I wish you,

A tune in the soles of your feet,
on the tip of your toes that taps and dances you,
a rhythm in your hips that sways you
in wild abandonment.

Smiles that creeps on you unexpectedly
that quirks your mouth upwards,
crinkles the corners of your eyes
and gleams them bright.

Poignant thoughts that softens your heart
and fills you with longing and passion
that moves you towards their fulfillment,
moments and experiences
that break open your heart,
to learn, to open up, to give and receive love,
you will never be the same kind of encounters.

Funny moments, jokes and fun that brings on,
deep belly, throw your head back
kind of infectious laughter,
that spreads and bring tears to the eyes,
that long afterwards brings a giggle to your throat
and lightens your day.

I wish you,

Unexpected thank you from a co worker,
flowers from a friend,
kindness from a stranger,
a chore completed by your teenage child,
time to put your feet up on a chair,
enjoy a good cup of tea,
you alone time, with others time, with friends time.

Time to paint and make music,
write poems and dance your body’s stories
that finds your souls creative longing,
time to read love stories
of places and histories long gone,
enter in to the minds of geniuses,
and to find this knowledge back in you.

Work that is life’s passions crafted,
that fill you with delight each morning,
uses all your innate skills
and teaches and grows you,
nourish you and your family
and makes a difference in the world.

I wish you,

Friends that tickle your funny bone,
broadens your mind and
pushes your boundaries gently,
with broad shoulders for when weeping,
time to waste on a Saturday afternoon,
that lifts your spirits
and shares your joys and sorrows equally.

Family to have dinner with everyday,
that stands by you through thick and thin,
long Sunday lunches that bring you together,
binds you in shared stories and laughter.

A wife, husband, lover, partner
that kisses your eyelids gently shut
and holds you at night,
knows your sighs and smiles,
your souls deep longing,
meets you in your dreams,
give of themselves with wild abandonment,
deep love and honesty.

I wish you,

all kinds of kisses,
a grubby from the heart kiss from a two year old,
mess up your hair top of the head kiss from your father,
from your mother, a kiss blessed on your forehead
with your face held from both sides,
an unexpected hug from a teenager,
deep passionate, never ending, tongues dancing
this is the end of the world kisses from your lover,
so glad you are in my life, on the cheek
with a warm hug kind of kisses from your friends,

I wish you,

vulnerabilities and lessons in life,
that teach you about life and how to be a good person,
how to be decent, honourable and honest,
how to show up, be there, be committed,
take responsibility, to accept consequences,
so that you are missed when your gone
because you made the world a better place.

I wish you,

grace in your life,
joy in your heart,
hope in your dreams,
abundance in your gifts,
and rich bounty in your life.

I wish you all of these things in the New Year my friends!
Much love and blessings,

Mihirini

 
(C) Mihirini de Zoysa, Please feel free to share my articles and poems, with credit to me and link to the website/page.
 

Image Credit :http://wallpapers5.com/wallpaper/Cherry-Tree-and-Dandelion-Meadow-Zug-Canton-Switzerland/

Whatever that can be said about 2011, is that it was not boring.

Most would agree that 2011 has been a year full of surprises, excitement and lessons. This year saw the crumbling of many institutions, world wide social and economic activism and sadly loss of lives in human made conflicts and in natural disasters.

I greeted 2011 in my last New Year’s newsletter with much enthusiasm and hope, and I wasn’t disappointed. 2011 has been a year of surprises, learning, discovery and growth in many ways for me too.

As clichéd as it sounds December is always a time of reflection for me. It’s a month where I feel unsettled in an uncomfortable but good way. I feel I must take account of the past year, and reflect on my learning and plan for the next year. I take account of whether I have lived well, meaningfully and honourably and am curious and hopeful that I am on a path that makes sense in the long run.

December is a time I look closely at the tapestry I have woven during the year, and notice the beautiful designs as well as the untidy stitches, or half finished embroidery and take a step back as I try to imagine the overall emergent design and how this looks and feels.

What have I woven in to the tapestry, what design and picture has emerged that was not before, what designs am I continuing and what may I need to unpick and redo?

As I stand on the brink of entering my 40^th year, it is even more significant that I reflect and take account of this tapestry of life. Here is my account of the most important learning.

Joyful Practice

I like the word ‘practice’. I use it often. It gives me a sense of learning, in a way of trying out things, reflecting on outcomes, and applying that learning the next time around. It allows me to be gentle with my self and realize that living a good life is not perfectly executed, but is at all times a ‘practice’ of trial and error.

Living a life of joy requires vigilant practice. It is too easy to fall in to negative self-talk and to focus on what is not working rather than what is working. But what I have found is that laughter is really the best medicine. I found that even in my darkest times, from somewhere within me I found laughter and mirth. Generally amusement at myself or there was always irony in the dark situations that life threw my way. Not the sarcastic or superficial, ‘I don’t care about what’s happening’, ‘I will pretend nothing is wrong kind’ of egoistic laughter. But the kind of genuine, gentle, amused laughter that comes from deep inside you, seeing the irony of life, of your own human fallibilities and of the cosmic jokes that are constantly played on you, just so that you have an opportunity to become a better person. There in lies the practice and possibility of joyful living.

Have you found laughter in the twists and turns that life throws your way? Are you amused by your own humanness? Where can you find joy in the lessons that your are learning right now?

