Kashmir's Shak

An Enforced Ceremony

Trust in business dealings has always been the life blood of the economy. To "deal" with someone meant exactly that. The dealing between individuals was the deal. Through that dealing each individual put forth their face, their name, their personal reputation as collateral.

Rules of great business practices were written long before the industrial revolution or modern day shenanigans such as CRM and 1to1 show boating. They were written in people's deeds not text books or power-point slides. Back in the days of Marco Polo, huge trading caravans moved back and forth between China and Europe.

Somehow, separated by thousands of miles, with nothing but sailing ships to communicate, people managed unbelievably large loans, entrusted others with their whole inventory on a rickety ship, working deals for long term, true business to business relationships.

There were no practical means of enforcing agreements over 5000-mile distances, across multiple languages and religious beliefs, there were no legally binding contracts that meant anything outside of a local jurisdiction, and little chance of recovering property if you were gullible enough to cut deals with swindlers.

Reputations were garnered over decades. Newcomers took their risks, the shallow had their day in the sun, but over time they were washed away and only the deep, true businesses survived.

The vast majority of traders were not crooks nor idealists, they understood the power of partnerships. They knew how to judge a crook from a partner, they knew what it meant to 'do business' with each other, either that or they went broke. The same is true today.

All of this occurred without cell phones, e-mail, couriers, railroads, MBA theories of customer management or conferences on how to create one-to-one relationships. That is because, doing business requires trust and like courage, love, respect and honesty, it is not something that can be taught, it resides inside all of us, we can only experience it by taking actions, it is about being not seeing or saying, you get there by doing it.

Every relationship, whether it is personal or business is about entering into something that cannot be fully defined, we cannot know everything about the other person, there are too many variables and these are changing all the time. That is where trust comes into the equation.

Business gets down to the courage to be trustworthy and trusting. We are not talking about blind trust, one hand washes the other, both parties need to operate with their eyes and hearts open. They need to connect, dig below the small talk. It requires people to place an ounce of integrity into every handshake, resist the temptations of greed and instant riches. That is how long term, true, business to business partnerships are created, through a core set of values that will never change.

There are as many crooks and swindlers today as there were in the so called - "dark ages". They used to be called pirates and swindlers, today we call them Conrad Black and Enron. They just have nicer suits and eat in better cafeteria's, but they will always be there to keep honourable business people on their toes.

This is an eternal truth, it is how it has been and how it will always be. Modern day business relationships are glued together through integrity and trust. Everything else is just so much noise. Laws, contracts, sales calls, customer information systems, databases, customer relationship management strategies are all an enforced ceremony.The only thing that counts is the underlying intent that keeps these social symbols, rituals and ceremonies together.

When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony.   
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith;   
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,   
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle;
But when they should endure the bloody spur,
They fall their crests, and, like deceitful jades,   
Sink in the trial.

Julius Cæsar
(Act iv, Scene ii)

Why Yet I Live To Say

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
but in ourselves, that we are underlings"

Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene ii)

I would rather be deaf than blind. Sometimes I watch another person moving their lips and try to listen to what they have done or are going to do. It is not easy but once I shift from hearing what people say to watching what they actually do, the world changes for the better.

Season after season, reason after treason, I experience the slow repetition of the same old sensible grief and abject splendour settle into the soft daily grind we call a life.

It is not just about other people, it begins with ourselves. We pay too much regard to what we think and say, but are not willing to pay as much attention to what we do.

“Do you know what you say?”
Twelfth Night (Act III, Scene IV)

Herein lies the root of our anguish and the door to liberation. Shifting from saying to doing, impressions to implications, from reflections to results.

This challenge is grossly amplified (literally) in our information and data overloaded existence. We crave and hoard information as if it were a coat that could give us immortality. Kids hold 500 songs on MP3 players but only play 3 of them, we maintain e-mails that we will never read again, we buy magazines that contain more words to soothe us from confronting the real issues that we know we need to address (our bodies, relationships, household chores and prayer/meditation).

Confessions, promises, resolutions, bla, bla, bla. Commitments to follow through, to alter habits, to improve health, well-being, relationships and our contribution to society are all just so much noise. Preachers preach, they have done so for thousands of years and will continue for thousands more, it matters not what they or we say or hear.

Our deeds are tour foundation, the accumulation of our actions is the earth beneath our feet. These may be a rocks of lies or the firm rich soil of integral actions. When our words and deeds are integral that is - when we act with "integrity", we experience a connection and fulfillment that cannot be purchased or acquired. These are the moments of truth, when we are awake, alive, true, when we count, matter, make a difference. Every action we take influences the thinking and actions of the people around us. That is our unique contribution.

When a person 'scales' a mountain, they do so by putting the weight of their feet, step by step to the top. The next time you put the full weight of your foot on a weighing scale, imagine that the measure you see on the dial is the measure of your deeds. Just pretend. Imagine, if we were actually able to do this, how would it alter our perception of ourselves and the actions we take?

Marcel Proust put it best when he said “The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes” We have to wake up every day, every minute of every day, deliberately silence the noise in our head, cut through the noise of cheap words and watch with dispassion beyond the games and acting, to the deed. This begins with seeing our own actions first, because when we see these then everything else in the universe becomes clearer. What we see is what we get when we see ourselves with open eyes.

