Re-reading The Adult Years by Frederic Hudson, co-founder of the Hudson Institute of Coaching, I was struck by how prescient it was (much of it could be written today) and how accurately it describes the tasks and the dilemmas of adults constructing meaningful lives in times of change (he was onto this 30 years before David Brooks very currentThe Second Mountain.
Frederic’s
vision for change is profound….here is how he positioned coaches as needed
change agents, in 1995!!! no less.
When the macrosystems (of society) are out of synch, the
microsystems rise in importance to provide direction and meaning for our
lives…. the leaders of microsystem empowerment (I call) “coaches” –
READ MORE of his great thinking here…and thanks for the work and the person you were Frederic…I am compelled to write about you every once in a while since you so live with me and so many I know…. John P. Schuster
As a
personal aside:
In the acknowledgement section of the book, he listed the somewhat forgotten but so relevant thought leaders like Malcolm Knowles (wiki) and Edie Seashore, superstars in my mind. And much to my surprise Frederic names me too, as I had forgotten about that. I got publicly acknowledged by Frederic Hudson, how beautiful to rediscover since I feel I live and work on his shoulders and try to carry on his work by helping Pam, his widow/company co-founder, also an accomplished author, their son, Michael, and the Hudson team. When The Adult Years was published I had known Frederic for only 3 years but it was a major turning point in my life and he and I enjoyed a deep connection from the beginning.
Evidence-based thinking needs its opposite sibling
What wretchedness: to believe
in only what can be proven. Mary
Oliver
The test of a first-rate
intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same
time, and still retain the ability to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Wisdom is discernment in action.
It deepens as we learn to make more useful distinctions. We gain wisdom from
experience that we reflect upon, finding patterns and lessons to take forward
to similar or related situations. Sophisticated people are able to make many
distinctions—and the word comes from Sophia in Greek, or wisdom There are old
sayings and catch phrases that get at this:
The fool doth think he is wise,
but the wise man knows himself to be a fool
You can always tell a sophomore
(that Sophia word again) but you can’t tell them much. (for the immature
pretend sophisticate)
I think I am not that different
than most: in much of our lives we march steadily into our futures, or we skip,
or stumble along, fairly happily, even though we are all hit with, challenge,
loss and occasional catastrophe. We move ahead more or less successfully in
spite of a few big and lots of little mistakes in judgment that we are always
correcting—from financial strategies, to work and career choices, to ways we
communicate with our spouses and kids, to politics and its endless streaming of
issues about which to get informed. On we go.
We have tough problems to solve
in the world. Immigration, global warming, to name two. And there are the ones
to solve in our lives: what’s the best amount of ambition in my career? How do
I shape my kids and let them be themselves at the same time? To name two common
ones.
I wish I thought well, clearly,
deeply at all times. I don’t and none of us do. And while science is always a
help on our thinking, Mary Oliver, at the top of this post, is just one of many
to notice logic/reason/science has limits as well. We all know that sound
reasoning helps us discern of course. Hooray and multiple Hosannas for
reasoning and rational thought. At the same time I also put in large shout out
for other types of thinking represented by the
three P’s I will explain. We also
need more than reason to arrive at a place of wisdom for our many decisions.
The wisdom of cedar tree rings.
Here are the three P’s: polarity,
paradox, and poetry-three words to keep in mind that can keep us from
the shallow dimensions of our thinking, keep us in the deep part of the pool,
when we have complex decisions to make:
F. Scott Fitzgerald helps us with
the first P, polarity. If signs of intelligence include holding two opposite
thoughts together at the same time, our politicians have some learning to do.
They need to learn this: that while you may represent one set of principles and
truths, your opponent represents polar opposite truths. Democracy protects individual
rights through majority rule—that’s
a built in polarity. Left and Right are both wrong and both correct. What is
the dynamic that needs to happen to blend the best of both ways of thinking?
Certainly not shaming the other side and questioning their intentions at every
turn. (Read Robert Hall’s strong writing on this in linkedin.com/in/rohall/)
Polarity thinking dynamics
consititute both/and thinking. So does paradox, the second P, in a different
way. Life contains contradictory features and this needs to be captured.
The “less is more” phrase is a practical paradox that we all recognize as
somehow true in some situations in particular, perhaps in a counter-intuitive
way. There is folk wisdom here—things are not always that they seem, big
changes can come from the little things, and many more. Not logical really but,
but true in the way paradox is true.
And the third P, poetry, is my favorite. Poetry has many gifts, and as my teacher friend Thomas Moore says, clarity is not always one of them. Reason tries to be clear, but poetry is deep, it suggest, approximates, shines light and imagination toward our experiences and life situations. And it goes for linguistic beauty—here is one little example from John O’Donohue “May our minds come alive today to the invisible geography that leads to new frontiers.” Invisible geography, a paradox and yet suggestive of the hidden maps of the mind/body/soul that guides us. We usually acquire life wisdom out path, some of us more than others, none of us becoming Gandalf-wise to the max. Poetry, Polarity and Paradox are the thinking modalities we can cultivate along side all that evidence based work we are doing. Logic and the 3 P’s are polar modalities that need each other, and we need them.
Mary Oliver tribute Last month we lost one of the great poets of our time. Mary Oliver has seeped into the culture with lines like “your one wild and precious life”. She took her leave of the physical plane at age 84. Prolific, profound, much celebrated, she was rooted almost always in nature first. What […]
We all see messes and problems in the world that we don’t like and want to go away. Companies losing money, teachers on strike, government shutdowns that seem unnecessary. We gain and seek information on the messes and their cause, we form our opinions, we start to voice those opinions in small or in big […]
One of the oft-cited advantages of being in later life is an abundance of friends and relationships, forming themselves into satisfying constellations, that add so much to the quality of life. The opposite, isolation, is a scourge of aging for some who are shut in or endure tough circumstances, so the very relationship riches for […]