Sylvia's Journal

The crows have always been here, at least for the last 150 years. We know this from a center page engraving in Harper’s Weekly (August 6, 1887). It features a ‘murder’ (yes, that’s the collective noun!) of crows circling over Lobster Cove. It was drawn by Harry Fenn in a series called ‘Around Cape Ann.’ The offspring (we’d like think) of those crows are still here.

About five years ago, many of the crows were killed by the West Nile Virus. We found their bodies all over the place, and dutifully reported the dead beasts. But it didn’t kill all of them.

Lately I watched as the crow population has not only surged, but the beasts seem larger than usual, and more aggressive. They are dive-bombing and hassling the squirrels in ways I cannot remember. I was wondering whether this is what happens when you lose many members of your species after a virus has ravaged the population. 

The ones we see now survived the onslaught, as their average lifespan is about 13 years or so.  Are they stronger than the lost family members? Darwin would say yes. Were they also more aggressive? My own eyes tell me yes.

And now it is our turn. I wonder if the crows are watching us, and in their own caw-caw language contemplate what they see below them, and ask themselves questions like, how will these humans emerge from their virus episode? Will their survivors be stronger, like us? Will they be more aggressive, like us?

I think they’d be wrong. I have seen so many instances of generosity, from companies to their customers, from total strangers to total strangers, from all those critical workers to their fellow citizens. It’s true I have also seen instances of aggression that I could not have imagined when the crows started dying, but these are far outnumbered by the acts of goodness and generosity.

I’d like to think that we are not at all like crows.

In the introduction to the 2009 edition of his book ‘Theory U’ Otto Scharmer writes, “Because our thin crust of order and stability could blow up at any time, now is the moment to pause and become aware of what’s rising from the rubble.” The reference to ‘rising from the rubble..’ comes from Vaclav Havel’s Liberty Medal acceptance speech at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (4 July 1994): “I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble.”

So, here we are, 26 years after Havel said those words, and 10 years after Scharmer wrote his. The thin crust has blown up and we are now in this strange new world, wading into the rubble of the old. 

As we hear other people’s perspectives on COVID-19 and the new world it has created for us, I see people on a spectrum that range from “this is nothing more than a very bad case of the ordinary flu!” (expressed by the guys who cut our neighbors lawn, who don’t wear masks or gloves), to “things will never be the same again” (as predicted by many scientists, economists, finance people, and me, all masked and gloved).

The SARS-CoV2 virus, in all its cleverness and tinyness, has accomplished in just a few months what the most brilliant, enlightened, farsighted and imaginative people failed to do since the second world war: getting people out of their boxes and reinvent how to live together on this planet in ways that are sustainable and leave no one behind.

Until just a few months ago plenty of people (at least among those who had the ability and resources to do so) had no interest in changing the way they worked. Now we are collectively doing it, even though some do it kicking and screaming. The people who will weather this storm are the ones who were prepared and saw this coming. Or those who may not have seen this coming, who are nevertheless able to see silver linings (no more commutes, more quality time with the kids, more freedom, no disruptions from bored or gossipy colleagues), and possibilities for the future.

As we now know for sure, we were never very imaginative about our future. We simply extrapolated from the past and present, with minor tweaks. The people who didn’t believe in online education kept on expanding their campuses with more real estate, upping their tuitions to pay for it all and hitting their wealthy alumns for never big enough endowments in an ever rising spiral. And now it’s ‘poof’ time.

In 1911 the Scottish naturalist John Muir wrote in his book My First Summer in the Sierra, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitches to everything in the universe.” I always thought this was about nature and the universe, but now I see it is also about our supply chains: Vietnamese factories cannot make an important export product (clothing) because they can’t get the buttons which come from China where the factory that made them is closed because the workers went home to be with their families and, even though they are now open, they cannot staff them because for them too, everything hitches to other parts of the supply chain, whether human or material.  It’s Poof time on a grand scale

I am reading a book about how emotions are constructed that has pulled the foundations of what I knew from underneath me. The book is challenging everything I knew to be true about the universality of emotions. It has me look back, with some embarrassment, to things I did in the past few decades during workshops in various African and Asian countries, testing people’s abilities to become more ’emotionally intelligent,’ and learn to recognize and name the inner emotional states of others based on, allegedly, universal facial expressions. 