Living a life of Integrity and Authenticity

If anything that we have learnt in the past few years of the economic and financial melt down, is that one thing that has been solely missing in organizations and in individuals is authenticity and integrity. People sign up for a life of materialism and wealth, for quick fixes of happiness. The media and the advertising industry promises instant gratification for anything. There is a quick fix for unhappiness, for being too fat, or too thin, or for lack of friends, for boredom, for the perfect relationship etc. This is what we teach our children too. We forget that things that are worthwhile in life require hard work, commitment and passion. So we forget who we are and what’s important, and we learn to lie to ourselves and to our loved ones, and to our friends, neighbours, employees and our customers. We live a life of inauthenticity.

Your integrity is tested when you are under hardships. If even under the most severe hardships you live by your values and principles you are living with integrity. This doesn’t mean this is easy to do. We are only human, and we have moments of weakness. Even if we have given in to our weaknesses and yet, if we are able to reflect and learn from them, and strengthen our core, we will practice living with integrity.

Authentic living is when the gap between your practice of living vs. what you say or believe, is small.

I have come to learn that to live with authenticity takes real courage. It means having to live with responsibility and being accountable for your actions and their consequences. Being authentic and responsible is an uncomfortable, fearful and vulnerable position. It means being at the edge of who you think you are, and facing to who you really are, and stepping in to being who you want to be, often without a safety net or guarantees that you will get it right.

Yet you do it. Because that’s what human life is all about. To forever reinvent yourself, to become the best possible person you could be. To live a life of reflection. To live an unreflective life is to squander the gift of human life.

You also learn that just because you act with authenticity, the people you are interacting with or the situations you find yourself in may not always be authentic. This can be often puzzling and you may feel betrayed by the unfairness of it. But life is not meant to be fair. Life is just one big lesson! Recently I read a lovely quote (very relevant to me as I am a vegetarian)- “expecting life to be fair just because you are a good person, is like expecting an angry bull not to charge at you just because you are a vegetarian“. This is when you must call up your values, your integrity within you and find out who you really are, what you are really made of, you learn to trust your intuition and judgement and act mindfully, skillfully and compassionately with integrity, congruence, love, self respect despite everything. Eventually what will remain around you is what is authentic, as inautheticity cannot survive for too long in an environment of authenticity.

The wonderful thing about getting older is that you have had time to reflect and practice this – who you are, who you want to be – countless times, and somewhere in your thirties (hopefully) or at least in your forties, you recognize yourself, and have gained the skills to make changes to yourself, and are able to become comfortable with how you have crafted yourself. Of course as you get older, you also realize that it is also more difficult to make the changes to how you have honed your habits (negative and positive), as they have become well established neural connectivity’s in your brain, body and mind. But hopefully by the time you come to the second half of your life you have gained the wisdom for self-reflection and are able to act with responsibility to yourself and others.

What are you doing today, right now, to check your sense of responsibility and authentic living? Have you learnt the art of gently laughing at your human fallibilities, of taking responsibility for your actions and their consequence, of having the courage to make changes to your self, to become the best possible version of yourself?

Juggling Judgment, intuition and Compassion

I have found my self always avoiding the word (and action) of judgment as I feel that it is limiting and not fair to the person or thing or situation being judged. I was judgmental about being judgmental.

I subscribed to the theory of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover‘. I now hold this way of being with the paradoxical “the first time someone shows you who they are, believe them” (Maya Angelou). I judged being judgmental as a negative trait, ONLY if I was making a negative judgment of the person. I failed to acknowledge that I do make judgments about people – positively, always giving the benefit of the doubt. I prefer to see the good in people than acknowledge the negative.

Not acknowledging all the positive and negative facets of a person, thing or situation is unwise and can harm you.

So here’s what I learnt and want to practice.

Take in to account the messages that you are given about a person, a thing or a situation. These messages may come from other people, from the person or situation you are encountering or they may come from your intuition. Learn to trust your intuition. Our bodies and brain pick up many clues and messages unconsciously and our intuition (gut reaction) is a way of these being made known to us consciously. Sometimes, the hard evidence for the intuition may not be available. Then actively and patiently look for the evidence that confirms or disproves your intuition. Over time actively reflect on how often your intuition or gut reaction was correct and learn to be discerning about its accuracy.

Accounting for the negatives and positives, being ‘judgmental’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just means you are making an informed decision and being discerning. It is wise. You can take more responsibility for the choices you make, rather than berating about how ‘things just happened to you’. Embrace the positives that are presented. With the negatives, the shadows, risks presented – work with them, find ways to overcome them, deal with them, and if all else fails, acknowledge them with compassion.

Are you listening to the messages you are getting from without and within? Are you acting with the wisdom that resides in your body, heart and mind? Are you acting with good judgment and compassion?

The art of Grace

Everyday life presents you opportunities to practice and become your better nature, to act with responsibility, with love and kindness, with authenticity and integrity. When they all come together, grace enters you and your presence. To act with grace takes courage, humility, compassion and gratitude.

People sometimes confuse graceful living as belonging to those who are born to wealth and have had access to education and mistake it with living the high life of expensive items, fancy houses, fine wines and brands etc. That’s not really the case. Grace can be found in many places in all sorts of situations.

