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ON LIVING

Freedom, ambition and Jack Kerouac

This morning Rach and I woke early and walked into town. There's a hole-in-the-wall bakery called Little Loaf, and they make the greatest bacon and egg baps, and it was a great day for a bap.

We turn down Orient Street, which faces us directly into the sunlight, and we’re blinded - everything goes pale and bright. The colour washes out of the landscape, leaving a haze of watercolour impressions, and we have to drop our gaze, forced to focus on whatever is a few metres in front of our feet. We notice the cracks in the pavement, the single tulip by the gate at number twelve, the crunchy-crisp air on our skin. And wrapped in this brightwash, we turn inwards, to our private reflections:
Life is magic. Anything is possible. Am I doing okay? Does it even matter?

The moment stretches, floods, stops time, opens our minds. We can hear each other’s breaths.

There's a beautiful line in Jack Kerouac's book On the Road, where the protagonist, Sal, describes a week in Denver, all late night bars, and girls, and cherry trees in bloom:

“...the whole world opened up before me because I had no dreams.”

And I resonate with this so much. These sunlit moments of open skies and in-the-moment experiences. A part of me wants to get off the train, you know? Quit the stage. Just walk away from all the pressure and responsibility and flop on my back in a field.

But, what about goals? Ambitions? How do we get anything done in life?

I’m asking these questions because for the last few weeks, Rach and I have been filming an online curriculum, and it's really hard. We're not on our backs in a field, instead, we pointed to the top of the mountain and said "there!" and began to climb. We made some great progress up the slopes, and then lost our footing and scratched our knees and egos. Then we climbed some more, and slipped back a bit more, and found some paths around and around the mountain, everslowly gaining ground, still nowhere near the top, but now too far from the bottom to give up.

Storytelling theory says that until a protagonist wants something, their story can’t get going. Characters needs to want things - ideally things that are worthwhile - and they need to want them enough to overcome great conflict to attain them. A meaningful story is found on the path of conflict, say the ancient tellers.

Still, who deliberately chooses conflict? I want Kerouac's open-world freedom. No dreams or ambitions, just the in-the-moment experiences of the beat generation he captures so perfectly.

Here’s how I think it resolves:

The world is open before us, like Kerouac writes. With all its options and possibilities and opportunities. And for a while we stand there, without dreams or fears, and just react our way forward, embracing all the wonders of life.

It’s not story, but it is beautiful. It is art, whimsy, a tossing about of our souls on the wind. We're kids dancing in gardens.

But eventually, somewhere amongst all that soul-tossing, we realise that there are, in fact, things we want. Specific things. Things that we want enough to fight for. Things worthy of prioritising above the myriad other possibilities that are out there. So we narrow our gaze, isolate our focus. In a world wide-open with possibilities we choose this one and we get to work.

Now we have a story. A character who wants something, and will overcome all sorts of conflict to get it.

But where does that leave the art? The beauty? The whimsy? Does the having of goals in life require us to give up the open-skies freedom of not having dreams or goals?

What I realised this morning, walking with Rach in the whitewash sunlight, was that when we choose this life of dreams and ambition, we are setting ourselves up for conflict, but the conflict doesn’t break us. It grows us, changes us, and becomes a kind of container that brackets these tiny moments, so that in the breaths between tension, in the sunrise light that blinds us whole, the world is still open to us. And with the sharp clarity that comes from climbing the mountain, we find eternity in every step.

What I learned in the coffee industry

When I was in my mid-twenties, I quit my corporate office job to work across the road in a coffeeshop. It was wonderful. My whole role was essentially to serve, shine, and honour the customer. The mandate from the owner was to "deliver an experience”, to remind the customer that they are important, interesting and worthy of respect.

One of my favourite customers in the coffeeshop was Simon. Long black, two sugars.
He would stride in, run his fingers through his greying hair, and wink at the barista. “The usual, Ellie, and how are we all today?”
We would banter a bit, and bring his order out to his window seat, while he reads through the finance section of the paper. What made him memorable was how often he complained about his coffee - about twice a week, he would return to the counter, look me in the eye, and shake his head.
“Coffee’s shit today, Nath.”
And, in true the customer is always right style, I would nod, and lean in, and reply, “What are you tasting, Simon?”
“It’s burnt. The beans are burnt. Ellie screwed up the shots.” Ellie is right next to me, and utters a tiny sigh.
“Well, Ellie and I are so sorry. We screwed up. Can we make you a fresh cup?”
“Yeah, thanks guys.” (another wink.)
Ellie makes another cup, with exactly the same beans, same shots, and Simon loves it. And he returns twice more that day.

It’s the hospitality industry, right? A hundred years ago it was exactly the same. There's a a report from a 1905 newspaper about how the Sears Group treated customers:

"Every one of their thousands of employees are instructed to satisfy the customer regardless of whether the customer is right or wrong. The customer comes first, last and all the time.” - (Des Moines, Iowa, 1905.)

This is the hospitality mandate. We take care of the customer, give them what they want, make sure they’re happy, and they’ll return and buy again. We pretend that they’re right, so that they return, because we want their money. It’s a transactional relationship: "You are paying me money, so I am at your service.”

Thinking back to that coffeeshop, there were actually some concerning behaviours going on.

Simon, long black two sugars, believed he knew more about coffee than we did. The power to decide if the coffee is good enough rested entirely with him.

Tyson, two macchiatos for him and his dad, didn’t care about the coffee at all. But he demanded our time. No matter the queue, we must ask him about his shop and his family, and as long as we listen, he’ll return each day for more coffee. The power to control our time together was entirely with him.