There was the assumption that the major 5 or 6 major emotional states (happy, sad, angry, disgusted, surprised, etc.) were the same everywhere in the world. Now I learn that the American psychologists who invented and then replicated the experimental designs that led to the conclusion of universality of emotions were wrong. Once the American/western biases were removed from the experimental methods, the author and her research assistants were not able to replicate the results, not once, not twice, not any time.

As I was listening to the scientist explaining why she first came to question the initial hypothesis of the universality of emotions, and then developed a new theory, I found myself arguing with the methods and conclusions that dismissed the old theory. And then I caught myself. I was not quite willing to let go of something that I had taken for truth. Such things are painful. But then I realized that this new theory did explain something that for decades had not made sense to me: why was it that people in Ouidah (Benin) who consider the Python a sacred animal were not scared the way I was of that animal. The snakes even curled around the rafters in people’s houses according to the temple master (who then curled an enormous snake around my neck like a shawl).

My beliefs about the universality of human emotions have, until now, informed the stories I am telling myself and others about emotions and feelings. [By the way, if you Google ‘what is the difference between emotions and feelings?’ you will find the very first few entries contradicting each other – this should have given me a hint!]

Once I got over my initial indignation (‘how does she dare to question my Truth!’), and listened a bit more carefully as she explained her new theory of ‘constructed emotions,’ I realized I had much to learn from this cognitive neuroscientist who knew a whole lot more than I did about how our brains work. The annoyance stemmed from having to admit to myself that what I thought I knew something about, I actually knew very little about. A setback, this late in life!

My  attitude of ‘I-know-this-for-sure’ has been challenged consistently these last 2 months. The things I learned about COVID-19 from, what I considered credible sources, turned out to be on shaky grounds, each truth being superseded by newer truths at regular intervals. What I (and so many others) thought to be ‘for sure’ about the virus has consistently been superseded. In the beginning of March I still thought:

• It’s just like the flu
• It’s only dangerous for old and fragile people
• If you are not showing symptoms you are not sick
• You can’t pass it on if you are not sick/don’t have symptoms
• As long as you cough and sneeze into your elbow you are good
• The virus can’t live outside the body
• Small kids and young people aren’t at risk
• We just have to social distance for a while and then we can go back to normal, etc.

Looking back there are so many things that, had I known, I might have done differently, done more of or less of. The same is probably true for millions of other people like me. Had we known ‘for sure’ – we probably wouldn’t have been in the pickle we are in now.

It goes to show how hard it is for (real) scientists to actually know something for sure (I am not including fake scientists who cherrypick their data). Even if scientists claim that something is for real, their assertions depend entirely on how they go about testing their theories. This leaves me with the question, how do we ever know ‘for-sure?’

For more than 2 decades we have kept our lives organized using what now seems an old fashioned appointment book. Every year in October I order the new Anselm Adams engagement book. This is our favorite, not just because of the wonderful pictures of the American landscape but also because of the way it is laid out. From October to December we have two books going. And then, in January we relegate the old one to a box with other memorabilia. We have kept them there mostly out of nostalgia for things past. It holds another year of our life. Sometimes we go back into that box to help us refresh our memories about something we have done in the past.  

Now, the calendar is like a wasteland, sitting unused on the counter with page after page of whiteness. The March weeks still have a number of entries, and then it is blank, except for the occasional things I planned month in advance, like our trip to Holland in April, a trip to a friend’s wedding in May, and some other gatherings that required travel and advance bookings.