I saw grace in my beloved cousin who was suffering from cancer. There were times of pain and hardship, and even through these, I saw her true nature of wit, love and joy in her when she was with her loved ones. When she left us, she left the gift of grace in our memories.

This is how acceptance for life’s curve balls fill you with grace. There are somethings in life you cant change. You can only choose how you respond to it. Loving, grateful and positive acceptance is graceful living.

I see grace in the person who works for me in my home. Her living conditions are very hard economically and otherwise. Her relationship with her mother is hard, as her mother refuses to talk to her. Yet when the water service is cut off from their homes, she wakes up early in the morning at 4 am, collects water in buckets from the public tap, and keeps at her mothers home, so that her parents don’t have to carry heavy buckets of water or be inconvenienced. This is grace to me. She knows her mother won’t thank her, and will not still talk to her, but still she does what is right. The she comes to work in my home, smiles and greets me in the morning and makes me a scrumptious lunch, and I am none the wiser to the hardships she has gone through in the morning. She is acting with courage, humility and compassion. This is grace.

Grace flows when you practice forgiveness and compassion. Forgiving someone for hurt or anger or injustice they have caused you doesnt mean you are not acknowledging the wrong doing or that you have not become wiser and more skilful at not getting yourself in to such situations again. Forgiveness means that you release from you the negative energy that you carry with you about that person or situation. Forgiveness is not sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength. The most difficult thing I find difficult to do is to forgive myself. I find it difficult to forgive the foolish mistakes I made, for any anger or hurt I may have carried for too long, for repeating the same mistake. It is difficult to say to yourself, that you are only human and some life lessons take longer to learn. Genuine, from the bottom of your heart, truly releasing forgiveness takes time, effort and great skill, and it takes a lifetime of practice. But any act of forgiveness is a good start, and then you practice it everyday, and grace flows in your life because you are so much lighter.

When I look at the tapestry that I call my life, I like to think that I too have been able to act with gratitude and grace more often than not. But it has not always been easy to act with grace. Especially when you are faced with hardships, heartache, and injustices. But these opportunities are presented so that you can practice the art of graceful living.

I have had many reasons to be graceful and grateful and that’s mostly due to the family and good friends that I am surrounded by. Many times, I have been amazed how their presence, their unwavering love and support has held me up and seen me through. I realize I am strong and powerful. Yet, I know I can’t do everything on my own, and I don’t need to. I am grateful to their presence in my life.

Are you living your life with gratitude, facing life’s little curve balls with courage, accepting the bounty and riches that come your way with humility and treating even those who hurt or anger you with compassion?

The grand design

When I step back and reflect on the tapestry of life that is being woven as I write … I realize that this is all connected. None of these lessons stand-alone. Every single thread is important in the tapestry. Every colour ads to the picture emerging. If I cut one thread the rest may unravel. There is something to be said about this tapestry weaving of life, you can’t undo the past, but you have a choice about the next stitch.

I take a further step back and the tapestry shows a pattern that is emerging that I am happy with, that I am grateful for. I can see the blessings that have come my way. I can see the people who have guided me, loved and supported me and been my lessons along the way. I can see the wonderful, joyful, painful, incomprehensible situations that I have been through and how the story in the tapestry is colorful and rich because of them. I not only see but feel the bounty and abundance that is my life and I am grateful.

My dearest friends, I wish you a life of deep insight and intuition, grace, authenticity, joy, hope and abundance this coming year,

With much love and blessings for a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year,

Mihirini

Image Credits -Image downloaded from artgallery.nsw.gov.au – tree of life

Lunuganga estate, located in the south of Sri Lanka, is the home and experimental lab of the renowned Sri Lankan Architect Geoffrey Bawa. His work was known to bring inside and outside elements together, so that over time the edges blur as nature takes its course. He was also known for his simple clean. straight lines of architecture.

Johann (my friend and long suffering caretaker of my hair for 15 years and now art partner in crime) and I walked around in the hot and humid day, with our cameras, capturing, framing what was catching our eye, wondering how these would translate in to sketches or paintings. After about an hour I reviewed the pictures I have taken, and realized that there was a particular quality or feel in my pictures. I was capturing where buildings met trees, or where windows looked out in to more windows and doorways, places where trees framed buildings, where dark and light was meeting, blurring.

In choosing to sketch I chose the frames that would in someway test my ability to show perspective, something that I struggle with as a wanna-be artist. I abandoned my big bag of art supplies and concentrated on only my A5 sketch pad and sketching pencils, and set to work, to do as many 5 minute sketches as possible for the day, so that I could later on pick what I like to re-sketch and colour at leisure on a bigger canvass.

Of recent I do not have the opportunity to attend art classes regularly, neither do I have the discipline to draw on my own, hence, Johann and I have occasionally tried to get together to inspire each other to sketch and paint. It is only when I become the wanna-be artist I am reminded how much I enjoy this process. I am by no means particularly good at this, but the fact that I don’t care that I am good or not, to enjoy it and share it says something about what it does to my creative soul. I do find myself immensely engrossed and focused, as I struggle with my frustration of trying to recreate a particular picture frame on my sketch pad. I feel exhilarated when I feel I have captured the essence or feel of the picture. I feel blissfully full.

