Who are we without this delicate strength? Is anything we achieve without tenderness really worthit? Be tender to yourself, especially when you screw up. Practice Metta on yourself: because people who are un-tender with other people are always hardest of all on themselves. As Michael Ondaatje says, “To rest was to receive all aspects of […]
Listening
The word listen contains the same letters as the world silent. I’ve spent a lot of time recently working on my listening. If I really listen, I find I often don’t have to ask that noisy question that was buzzing round my mouth demanding to be let out, because they explain the to me even […]
Language
Non Government Organisations (NGOs) are buggers for using jargon: blue-sky thinking: pushing the envelope: gaining traction: cascading information: surge capacity – and my all-time favourite howler, “reaching out!” Jargon is closed codes that shut others out for no good reason apart from the power of exclusion: it’s not clever, just snooty. I think simple clear […]
Reframing
One thing I’ve learnt from my years of working and wandering abroad, is that whether we are talking about armed conflicts, governance, abuses by security forces, migration or counter-terrorism, we need to think beyond what is going wrong, towards what could work better than the status quo. If we fixate only on what’s problematic, we […]