Gone are the appointments for doctor, PT, massage and dentist visits, dinners with friends, concerts, plays, lectures, etc.  If this calendar is kept with the old ones in a box and no one throws it away after we are gone, it may tell a story of idleness, of nothingness.

But of course, nothing is further from the truth. We are very busy but everything is now only marked on our electronic calendars. For years we struggled to keep the atom and byte calendars synchronized, with mixed success. Now that problem has gone away. We don’t have to chide or blame each other for not marking something in the appointment book and missing an appointment that required payment for the no-show. This is one of the many layers of the new abnormal that is revealing itself to us. More to come, no doubt.

Some weeks ago, I decided to offer complimentary services to teams that are now working in a high stress new normal. I made the offer to ex-colleagues who have moved on to other places of work and now are members of teams that don’t have a lot of practice talking about their feelings. I have done five sessions since then with four different teams working in the private for-profit sector, the private non-profit sector and the public sector.

As with any move we make towards others, they may not be entirely altruistic. In my offer were also some more self-serving motives.

For one, knowing that team coaching is on the rise, I figured that these experiences would give me something to experience and learn from, and I did. I am a member of a team coaching network that gets together periodically. The experiences gave me something to bring into the conversations.  With that, the selfish turned back into altruistic.

I also reasoned that, if the teams appreciated these sessions, maybe they would hire me in the future. In fact, one did offer to pay me but I declined, at least for now. Still, there is this hope.

I know in my reasoned brain that real thankfulness and gratitude do not require a response, but the brain cells in my heart keep jumping up and down waiting for that gushing response, oh, that was wonderful what you did, we want more of that (so I can be more generous again). 

But the reactions didn’t come, not positive, not negative, just none. And in that nothingness I find myself wanting. Any feedback, even if the session was a waste of time, is better than my guessing, which leaves nothing to learn or improve.  The vacuum leaves too much room for making up stories.

I am coaching someone who is missing feedback from her peers and boss about her performance and they way she works in the team, her style, but there is none. I can so empathize with her now. Some of my teachers would say, well, there you go, this experience needed to be experienced by you to be a better coach. I hope so.

I just deleted from my calendar the last vestige of our planned vacation in Holland, the return trip from Tessa from London which would have been done using my Delta miles. Now all signs of this event happening are gone. Hopefully we can do this a year from now.

We broke our isolation seal by having Sita and her family over for the weekend. Saffi, our 4 year old granddaughter gave us the longest real hugs ever. The one we had all been longing for. 

The weather was on our side. We spent much time on our beach, which had been cordoned off by the police, but we had our own access and ignored it. From time to time the police car would drive by and, using a bull horn to tell people to get off the beach.

There was a wide assortment of people on the beach: some family pods, some teenage pods (without masks) and some lonely adults. I think what we had all had in common, was the need to break away and inhale the fresh clean lobster cove air. It was too cold to swim, although some people did don bathing suits, ran in quickly, dipped below the surface and ran out. We stood by the side and applauded them. I don’t think I have ever swum in our cove before late June.

It was so nice to be together for a short while, as if nothing had changed. But of course, everything has changed and so we enjoy the time we have together doubly. Pure joy!

Here’s some perspective taking – a useful technique I learned in my coach training, that was triggered by the comparison of the number of deaths (in the US) due to COVID-19 and deaths during the entire Vietnam war. At this first week of May 2020 it is about the same, 58,000 or so. It made me think about other parts of that comparison that may be true as well (recognizing that 60 years ago we were in a man-made catastrophe, a little different from this force of nature that has hit us now): 

At a societal level:

• people were anxious and angry
• when your number came up, you could lose your life
• a generational divide about how to act, what to do or not to do, accompanied by estrangement within families based on one’s views
• an economic recession
• a deep polarization in society.

At a (geo)political level there were then, and still are now, some things that are eerily similar:

• a president considered incompetent by many
• officials at the highest levels lying through their teeth
• fierce battles between the White House and the so-called liberal media
• a cry to battle competitors to the ‘America First’ position (USSR then, China now)
• reluctance if not outright obstruction to the strategy of ‘tax and spend’ to help citizens traverse the turbulence
• election strategies focused on disenfranchising those who don’t support the president’s agenda 
• open warfare between the White House and Capitol Hill. 