In the evening a hot, sweaty and thoroughly tired but inspired bunch of artists met in the main house to critic and feedback each others work. We were a proud lot, of our own work and each others and looking for ways to give constructive feedback for the growth of our craft.

While I was drawing during the day, I had been musing on the particular frames that catch my eye, the way I like lines, geometrical shapes, the structure in the unstructured, the way in and out merge and blur, existing paradoxically and in harmony at the same time. I knew there was some reflection hidden in my artist’s eyes that would inform the particular inquiry question that I carry around with me these days – what are the ‘arts of conversation‘?

In the spirit of sharing this I offered to the group a small exercise to wrap up the day, to bring the artists eye to the minds eyes of expressing through language what was expressed through pictures (or ‘marks’ as Chris Seeley my doctoral research supervisor and Anoma, our art teacher would say).

I invited each person to grab the first 6 words that come in to their mind when they think of today’s experience, of what they drew, felt and smelt. Thereafter I invited them to explain each word in not more than 4 or 5 words, and then to play with arranging these phrases if they like to see if there was an emerging pattern, a piece of poetry that would inform them of another way of knowing and understanding their experiences and what other connections it may have for what else is going on for them.

My words were – in, out, light, calm, deep, soul. I had already worked on these words and a few lines of poetry had come to me a little earlier, and I was able to share this with the group. One or two of the others in the group shared their reflections as part of this exercise. I am not wholly sure how this exercise was for all, while one or two commented that they were amazed by the connection of the words, the experience to what else was happening in their life. Most felt that it was a nice way to conclude their imaging of the day.

Here is my little poem

Lunuganga conversations

Outside in, light streaming
Inside out, light beaconing

doorways to heaven
windows of soul
carved in granite
flowing in water
separating and merging
expanding and contracting

deepening self
widening soul
exploding mind
calming body

Artist as a conversationalist

I realized that as an artist I too was picking and choosing particular frames, to tell a story of the place and was seeing the place and space from a particular eye.

I was captured by how doors framed and let in light, or how one framed view led to another. Lunuganga evoked in me how things that seemed separate existed side by side and as one. Concrete pillars and vines and giant tree roots and enormous brass pots and wooden benches rubbed and leant on each other. Gravel walks led in to crazy design steps in to grassy patches and merged and separated spaces.

I was struck by how practical man-made structures supported and blended in with the complex and flowing patterns of nature. How overtime they have coexisted side by side and become one. Blurring and merging. This seems like a lovely way to view conversations. A good conversation should be like Lunuganga – there are practical structures – such as language, semantics, and best practices of framing questions and responses, while allowing them to merge seamlessly with the natural flow of thoughts, feelings, intentions of building relationships and shared futures.

As an artist I compose my picture – so that the audience gets a particular frame – perspective – of course it does mean that all possible perspectives are not contained in that frame – but in reality we cannot consciously process all the infinite possibilities of perspectives, while maybe neurologically they maybe stored in some manner in our brain. Framing tries to bring in to light the aesthetic appreciation of the artist, the message the artist wants to convey.

My reflections have moved me to consider how this insight of how I capture a picture, a story in image form, informs my inquiry question of the ‘arts of conversation‘. I am particularly drawn to the idea of how we frame conversations. We pick which words, which thoughts to present to the listener, we pick the drama we want to create or draw attention to, in the same way that as an artist I frame and compose to bring to notice a particular story. It is my story, my message, but could be interpreted in many different ways. If the picture evokes different perspectives in different people and all parties are able to create and share perspectives they haven’t had before, this would be a really good piece of art – as would be applied similarly in a good conversation. If we can all explore our multiple realities and create and share new realities we didn’t have before, we cant help but grow in that conversation.

Of course in a drawing or a painting there is a stillness to it, while in a conversation the picture keeps changing and being recreated at every interaction.

Anoma, always encourages us to sketch 6 frames of what we want to draw (maybe 3 portrait and 3 landscape frames) so that we can then decide which frame is the most interesting to draw. In our conversations also, if we could say ‘before we settle in ‘mile deep’ in to one part of the conversation, can we look at the topic from 6 different frames, and see which one has the most energy and interest and drama for exploration’,  we can then acknowledge the multiple realities in our conversations, in our perspectives.

On exploring the concept of framing in a piece of art or photograph, my friend Chris (learning group friend) inquired as to “what goes outside the frame”? Ah, would these be the un-sayable?

Depending on the intention of the conversation the frame could be narrowed and focused and we engaged in mile-deep conversation or ‘mine for clarity’ (Scott, Susan; 2002). On the other hand we could keep moving the frame further back (as suggested by my learning group friend Shiobhan) to include more and more perspective.

I feel as if human-made structures and nature in Lunuganga are engaged in continuous interesting conversations in living in the present and in creating shared futures. It is hard to tell whether either mind being taken over by the other, it seems more like they are happy to merge and blur together as they become one, yet while maintaining a sense of their individual identities.

I think I would like to have conversations like that, with my friends, family, lover and clients and the world – to be a lovely synthesis of who I am and who they are.

Wishing you conversations that help you merge and blur in to each other, creating intimate shared futures.

Mihirini

Explanations – ‘Learning Group’ – this is the supervision group of 4 other doctoral students at Ashridge School of Business, where I have recently started my doctoral studies

Please visit http://www.lunuganga.com/ for more information on Lunuganga

Image credit (and sketches) – Mihirini de Zoysa

As I enjoy a beautiful spring afternoon in London, I am only a few days away from attending the first workshop in a doctoral program in Organizational Change offered by Ashridge School of Business.

