Good afternoon fellow leaders and influencers. I hope it is as warm and sunny a day for you as it is for me, inside and out.
I had the wonderful pleasure this weekend of seeing Hamlet with a great friend at Bard of the Beach http://www.bardonthebeach.org/ and I loved every second of it! I was reminded of just how powerful a doorway the arts and story are to our understanding of what it means to be human.
And over brunch on Sunday a friend shared a story that caught my ear in the midst of my Shakespearean reflections. On a very busy day she had a number of business errands to run between meetings, including a stop at the post office. She was thrilled to find a parking metre with about 10 minutes left almost right in front of the post office. This was a bit of good luck in the midst of a very scheduled and hectic day. She literally ran in to the post office and in the line up in front of her was an elderly woman. She was moving quite slowly and ‘chatting’, looking into her change purse for just the right change, and rummaging around in her bag filled with knitting. My friend was getting quite frustrated as the parking metre was ticking down, not to mention the next appointments looming. The story playing in her head was all about how this little old woman was in her way and attaching blame on the woman for holding up her work. And being a professional coach herself she started to ask herself what all of this frustration and blame was actually doing? How was it getting her anywhere, how was it making a difference for her and for the people around her? And suddenly she simply asked the woman, “what are you knitting?”
The woman was thrilled and told her of the shawl she was making, and the two of them became fast friends. In a moment or two it seemed it was her turn at the counter, and having said ‘so long’ to the knitting lady got back to her car only a minute or two late, and the rest of her day went much more smoothly.
What I take from this story, and in fact from my whole weekend, is that I do have a choice. Really bad things happen to us, and sometimes like for Hamlet, they are almost unbearable. And I still have a choice. In fact Polonius says to his son Horatio early in the play, “to thine own self be true.” And at some level, Hamlet is being true to his dead father and not to himself, and the result is disaster for pretty much everyone around him, including Polonius and Horatio. By being true to herself and checking in with herself about where the frustration and blame were coming from and what they might mean my friend was able to change her script and the result was a much happier ending. In fact we are at our best as humans and especially as leaders when we are able to be true to ourselves, to know enough about ourselves that we can change the script.
And of course my friend’s question is a wonderful one for us all on so many levels, what are you ‘knitting’?