Words bury the truth. Our actions are the fulcrum, the pivot upon which our life turns. Our deeds are all we own, the only truth we wear, our only true possession, when all is said and done, it is all we leave behind.

Why does it take so many words to say something so obvious?

Now, whe’r it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple   
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
a thought, which, quarter’d, hath
but one part wisdom,   
And ever three parts coward,
I do not know
Why yet I live to say  ‘This thing’s to do;’   
Sith I have cause and will and strength and
means to do ’t.

Hamlet (Act IV, Scene IV)

Jove In A Thatch'd House

"These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights that give a name to every fixed star, have no more profit of their shining nights than those that walk and wot not what they are. Too much to know is to know nought but fame" - Love's Labour's Lost (Act I, Scene I)

I am blinded by the assumption that if I accumulate enough scientific, evidence based knowledge - then I can make the right decisions and be free to live a good life.

Knowledge is the currency of the mind. Without it I starve, with it I can function, once I over-dose on it, I am its prisoner. It is only meaningful when it serves - as means to an end.

"O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatch’d house!"  - As You Like It (Act I, Scene II)

A singular obsession with knowledge is another form of lust that blind and bind us. This is a praised addiction and it is the cause of many an emotional ailment. How is the obsession with accumulating knowledge any different than being an alcoholic or an entrepreneur trapped on the treadmill of making more money than one can ever spend or put to good use?

I need intellectual nourishment to activate my sensibility for the truth, to keep me awake. A gluttony of ideas, only clogs the senses.

Ideas are inventory, too much ties up the flow of thinking, blunts my intelligence, buries the very truth I search for, so lustily in its own noise.

"O! where hath our intelligence been drunk? Where hath it slept?" - Life and Death of King John (Act IV, Scene II).

Sermons in Stones

      "I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is
      emulation, nor the musician's, which is fantastical,
      nor the courtier's, which is proud, nor the
      soldier's, which is ambitious, nor the lawyer's,
      which is politic, nor the lady's, which is nice, nor
      the lover's, which is all these: but it is a
      melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples,
      extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry's
      contemplation of my travels, in which my often
      rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness".

As You Like It (Act IV, Scene I)

Every year for the past 20, I have seen the books, presentations and pundits proclaim that everything up to this very date has been negative but now, from this point forward and miraculously, in the next five years, a tidal wave of change is going to wash over all our problems. The breakthrough is just around the corner, just sign the line that is dotted and hand over your doe.

I am a shameless do-gooder, but I am also far from an idealists. I want to do good work, I want to help people, do my bit to take away suffering, help my fellow captives to experience one pure moment of fulfillment in their crowded lives.

Our environment is suffocating. We are running out of fossil based fuels, at the same time as we increase our dependence on them. The skies are leaking.

The air is poisoned. It is not that complicated. If we put chemicals in our water supply, it will kill us.

Ten million people will wake up this year year discover they have cancer for the first time.

Six million die prematurely (of cancer) in the same time period.

Statistical trends already reveal that unless there is a quantum shift in thinking and behaviour across the planet, 40% of us will get cancer in our lifetime. One in four of us will die of cancer. Does anyone exist whose life has not been tainted by this global epidemic?

Two and a half million people died of AIDS in the past twelve months. Over half a million of them were children, under the age of 15. Thirty seven million people are living with AIDS/HIV.

Academics are arguing over the methodologies for calculating the levels of poverty in the earth. And we all sit by, helpless, busy ourselves with trivia - waiting to die and turning a blind eye. Things are definitely getting better. Right.

"O! while you live, tell truth and shame the devil!"
Henry IV, Part One (Act III, Scene I)

As the global pressure to be more competitive, to have more, to work harder and run faster to keep having more, we will have less and less guilt free time for ourselves and the ones we love. In this brave new world, our relationships are increasingly be measured on their financial and emotional ROI. It is just going to get worse. This is as shallow as visions get.

Our personal worth is based on the hourly rate at which we are able to rent out our lives. Our value is measured by the depth and frequency of our consumption and expenditure patterns. The sum total of our life's purpose summed up in the the dollars we are able to put in each others pockets.

War, suffering, hunger, disease, hatred, lies and ignorance have been part of the human lexicon since we lifted our front paws off the ground. There is no new nesws here, the question is can we change? The only change we should look forward to are the "five easy pieces" jangling in our hollow fists. 

Parents do not have time for their children. Children do not have time for childhood. My seven year old told me yesterday about the class she received on how to know whether her male relatives (father, uncle, grandfather) were doing 'inappropriate touching' and what to do if we did. I was not sure if she was being violated, or me? My 13 year old went through a course that consisted of a heaviily padded guy jumping on top of her so that she could experience a "rape simulation". How many children have not watched war scenes on TV where innocent people are brutally attacked or murdered? My neighbors daughter was killed in a drive by shooting outside a night club, at 3am, she was 16. We are beyond violence and violation. Are things going to change? Yes. For the better? What do you think?

These are the truths that stop me in my tracks, I can't do anything about them, but I am not going to cry, at least my eyes are open.

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I will not change it".

As You Like It (Act II, Scene I)