Its been almost two years since I finished the MSc in Responsibility and Business Practices from University of Bath, and I am ready to learn formally once again.

I would like to create a space where I share this learning journey with you. At the moment I am not exactly sure how I would do it, and what format it would take and the kind of space we would create for sharing and learning together. To begin with, I will tell you more about the program, the structure, my engagement with it, and how I would continue to work while I study, research and learn.

The Ashridge Doctorate in Organizational Change (ADOC) is a 4 year program designed for professionals in organisational change to make a “unique contribution   to our understanding and knowledge of initiating and sustaining change within and across organisations, including working on issues of macro level social and institutional changes” (extract from the Ashridge brochure). It is designed as a practice based or professional doctorate (DProf), where the first year will be a Master of Professional studies (MProf) with the option to transfer to the doctoral program.

What  I find to be a unique feature in this program is that apart from the real world practical aspect of research, the learning and research methodology is based on Action Research, where participants engage not only as objective researchers but as subjective researchers, delving in to their topic of research and in to their own selves as part of the research. This approach tries to capture the researchers own process of change and engagement with the research (otherwise known as first person action research / inquiry).

As it is a doctorate in professional practice, it requires the researcher to engage in their own practice during the process. Hence, my research topic is very much ingrained in my own professional practice, and I would continue my consultancy, coaching and training work as before.

I would like to invite you to be part of my learning journey, and in the coming months and years I would like to share and learn with you. As mentioned before I am not sure about the kind of structure or space I will be creating. I am sure most of it would be a virtual space. Some of it for sure will be through my website, Facebook, twitter and newsletters. However, I would explore other face to face mediums as well. I look forward to your suggestions and feedback on this as the journey progresses. For the moment, I will share my learning as blog posts on my website www.corporatedruids.com under ‘Learning Journey’. You could also sign up for a RSS feed from the website so that updates will be delivered to your email address. I will also post on my corporate druids facebook page and via twitter and will also attempt to send a newsletter to those who would like to sign up for it.

I cannot promise that my learning will be shared in neat little packages. The learning process is sure to be messy and unclear as I find my way and gain insights. Those already experienced in such research assure me there are many false starts and black holes.  At the moment I can share a very brief explanation about my research question and as I gain more clarity and focus I will share more.

My research topic centres around “the art of conversations” and how these conversations influence people to influence change in systems.  I am interested in different forms of conversations we have in organisations – informal and formal conversations. My interest is also in complex adaptive systems (i.e. systems where there are many parts, with non-linear relationships among the different parts, having feedback mechanisms, behaviour that over time can be mapped as patterns and unpredictable behaviour) and how these conversations can influence change in such systems.

As a leadership coach, organisation development consultant and facilitator of meetings and different forms of planning discussions I am intrigued by the phenomena of people getting together, in meetings, workshops, at lunch, having conversations, dialogues, discussions, presentations, debates and seeing how these can be converted in to action. Most often these conversations are lost in a myriad of other happenings in the organisations. My interest is in seeing how these conversations can be insightful, motivating and reflective and bring learning and action in a system that is often uncertain and complex and most importantly how these conversations can co-create shared futures.

This is my inquiry … for the moment. Its sure to change shape and form, and I will share as much as possible of my journey and learning with you, as it evolves in the next coming months and years.

I invite you to join me, share experiences, ask questions, challenge concepts and theories and learn together.

I cant wait to begin! So lets talk!!!

Wishing you many insightful and joyful conversations!

Mihirini

Image Credit – http://picapixels.tumblr.com/post/131121537/imgfave-dandelion-by-faithananek-on-deviantart    Original design by John Oxton, Illustration by Denis Radenkovic,

Growing up, my family did not observe all the traditional rituals as most other Sri Lankan families, though we would go and visit my grand parents, and would eat Kiri Bath (milk rice made for celebratory events) together as a family at breakfast. This continues even today, even though we don’t strictly follow the auspicious times and other rituals.

While enjoying a lovely relaxed weekend with my parents, brother and his family and his in-laws in a beautiful bungalow in Digana, Sri Lanka, I counted the blessing of other rituals that hold us together as a family despite the absence of most of the traditional rituals.

Until about two months ago, we would meet as a family almost every Sunday for lunch at my parents home. As I recall even when we were living with our parents, we probably had Sunday lunch together, but it became part of an important family ritual once I and then my brother got married and moved out of our parents home.

No one had a formal conversation about establishing this ritual. It just evolved. A practical solution to continue the close relationship the family had. Meeting every Sunday, is a ritual that has made us feel safe and loved, connected, kept us grounded as a family in an otherwise uncertain and busy life.

Of course, my nephew who is only two months old, has taken over our lives and for a few weeks completely upset our carefully established and taken for granted rituals. The fact that we were not meeting every Sunday just because of a practice or a tradition, but because deep down it meant something, was exemplified when we started meeting at my brother’s home, till the baby was a few weeks older, when he was brought to my parents home for the first time.

A ritual can be a set of actions that are performed repetitively that holds symbolic value to the person, people or community performing them. Over time there is always the danger that the original reasons for performing the rituals are forgotten, and the action merely performed for the sake of doing them. That’s where rituals get a bad name.