And finally, there are the historical wounds that do not want to go away and that are still releasing pus:

• state rights versus federal rights
• vengefulness due to forced desegregation and all the other judgments about the denizens of ‘the (elitist) north’ and ‘the common (white) men of the south.’.

And then there is the long hair – this time not a statement about one’s political philosophy but rather a result of the closing of barbers and hair salons.

Here is a little tidbit culled from the archives of the House of Representative. With some minor changes in words and names, it was easy for me to see that we are not entirely on unfamiliar grounds. 

The 91st Congress (1969–1971) faced several daunting challenges: an unpopular war in Vietnam, race riots in the cities, a rising crime rate, and an economic recession. College campuses erupted in protest when President Richard Nixon ordered U.S. troops into Cambodia and escalated the Vietnam War. Congress defeated the President’s attempt to change welfare policy, and rejected two of Nixon’s nominees to the Supreme Court. As animosity mounted between the White House and Capitol Hill, Congress reorganized itself in 1970 to foster transparency with new voting rules, a new budget process, and a more professional staff. (source)

We have made it through that time half a century ago. We will make it again through this one. And maybe, 60 years from now, people will look back at this time as a period that created the most amazing music, and the teenagers then wished they hadn’t missed it.

History, and life, consist of cycles, with suffering and wonderment traipsing rigth alongside each other.

This was a good week, especially for our emerging bulbs, the bleeding hearts plants and the garden seedlings, what with all the rains and dampness. For us humans it was a little less good, weather-wise: it’s still mostly winter (upper 30s at night, 40s during the day), reminding me of something I know all too well – spring really doesn’t start here until the second half of May. The sun remained hidden most days.  One night, after a lovely sunny day, we had difficulty accepting that the (relatively) warm weather of the day was gone. We sat stubbornly outside, around our firepit. Shivering, despite wearing a coat and hat, it wasn’t as great as I had fantasized, a distant memory of a warm summer’s night. 

But it was a good week in terms of learning and human connections. With all that time on my hands I am making time to listen in on conversations around the world, and learn as much as I can. Although one could say that these conversations are all taking place in bubbles – like-minded people talking with each other about the importance of connection, care, compassion and communication, while we connect, express our care and compassion and communicate what we are all doing about these things, or could be doing. 

The conversations are uplifting. They leave me with a sense of hope. All these people who appear on my screen are embedded in others networks and each of those has members who are part of other networks – an exponential affair, all those bubbles. And in all those bubbles are helpers. Like me, they believe that the current crisis is not just a disaster but also an opportunity to re-arrange the desk chairs on this ship that, by the way, is NOT sinking if we continue act wisely to keep the ship seaworthy.

What’s also uplifting is the promise of this weekend: a promise of sun and warm weather, and best of all, a visit from our grandkids with their mom and dad. We have all been isolated and careful for so long that we are pretty sure we are clean. We will be a clean and careful family pod.  

My self-selected messengers delivered two related messages this morning that, like Velcro, hooked onto words already floating in my mind: boredom and change. They seem opposite at first glance. One a state of mind, the other a force of nature.

I have a steady morning routine which consists of  a 10-minute meditation, a 8 to 9 mile stationary bike ride, followed by a shower and then breakfast. I recently answered someone’s question (how are you feeling?) with the word ‘bored!’ It’s the same thing every morning, day after day after day. At night I have a different routine: I listen to whatever audio book I am engrossed in while doing my electronic jigsaw puzzle. It’s not that these routines are unpleasant or forced, it’s the sameness that sometimes gets to me.

My meditation teacher talked about boredom this morning. He reminded me that the sight of a sleeping baby may seem boring to all but the parents of that child. Not much going on. Yet nothing is further from the truth. Inside that sleeping infant changes are taking place at a crazy pace. 

