Category: Personal Development

Letting go to make it stronger

My son Tim has just turned 18, like one minute ago. So I went downstairs and wished him “Happy Birthday” and a big man kiss on the cheek. He’s still young in many respects and lovely with it. When he went to bed he said “I’m just going to play on the computer for a bit ok?”.  I said that was okay, but only until midnight, at which time it will be your choice. We laughed.

It’s been a really big year – he’s grown from boy to man, nearly done with school, worked at a cattery and now accepted into Unitec. It was a proud Dad that wrote on his card this evening.

And you know what, with all that he’s happier than ever. You can feel the hope, anticipation and satisfaction of achieving what seemed like the impossible even only a year ago. And there will be many more challenges, and I hope there will be. That’s how we grow and remain happy.

I let go a little bit in the early hours of this morning. And he grew a little more for it. He’s stronger and we’re stronger.

Dad

 

New Court ruling: what you don’t know can’t hurt you

The government has decided to get tough on those who seek name suppression because it’s not fair on those that don’t and justice should be administered publicly and in a transparent manner. Seems sensible enough, though, and I’m no apologist for the rich and famous, most of the time it’s only the most serious of crimes that are reported, unless you’re rich and famous.

In my work with organisations, the biggest problems in change or crisis arise from lack of transparency. When leadership is transparent, whatever the message, it is better received and the grief associated with change is shorter and less intense. Confidence comes from transparency.

Which is why the complaints and investigations about Supreme Court Judge Wilson being publicly aired are very important for our confidence in the judiciary. This judiciary that will monitor and lead the government’s intentions on our behalf on name suppression.

I see today that the government has settled an arrangement with Judge Wilson that sees all action stopped and a payout to him of nearly $1 million. The reason given by “cause and effect thinker” Judith Collins is that “To proceed with this case would have caused incalculable damage to confidence in the judiciary”. What can that mean? That we will keep hearing about Wilson’s alleged inappropriate conduct? That it will remind us that there is a judge who it is alleged did not act appropriately? That we might find a judge guilty of a conflict of interest?

If the cause of this problem is the alleged lack of candor on the part of a judicial officer, then this drop it and hide it solution takes you straight back to the cause. It’s a lesson for us all on the perils of linear thinking, hiding to avoid the hard questions and in this case, hypocrisy.

We know Judge Wilson’s name, we know what it’s alleged he did, but those that lead him and us in a transparent justice system for all have suppressed for ever the ability for us to know whether or not something was sick in the courts. Or that’s what they intend.

Actually we can see now there is something very wrong. And it’s not just one Judge.

Unintended consequences. You gotta love ’em!

Stephen

ps I haven’t gone permanently political on my blogs! Sometimes things just hit you. Hard. I wrote about government transparency over a year ago too.

Time and Space

It just seems like the other day that I wrote my last blog here – it’s not that long ago – 14 days to be precise, but some of the content seems decidedly out-of-date. The joys of politics. One day it’s incredibly important, now we can’t even remember what it’s about or why it mattered. Soon we’ll have a new super-city mayor. Let’s call him Mr B. Mr B will be in a hurry. You can see him now rushing around the region, shaking hands, promising this and that, smiling at babies. Time will be of the essence.

Three years from now he’ll be giving it another shot so the first two years will seem important. Build this, make that work, fix that. Where will we be? Probably working, enjoying our families, working out. I’ll be running still, I hope and reading lots of books. I’ll enter my sixth decade (that’s a frightening way to say you’ll be 50!).  If you start now, you could finish an MBA or some undergraduate degrees. You could learn to play the piano, learn to fly (no, not that, an aeroplane) or train to run a marathon. If I keep up doing this, I should have about 200 blog entries under the belt.

Quite a few new humans will be born and most of them will be walking by the time comes for Mr B. to put himself up for re-election. A few less of us will die and be remembered, mostly for a relatively short period by a relatively few number of people.

When I look back over the last three years, they’ve been big. Huge even. Maybe I should have taken up the violin again and learned to play it again. I watched the movie The Concert on Tuesday and pondered the thought, and that I still own my violin from decades ago. If I’d started three years ago, then I might be not too bad. But there was never time – family, work, running, movies, my house blah blah. If I started now, then I could play a tune for Mr B. next time around. Or the other Mr B. Or both even.

So time, yesterday it was David Garrett, this morning it’s Paul Henry, this afternoon Chris Carter and tomorrow it’ll be Mr B. Time will drag us through space while stuff goes on around us. The time will pass whatever we do. Where we are now is millions of miles from where we will be in three years. Will it feel different? Possibly not, the universe has lots of space that we can fit in ,and not feel it’s any different than the last space. So if we don’t notice the space, will we notice the time?

I hope so. In the time it took to read this blog you’re in a different space, hurtling through the universe. Look back in what you did in that space. Well actually thanks for spending it here. What about the space over the next three years. Infinite. Time too. Enjoy.

Stephen

When you feel who matters

It was 5.02am this morning and my new Blackberry (which I didn’t even know was on or off such is my knowledge of it so far) buzzed and woke me.   It took three goes for me to plug in my PIN number but when it did the text from Mum in Christchurch sent a shiver up my spine “Terrible Earth Quake”. It was one of those moments that I shall never forget. Or the next 15 minute frantically trying to contact them and finding a headline on stuff.co.nz that read in huge lettering that a 7.4 quake had hit Christchurch.

Were they trapped under a pile of rubble and one got text out? Were they struggling to find their way around? Clearly they were scared.

I felt devastated with concern and became upset. It made me realise how much my folks mean to me and them being vulnerable with the force of the earth against them was very difficult.

Thankfully we made contact and it was obvious that they were scared. Dad said it was like a bad dream that he hoped to wake from. Like most folk they had no power, books were thrown from shelves and crockery and ornaments smashed.

We’re little beings in a universe that is never static. Planet earth is relatively calm, although today’s events make you wonder, but that’s because we are so small and temporaty. The universe might be mighty and completely beyond our command, but we have emotional connections with loved ones that gives us meaning.

When the core of that meaning was put at risk for me, I felt an immediate and deep sense of empathy. It was me. In this moment did I felt the depth of meaning in this relationship.

They are safe, but they’ve had a frightening experience.

I’ve always known what matters. Today I felt it.