You will find rituals everywhere. In intimate relationships, families, societies, communities, religions and even business organisations.

Birthdays and anniversaries have become accepted forms of rituals where people celebrate each other. A special time and place is made for this, because it is a reminder in our otherwise normal busy life that we need to appreciate each other. But then again, one should not fall in to the trap of forgetting what these rituals remind us – that we do need to appreciate each other everyday and we don’t have to wait for the ritual to do it.

Couples also develop their own set of unique rituals, in how they conduct their relationship during courting times. They can be as simple as how they greet each other in the morning, even when their apart – from a good morning sms or call to how they make special times for each other, by cooking for each other, or going out for dinner.

My father and I

Families have rituals of meeting, like our family’s Sunday lunch, and ways of greeting and partings, that in some way establishes comforting gestures of love and respect. I remember as a child, that my mother and father would always come and wake me up on my birthday with a gift. Even after I moved out, one of the first calls I would get on my birthday is from my parents. It was and is something I still look forward to. It comforts me, and reminds me I am loved.

Religious holidays remind us to go to our respective temples and churches to pray and engage in spiritual practices. But we don’t have to wait for those days to be spiritual.

Company retreats and even weekly meetings are rituals performed by organisations, providing space and opportunity for people to meet and greet and share information and dialogue, and create an institutional memory. Once again, the underlying principle is not to forget why they are being done and not to wait for the ritual alone to do these things.

Even in everyday society we have rituals we have take for granted – for example, saying good morning to someone when you see them in the morning. The underlying value is to acknowledge the person as you see them. However, often we mouth the words ‘Good Morning; without taking the time to genuinely wish it.

One of the dangers of rituals is when people become dependent on them to cater to the underlying value of the ritual.  Relationships and families and communities can fall apart if the rituals in someway get disrupted or if there is an over dependence on the ritual to deliver the underlying symbolic value. It is most obviously seen first hand in intimate relationships and families. For example a newly wed couple may have a particular way of greeting and parting as they leave home for work, like a kiss or a hug, but overtime due to neglect or time pressures these may become a peck on a cheek or nothing at all. Unless there is something else that is conveying the love and caring, the absence of the ritual can cause dissonance in the relationship. The absence of the ritual is only a symptom of something else that is missing.

The only way to ensure that rituals don’t become outdated and irrelevant is to be always actively engaged in reminding ourselves of why we are doing it. If for instance the ritual is no longer serving the original purpose, then the ritual should be stopped. An unexamined and mindless performance of a ritual has a danger of being institutionalized, or legal or policy.

A ritual is only a symbolic action reflecting something that is much deeper.

What are the rituals you are practising in your relationship, family or community, that is keeping you together, making you feel safe, feel loved, and valuing each other? What are the rituals that are just repetitive actions that hold no such meaning?

Good rituals are like good habits. So don’t be afraid of rituals. They bond us. Keep us together. But don’t be a slave to rituals either. They can numb us and make us forget why we started the rituals in the first place.

Wishing you many opportunities to create and practice good habits and rituals of bonding, loving and valuing each other

Mihirini

Image Credit – (C) Isuru Gunasekera

Its no secret that I do not go out of my way to watch cricket. When I have occasioned to watch it, I have enjoyed the exciting parts, but have never been able to sit for a whole day in front of a TV watching it ball by ball. Having said that I did watch the 1996 world cup, when Sri Lanka won for the first time.

Today Sri Lanka plays India, in the 2011 world cup.

The fever, the atmosphere, the energy and enthusiasm every where you go, every person you talk to is incredible. How can 22 men, couple of pieces of wood and a red leather ball, one large sized ground, turn on, exhilarate and bring together a nation?

But apparently it can.

I imagined an energy field the size of Sri Lanka, with the hopes and dreams of 21 million people travelling and finding its way to Mumbai, India to join our cricket team today as they play the finals against India.

I suddenly realized that I could possibly be the only person in Sri Lanka not making plans to watch the world cup with with someone else or with hoards of crowds. I realized that I didn’t want to be alone. I needed to belong, and feel part of this amazing fever – be part of this energy cloud on its way to Mumbai.

While I may not watch cricket on a normal day (it is my belief that the sports channel button on my TV remote has rusted over the years of never having been used), I do want Sri Lanka to win! From the bottom of my heart I have hopes and dreams that today Sri Lanka would win.

I called one of my very close friends, and told her that I didn’t want to be alone today in the afternoon and whether I could come to her place. Not only did she gladly welcome me, she called me back in 5 minutes and said she and her husband and children will come to my place to watch the match so that I don’t have to drive back alone in the night after the match. What can I say? I have very very good friends.

And then only I realized the power and magic of what has just happened. I, someone who would not normally even watch cricket, not even understand the game that well, is having a cricket match party at my home!

How could this be?

I wondered how could we recreate this magic of wanting to belong and be together in other important issues.

If only we could distill the secret magic ingredient that does this ‘bringing together’ that blinds us to our differing creeds, casts, race, religions, political alliances. If only we could extract the formula and mass produce this feeling of togetherness and bond we would never want to harm each other again on the basis of our differences.

Apart from the 22 men, couple of pieces of wood, red leather ball and large sized ground there must be some other ingredient.