In our physical distance world of today many people have expressed this sense of ‘boring sameness’ to me. A joke that is circulating on FB tells it all: Until further notice the days of the week are now called 
thisday, thatday, otherday, someday, yesterday, today and nextday!

Yet around us, and possibly inside us, change is taking place at a crazy pace. All the things we took for granted (such as how we get medical care, how we meet, how we work, how we earn our living) have been thrown out of the window. Telemedicine, something some people have been pushing for decades, has now become a common form of consultation with health professionals. Flexible work hours, tele-commuting, working in remote teams became a near instantaneous reality, as if a switch was flipped.

So I am telling myself that underneath all that sameness and boredom, some awesome, and in many cases badly needed changes are actually taking place. I can only hope that these changes are so firmly embedded by the time we leave our isolated spaces that flipping the switch off again will be nearly impossible. 

I studied psychology because I was interested in human behavior. After a long and circuitous route, I have come back to my roots. Not that I ever lost interest in human behavior, but I pushed off from the Developmental Psychology shores many decades ago. Now I am back.

I graduated about 5 years before Robert Keegan published his book ‘The Evolving Self.’ I paid little attention to him then as he was not in the pantheon of great psychology theorists at the time of my studies. Besides I had moved to the Middle East (Yemen, then Lebanon) and later to Senegal. I had gotten married and had a child while working full time. Although I watched the development process unfold in my own child, I had kind of forgotten about the discipline of developmental psychology in which I was credentialed, at least academically. It was in 2001, when I read Keegan and Lisa Lahey’s book ‘the way we talk’ that I reconnected with my initial interest in developmental psychology and started to follow Keegan. 

Yesterday I was reminded of his theory of human development during my breakfast reading of Heather Cox Richardson’s daily missive. She displays, for all to see, the behavior of people at the highest levels of our government. It took me back to Keegan’s view on how the mindsets of some people evolve more than those of others. 

Here’s a summary of his stage theory – more depth be found on the internet and YouTube.

In Keegan’s theory the earliest stage, Stage 1, is the stage of the Impulsive Mind. The world revolves around the small child and everything is there to serve his or her needs. At stage 2 the child (now an adolescent) has expanded his or her horizon, although satisfying one’s own needs is still at center stage in all interactions. This is the stage of the Imperial Mind. Interestingly, in his research he found that about 6% of the US’s adult population is stuck in that mindset. 

At stage 3 we have learned that we are no longer the center of the universe and our minds are socialized by the culture, values and philosophies of our extended family and community (tribe, religion, etc.) in which we are embedded. Keegan’s research suggests that about 58% of the adult population is at this stage of the Socialized Mind. In stage 4, the stage of the Self-Authoring Mind, we have come to realize that there are other perspectives on reality that are different from the one we were socialized in – hence the importance of travel and living in cultures other than the one you grew up in. About one third of the adult population has reached this stage. 

The highest stage is number 5 – the Self-Transformative Mind. At this stage we have come to realize there are no firm answers to anything as everything happens in a context.  Jennifer Garvey Berger, who has worked with Keegan and who is a genius in her own right (especially when it comes to leading in chaotic situations, like right now) explains: “People with this form of mind are less likely to see the world in terms of dichotomies or polarities, […] they are more likely to believe that what we often think of as black and white are just various shades of gray whose differences are made more visible by the lighter or darker colors around them.” An estimated 1% of the population has reached this stage.

The stages are somewhat comparable to the levels of energy that I learned about in my (IPEC) coach training. People with catabolic (depleting, destructive) levels of energy either are victims or get very angry. At levels three to seven people show up with the kind of energy that is anabolic, uplifting, constructive. The highest levels are congruent with Keegan’s stage 5.

Back to our government officials. I think many of them operate out of level 2 or 3, and the one at the top seems to be stuck in level 1. I would think this level to be an immediate disqualifier for the top position.