACBETH. Throw physic to the dogs: I’ll none of it.

Macbeth
Act V, Scene iii

Entomb Thyself Alive

"If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,   

And case thy reputation in thy tent"

Troilus and Cressida  (Act III, Scene III)

Telling the truth is espoused as being a virtuous thing but it requires a set of subtle skills. Yes, 'the truth will set us free" makes a ton of sense. Truth is a form of release. But it is a double edged sword. Telling the truth can also create bitterness, a sting that leaves a deep and permanent scar.

As one truth dies another is born in its place, such is the cycle of death-birth-death.

I cannot manipulate others or prepare them for the truth, all I can do is manage the way I relate to my own journey of discovery.

The same applies for when others share their truths with me. The only person I can control is me.

The challenge in our busy "don't have the time" society is to prepare ourselves for these moments of truth. The challenge is to be aware of our response. I see all too often, when people are giving others advice (even when it is well meaning advice) they tend to focus on their own intent and the other persons behaviour. Perhaps it should be the other way around. Perhaps the preacher needs to attend to his or her own intent first befor they spring into action.

when we are confronted with an unexpected truth, it is common to 'lose face'. To lose face is almost as literal as it sounds.

Even though we cannot see ourselves, we walk around with an image of who and what we are. Along comes this new way of thinking or seeing things and our old image is shattered. We scramble to cover our tracks, justify our positions, prop up and try to keep in place a face that no longer exists.

In reality, when we lose one face, another one appears underneath it. This may be the same face we had before it may be somone entirely new. That is the moment when we get up and walk out of the tomb of who and what were yesterday and create a new reputation and identity for ourselves. Not an easy right of passage, it hurts like hell to walk out of that door, but that way wisdom lies.

Slowly Wise

“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast”

Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Scene III)

I can sit in a room with another human being and inhabit their soul. See through their eyes. Entrain to their heart beat and live inside their dreams and fears. I can go into a crowded room and without a minutes preparation, pluck the essence out of their thick hair, design a meeting on the fly and have the room singing to one tune by the end of the proceedings. This is my gift.

I can equally be stupid, go nights without sleep (48 hours at a stretch), push my body to the point that I am entirely pointless. I can ride the waves of micro-sleeps through that major business events and meetings, look like a pile of shit at the end of it and get paid for this self abuse because it is often the norm for the very people cutting the cheques. This is my abuse.

I can live without adequate supply of water, air, sleep, food or love. I know what it means to be the cliche, the road warrior, the workaholic, trapped inside the respectable addication.

I know what it means to collapse like a sack of potatoes in the back of a limousine, scramble across airports like a vagbound in a thousand dollar suit, I know what it means to hit a stange bed in a far away place so hard that three or five hours can pass by before I wake up in my own drool - not knowing what city I am in, why I am there or even who the hell I am.

I have tasted the curse of my own insanity. I know the fear of getting stuck there, the dreaded thought that perhaps one day I may return as a permanent resident.

I remember the day as if it was yesterday. Seven years ago, in a San Francisco hotel room, over flowing with all the plush comforts of modern life, every desire merely a call away.

I woke up to the fact that the bravado of being a road warrior was going to kill me, if I did not wake up. I was so addicted to work it was eating into my life, the back end of this life that I cannot see - that my loved ones will witness one day - was the sacrfice I was making. For what? Nothing, but plain old stupidity.

Seven years ago, I came to the realizatio that if I eat, talk, run, think, listen and live fast, I will die… first.

What record was I trying to break? What heroic peak was I trying to mount? Rat racers across the globe had travelled down this path to glorious doom. What was so great about my own self annihilation?

Seven years ago, I stepped off my self inflicted torturel. I created a pact with a few carefully chosen partners. We opened up our own firm. True North.

I still rush, I burn the candle at both ends from time to time and yes, there are days when I am not exercising my best judgement, eating or thinking properly, but I am alert to the actions i am taking not a prisoner of my own ambition.

I will not be held hostage by political crap trap, I will not sell my soul to the devil at the right price. I refuse to pander to the personal whims of people who want to make a name for themselves at the expense of the people who want to contribute.

Most of all I am slowly putting back the years at the end of my account, so I can be here a little bit longer for those who care for me to stay.

Not everyday is “True North Strong and Free” – but at least I know who and what I am working for.

Deep Harmony

"O! but they say the tongues of dying men   
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,   
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.   
He that no more must say is listen’d more   
Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;
More are men’s ends mark’d than their lives before:   
The setting sun, and music at the close,   
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,   
Writ in remembrance more than things long past"
Richard II
(Act II, Scene i)

When a man gasps his final breath, it is not only his heart beat that stops, or his eyes that turn lily white, the one who is watching is a living reflection of the same bitter-sweet rhythm.