A game of sports played in the international arena (or anywhere) brings together years of dedicated practice, skills, art and focus on to a specific goal – to play the game well. Knowing very well, that at any one time only one team can take the award home. But a game well played displays the craft and skills and dedication and passion of a group of people who are willing to give all they got to play well, and win.  A cricket game has opportunity for stunning display of mastery, for dismal failures and mistakes, for periods of playing it safe and boring, for taking extreme risks. Its a place for leadership and team work; of patience, heroism, enduring pain, of doing the work that must be done to play the game well.

While 22 men do this on a field, everywhere in Sri Lanka and India and many parts of the world, they are not just being watched – but ‘actively’ watched. With music, with flags waving, with friends. The pride of a nation is on that large sized ground in Mumbai. Our hopes and dreams are there on that pitch.

Can we not replicate this audience fever and passion in other areas.

If we were to create enough fervour and passion for complex issues like protecting our environment or even for just making our roads safe to travel on, creating good driving habits. Can we not all cheer on and wave flags for learning to love and respect each other despite different colour, cast, creeds and religions?

I know we can. I don’t know how exactly though.

Today, I don’t have answers, but I know of the possibilities and potential of how 21 million people can come together as one voice, one hope, one dream, one vision and one mass of collective energy. It is possible.

Now I must stop writing, as I have some important errands to run – I must prepare for a cricket party at my home. In exactly 6 hours, 23 minutes and 10 seconds Sri Lanka plays India to win the world cup!

Wishing Sri Lanka the World Cup, Wishing both teams a game well played, and wishing all those who are watching the match all the energy and excitement of seeing two well deserving teams excelling in their sport, in their skill, in their art;

… and most of all wishing all human nations, societies, communities, families the ability to come together as one voice, one hope, one dream, one vision, one mass of collective energy field to do the important work of creating a better world to live in.

Mihirini

Image Credit (C) Ima Hassen

I remembered this quote, attributed to the Greek philosopher Hercalitus, when one of my closest friends, who has known me for a substantial part of my adult life, and I were reflecting on many of the changes that we have been though in our lives. We reflected that as we go through different cycle of changes, it poses interesting challenges to friendships and relationships. I said that as I begin to take my next initiatives in my work and learning, that I feel as if I am in search of myself all over again.

She laughed and remarked that I am constantly changing and shared with me what her husband had said when she had shared this sentiment. “We are never full stops, we are always in fluidity”.

I have since then been reflecting on this, and thinking that no wonder human relationships are so frustratingly complex and deliciously intriguing all at the same time.

We think we are full stops. Unchanging. But at best we are commas in a sentence, a pause if at all, before the sentence takes shape and continue giving meaning.  Most times, when there is some underlying congruency in purpose, there is flow from sentence to sentence and a meaningful story is weaved. And this story is peppered and coloured by the other actors that make the story. Its not one story. Its many stories in continuous story making.

And I am tentatively inspired to imagine I understand this phenomena in the following manner.

Fluid Full Stops.

You will see me, when I see myself
in the house of mirrors
and reflect my soul image

You will hear me, when I hear myself
through the echoes and noise
and speak my truth

You will know me, when I know myself
in the ages gone by and times to come
and I understand where I am now

You will find me, when I find myself
in the myriad of selves fleeting
and name my transformed self

But I cannot promise I will hold myself
here to this full stop
as much as I promise that I wont hold you
to one image in my mind

And somewhere you and I
will meet and greet
and embrace in recognition
the same and the difference
and find a fluid home in each other

Wishing you many joyful journeys of self discovery,

Mihirini

Image Credit : Sujin Jetkasettakorn

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Other_g374-Happy_Young_Woman_On_The_Green_Grass___p34879.html

He is brutally honest and insightful and does this with such compelling humour,that it is difficult to ignore the reality of what he says.

The way we have defined this ‘balance’ as a goal it self is quite interesting. Work Life Balance. Almost as if work isn’t life. It implies that working in someway takes away your life. I like to be more balanced about this and call it Work Home life balance. On the one hand we know in reality that just because we go to work in a professional capacity, we don’t leave our personal lives behind. If your child is sick, this worry comes in through the office doors with you. If you have had an argument with your partner, this is going to affect your mood. If you have had a hard at work, you are bound to take your anxiety home with you.

There has always been work – long before organizations came in to being.

Al Gini (1998) in his ‘Work, identity, Self’ defines work as the basic lever as “in its most benign sense work can be defined as: any activity we need or want to do in order to achieve the basic requirements of life and/or maintain a certain life-style” (a).

In this sense, the work of cooking, cleaning and growing food and looking after children and elders is work. And this is real life.

Of course this is a little more complicated now. We outsource the ‘basic work’ to either modern technology or to others, and then we ‘go to work’ – a place away from our homes and our gardens, mostly in big buildings or industrialized factories, or large farms.

Naturally this begs the question how do we balance how we spend our time and efforts in these two different places – work and home. Most of us ‘go to work’ in order to provide for our home. Some of us who are fortunate manage to make a work life doing what we like to do. Not all of us do though, and in my work as a Leadership Coach, this is a constant question that comes up. “How do I prioritize, balance, these two”.

Nigel Marsh addresses this perennial question in his TED talk and makes the following four observations.

1. Have a honest debate.
“Some jobs are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day to day basis with a young family”.

When work became organized it got organized around masculine agendas not around the realities of women. That is why today, we are trying to reinvent the ‘organized work place’ to include flex time, maternity leave. And as social roles change, where men are also involved in the raising of children, organizations are including paternal leave etc. In this context, I would like to go as far as to say that ‘organized commercial work places’ have not been designed for humans. What human really wants to and yearns to be stuck in a windowless office for 16 hours a day, 5 to 6 days a week, and then still not be ‘off’ work because you bring your office home in your laptop or your BlackBerry.

But this is the reality of organizations today.

2. Governments and corporations won’t solve the issue.
“Never put the quality of your life in the hands of a commercial enterprise … They are inherently designed to get as much as much out of you they they can get away with”

If we were to wait for the system to change it may not happen. We have to take the responsibility to do so. We have to review and prioritize how we spend our lives. We have to come in to positions of power and influence to campaign, advocate and implement change in these big systems. Eventually all of us make the system.

3. Be realistic about the time frame we choose to make the balance between work and home.

“we need to elongate the time frame upon which we judge the balance in our life”

The reality of today’s modern world is that in order to live, most of us have to engage in some form of organized work, working for others, so that we earn money to do the things we enjoy and are important in our life. We cant do everything in one day,  but neither can we wait to retire from ‘work’ in order to enjoy life. We will be too old and no one will be there to do it with.

4. Approach balance in a balanced way

This is how we balance according to Nigel. He shares the story of how he spent an afternoon with his son playing and feeding and putting his son to bed, and his son proclaimed it was the best day of his life.

It is possible that this was the best day in his life, because it was an unusual occurrence. But it goes to show that small things matter – in order to spend time with your son you don’t have to give up work altogether. But you can make time on a daily or weekly basis to do that. In order to enjoy a holiday you don’t have to work 16 hours a day for a year and then take 2 weeks off and call it a holiday. Create small oasis of holiday every month, whether it is for a day or even a couple of hours where you do something that you like.

He leaves us with the simple wisdom, that if enough people take responsibility for the well being of their own lives, it will transform society and the norms in which we currently live by, where success is defined by “the moronically simplistic notion that the person with the most money when he dies wins, to a more thoughtful and balanced definition of what a life well-lived looks like”.

On that note, I went back to sleep-in on a Sunday morning.

Wishing you beautiful balance in your life

Mihirini

P.S. You must watch Nigel Marsh on TED talks. He is witty and direct, and makes you think!

Nigel Marsh : How to make work-life balance work

(a) Gini, Al (1998), Work, identity and self : How we are formed by the work we do, Journal of Business Ethics 17 : 707-714,

Photo Credit – (CC) James Jordon – http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesjordan/3022290830/sizes/z/in/photostream/

In November, UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced that, to help guide national policy, the British government would begin to measure the subjective well-being of its citizens. The announcement was the latest evidence of a growing awareness among governments and economists that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and other traditional metrics of economic progress fail to measure the kind of progress that makes life better. [excerpt from Yes Magazine - Read more here http://bit.ly/eHCSKD and http://bit.ly/fGQaIm ].

At last governments, economists and policy makers are waking up to the fact that the GDP does not count everything. It does not count the work of women and home makers and parents (unless they are paid to do so), it does not count the wonder of swimming in a blue sea or sun bathing on a beach or sitting under a shady tree reading a book unless, you have paid to go to a tourist destination to do so. GDP does not count the honour and gratification of spending time with a loved one, or of being able to eat the vegetables from your own garden. GDP only counts where money exchanges hand.

All of life and the quality and well being of being human cannot be measured only through the exchange of money. We pay attention to those things we measure. For example Bhutan has been for many years measuring their Gross National Happiness (GNH). It is heartening to know that at last some, like the British Government, are beginning to question the statues quo of how we measure our growth, success and how development is defined.

We have to be careful however of not becoming obsessed with trying to count the ‘uncountables’. In order to count these intangibles we must not try to reduce things like happiness in to some standard formula. There is no standard formula for happiness. Different things make different people happy. What we must do is to acknowledge this, and to build a holistic view of success, growth and development.

Wishing you a whole lot of well being!

Blessings
Mihirini

Image credit / source – http://freeartisticphotos.com/contre-jour-portrait.html

But what we need to is virtue, good character, people who care about doing the right thing.

“The virtue that we need most of all is the virtue that Aristotle called practical wisdom. Practical wisdom is the moral will to do the right thing and the moral skill to figure out what the right thing is. So Aristotle was very interested in watching how the craftsmen around him worked. And he was impressed at how they would improvise novel solutions to novel problems — problems that they hadn’t anticipated. So one example is he sees these stonemasons working on the Isle of Lesbos, and they need to measure out round columns. Well if you think about it, it’s really hard to measure out round columns using a ruler. So what do they do? They fashion a novel solution to the problem. They created a ruler that bends, what we would call these days a tape measure — a flexible rule, a rule that bends. And Aristotle said, hah, they appreciated that sometimes to design rounded columns, you need to bend the rule. And Aristotle said often in dealing with other people, we need to bend the rules”.

Image Credit – Salvatore Vuono, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Other_Metaphors_and__g307-Keyboard_Solution_p18268.html