This happened today, we were visiting my 85 year old grand-uncle, he is recovering from cancer surgery. After much family pressure he finally agreed to have his colon removed. He said he would rather die than have to walk around with a bag, but he relented.  As Pistol said in Henry V;  in Act II, Scene i:  "The grave doth gape, and doting death is near; Therefore exhale".

He was sitting when we came into the room. The nurse asked my brother to help move him to the bed. As my brother helped him to his feet, he collapsed, head slumped back, eyes went white and all the breath in his tired old weary body sagged out. The heart monitor went flat-line.

A crack team of doctors and nurses seemed to explode out of the walls, within a matter of seconds they worked furiously and pulled him out of the jaws of death. We stood to one side, not knowing where to put our hands or hearts. We were the living dead in his presence.

Within the minute, he began to breath again, the heart monitor went from a flat-line to a blimp, his big chest started to move, the slow groan and the sight of his pupils moving back and forth through the faintest squint was as momentous as any work of art I have ever experienced. This was no magic trick, this was absolutely momentous. As he came back to life, so we broke out of our living statues into a warm realization of our incompetence.

This was the miracle of modern science in action. This was team-work, a testament to our society that treats all life as sacred being it new born or 85 years old. This was the pinnacle of the past 100 years of research and education. This was a moral testament to a health care system that everyone talks so negatively about. This moment was momentous.

After giving us all these brief signs of what we technically call "life" he fell back into a deep sleep. He began to snore. A sweeter sound you cannot imagine. His long drawn out six foot six body, straggly white beard and head full flowing white hair were the only clues that this was not a babe, otherwise the way he was as rooted in that bed, innocent, alone, incapable of movement let alone go to the bathroom, here he was totally, utterly dependent on everyone who chose to be around him. He was really no different than a new born child. This grand man had finally come full circle.

An hour later, he awoke suddenly, the first thing that shot out from his deathly slumber was screaming his son's name over and over. It was in a voice full of anguish and anger. I thought it was love, the death throes for the love of his only child, but it was only later this evening that my mother shone light on what I could not see.

My cousin was 2,000 miles as the crow flies in Vancouver attending a wedding. My uncle was ready for death but refused to let go because he did not want his son to live with the agony and ignominy of not having been by his fathers side at his final moment.

My mother explained to me that yes indeed,  science had pulled him out of death's grip, but science alone could not work such magic, he had to play his part. Drugged to the eyeballs, exhausted from major surgery and unconscious, the only reason he was still alive was due to both science and the spirit, his spirit, his will to live, just a few days more for his son had turned death back, for just a little while.

"And turns the sun to shade; alas! alas!   
Witness my son, now in the shade of death;   
Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath
Hath in eternal darkness folded up.   
Your aery buildeth in our aery’s nest:
O God! that seest it, do not suffer it;   
As it was won with blood, lost be it so!"
Richard III
(Act I, Scene iii)

He That Is Giddy

"Never trust me, if I be afeard.   
He that is giddy thinks the world turns round"
Taming Of The Shew
(Act V, Scene ii).

Fear is our enemy. It rises through the roots of our humanness, rising through our nervous system, till it entangles our ears, eyes and drags all our senses back into muddy rut and drills down deeper each passing breath into the darkness where fear can meet fear and extinguish each living breath with self consumption.

Clarity is our enemy. It consumes us and everyone who crosses our path, sinks our soft skull in the warm content of its false sense of security, bathes us in its warm content, keeps us rolling around in a bed of peaceful permanence, our life expires as we suck on its pale perfection. This false sense of clarity has cultivated more wars, anguish, caused more senseless suffering than it's half brother - fear - can ever attest to.

We betray ourselves the moment we cling to these two extremities. In reality, each and every day is the same, we wake, eat, work, make love and go to sleep. Whether we are afraid or we are clear, we wake up, eat, work, make love and go to sleep. If we yield to the universe and connect to the eternal truth that resides within us, we wake up, eat, work, make love and go to sleep.

Regardless of our inner struggle, every day is the same. The only choice we have is to let go of fear and clarity, refuse to be seduced by the search for what or who is right or who is wrong, but to allow the noisy dust of thinking to settle and trust the voice within, the truth of being RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.

The life we are searching for is right here. The truth we are searching for waits for us is within. The lies we are afraid to find occupy the same same living quarters as the truths we fear. The anger we experience is ours. The trust we search so vainly for begins with the one we were born with.  Go wherever your search for truth takes you, it will always bring you back right here.

Slave To Memory

"By heaven, I would most gladly have forgot it:
Thou said’st,—O! it comes o’er my memory,   
As doth the raven o’er the infected house,   
Boding to all;"
Othello
(Act IV, Scene i)

I am always fascinated when leaders, be they politicians, business people, scientists, artists or parents ‘talk’ about culture, it is always amusing to watch how they talk about it as if it is all ‘out there’ somewhere, as if it were something that existed beyond their reach, or something that they have to contend with, honour or tame, rather than something that exists because of them.

Senior executives, like parents, politicians and priests, genuinely forget the power of their own history and their current behaviour and how these things shape the culture they live in. Culture is the set of beliefs, rituals and symbols (e.g. language) that reflects back their own self in a hall of warped mirrors. When reality strikes home (an employee quits unexpectedly, a child leaves home, a terrorist attack occurs or someone such as themselves are fired), these mirrors come crashing down in a tattered dawn of bloodless disbelief. Until then, we continue to snooze in the history of our own making, legends in our own lunchtime.

Just as a fish is oblivious to water, so we also float around in our own belief systems, oblivious to how our history shapes and perhaps even paralyzes our culture.

There are moments when we are awakened and aware, but as soon as we get busy or feel pressured, we rapidly substitute thinking with memory. Most of our lives, memory trumps thinking.

it is natural for us to revert to the comfort of our memory rather than step into the ambiguity and discomfort of ‘thinking’ about what is really going on.

Our decisions become a reflection of yesterday the minute we get too lazy to think, the minute we escape this moment, right here, right now. We are more often than not embedded in YES-terday, rather than Yes-TODAY, that is we say 'yes' to the old decisions and ways of thinking rather than examine the present moment freely.

Being in the moment is easy to talk bout, and yet the toughest thing to do. That is why silence is boring, being consumed and distracted by small talk, noise and being enter-tamed, is the cop out that help us avoid the terror of the untamed brain, the unfettered breath, the freedom we crave from a distance but cannot digest in the flesh.

The toughest thing is to be awakened, self aware, self-less, fearless, open to our role in the world we create.

To create and lead change. To do these things, we have to initiate one step out of the norm, beyond the comfort of our memory ladened path, step into the muddy thinking without certainty that we will not sink into the reality and never find our 'old self' ever again.

"I do believe you think what now you speak;   
  But what we do determine oft we break.    
  Purpose is but the slave to memory,
  Of violent birth, but poor validity;   
  Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,   
  But fall unshaken when they mellow be"
Hamlet,
(Act III, Scene ii)

Our Naked Frailties Hid

"Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we!   
For such as we are made of, such we be."
Twelfth Night
(Act II, Scene ii)

In Punjabi there is a word that I am not sure I find a direct translation for. The term is "bham" - bham is a deep rooted suspicion, a doubt that enters the system and so totally contaminates the soul that everything you think, say and do is now filtered through this false certainty. It is a lethal combination of fear, doubt and paralysis.

If someone you trust whispers in your ear that someone has spat in the glass of milk you are about to drink, what would you do? Put the glass down and walk away from it, or consume it with the same relish as if nothing had been said? Bham, a single word, the briefest sense of betrayal, a single glance, an invisible, indivisible hairline of doubt that transforms the whole.

Where does bham come from, not the carrier of the viral rumours but the receiver whose immunity to their own human frailty is interrupted, it arises in the minute we avoid trusting our own judgment, intuition and lean on other people's t-reason to buttress our decisions.

The self doubt we dish out come back to us with interest. The bham in our bones infects the ones who trust us and they mirror the dis-ease with every glance, hum, nod and grunt. Eventually we are locked up in the certainty of mythical proportions, she is great, he is a twat, she is whore, he is an angel.

Bham is the drama we conduct, that that eventually conducts us. It conducts the negative and positive energy from and through to other people. We pass around our bham like a holy relic, with a warm tenderness and a religious faith that the Gods have to envy.

Remove bham and we are naked, alone and vulnerable. Remove bham and we are damned, we have to think for ourselves, take responsibility for our own actions and relationships, accept our frailty and the frailty of everyone around us. Remove it and we have to live fearlessly, content with our uncertainty and fallibility. Who needs that, bring on the bham - our drug of choice!

And when we have our naked frailties hid,   
That suffer in exposure, let us meet,   
And question this most bloody piece of work,
To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us:   
In the great hand of God I stand, and thence   
Against the undivulg’d pretence I fight   
Of treasonous malice.
Macbeth
(Act II, Scene ii)