Claire, skinny latte and a slice of toast, doesn’t even look at us. She’s often on her phone when she drops her cash on the counter, and she drums her nails continuously until her order is ready, and then she’s gone. We exist only to get her the fix she needs.

Now, for us hospitality staff, this was fine, par for the course. We knew that we were awesome at making coffee - that the beans were fine, the shots were great. We knew that what we were really selling was an experience, some attention, whatever the customer needed. We knew that in the end, the customer was handing over their cash to us, and that’s the transaction that mattered.

The fallout, though, was that we couldn’t respect those customers who didn’t respect us.

So we treated them like children - We pandered to them, played their little games, and then took their money. And, like children, the customer-who-is-always-right became entitled, entrenched in their belief that they deserved everything.

The power was out of balance, and the respect was out of balance. The expectations were all off.

I'm not making coffee for people anymore, but I do still experience these imbalances. As a parent, I've had children demand their way, as if I just exist to serve them. As a husband, I've sometimes forgotten we are a team, assigning respect and power based on the amount of income we each earn.

Health professionals have patients demanding more, and faster, and better. Receptionists are being abused for not performing. Bazillion-doller corporate deals are falling over because someone felt disrespected. People are dying because others have too much power.

I'm not saying that power is bad, or respect should be prescribed, or expectations should be lowered, or anything like that. These are elements of humanity that spark great and wonderful things in life. But, when the balance goes out, it happens subconsciously, and our response is disconnection: we can't even describe exactly why, but we feel it, and we distance ourselves from each other.

I honestly loved my time in coffee. I loved reminding others that they were important, and interesting, and worthy of respect. I want to be that voice in all my relationships, in all my business dealings. I'm realising that transactional relationships are everywhere in life, with so many "I gave you this, I now deserve that" imbalances, but it's okay. We're all human and we're getting there.

What gives me hope, though, are the outliers. Those characters in the system who just somehow rise above it. They’re in the game, but changing the rules.

Like Aldo, who would swing by for a double espresso every morning at 9:45. He's selling the most expensive commercial real estate in the city, but in the coffeeshop he is an equal. He lingers at the bar, asks us all about our lives and interests, notices when Ellie gets a haircut, asks for advice for his home coffee machine.

Or Wayne, decaf flat white, parks his bike around the corner. So excited about our lives. I shot his daughter's wedding.

And Lucy, who crosses the entire city for a skinny cappuccino from us, who asks for our ideas, shares her stories, and thanks us for making her feel so loved.

For these customers, we would do anything. Their humility and vulnerability opened the door for us to share a collaborative power. We all stood together as equal humans, just with different skill sets. The respect was balanced, and we all drew in, we connected, and were all empowered.

So, I'm working on being an outlier. In a world of transactional relationships, I want to find different ways to play the game. So that us humans can stay connected and equal, and share the power, and collaborate for truly great things.

Like-minded vs like-hearted

This week, I spent a lot of hours writing a thing. I had an idea, and was focussed on sharing it, pushing my opinion, convincing my readers that the idea is true. I was going to post it today.

But then I read it. And then I trashed it.

I realised that I was writing so that others would agree with me. Like-minded others who would rally to my side, while I shared a polaric opinion about something I honestly didn’t know enough about.

There is a great difference, it turns out, between being like-minded and being like-hearted.

Like-minded people gather together and agree, and rant against those that disagree. We form groups and sides, and double down on our beliefs and stances and our right-ness.

Like-hearted people, in contrast, gather on the plain of love, acceptance, and difference. We believe different things on the surface, we can disagree, and have totally unique life experiences. But we stay together to learn from each other: perspectives, opinions, wisdom from other angles.

I often find it difficult to engage with a single-minded writer. They either have me on their side, or they don't, and then they are just trying to convince me of something. That's fine for a science paper, but it's not STORY.

Storytelling is all about like-heartedness. All writers have deep beliefs and opinions, but the great ones never explicitly need to share them. They wrap their world views in a trojan horse of shared narrative experience, allowing their audience to walk with them and draw their own conclusions in their own time.

Storytelling invites everyone in. It may seem like the softest tool of revolution, but it honestly has the most power to actually change someone’s mind. Living like-heartedly means you don’t have to convince, win or own. You just have to invite, and listen, and share the stories.

On the road: Gnaraloo Station

Last week I joined a couple of friends for a drive up the coast to Gnaraloo Station. From Perth, Gnaraloo is a thousand kilometres away.

I had a seat in the back, pressed up against sleeping bags, wetsuits, and something that smelled like banana bread. For the two hours before the sun rose, I watched suburban porchlights streak past, all tungsten yellow, then the city lights, giant bug-zappers of brilliant white, then the northern fringe cities with their pale blues and intermittent fuel-station-golds. And then, nothing. Just a comfortable darkness, visited occasionally by a passing car or a stray streetlight.

Nick drove the entire way. For twelve hours he chatted and laughed and shared his stories and listened to ours. Ian is almost twenty years older than me, and engages with others as if we know the secrets of the ages, and just need the time to get it out in words.

My focus drifted from conversations within the car to conversations with the horizon. For hours it was dirt-red, then a splash of canola yellow, forest green, granite and limestone, then back to dirt. It was quite beautiful, an entire palette comfortable with her loneliness.

Gnaraloo is in the middle of nothing. It really is. It's a sheep station, but I barely saw any sheep. Wild goats, though, they were everywhere. They looked down on us with their proud beards and funny tails, like they owned the place, like they were running the show. A people-farm, run by the goats. The locals of Gnaraloo don't dissuade this idea at all: they are wild and earthy and distant, their language is the land and the ocean. People come here for only three things: to surf, to fish and to feel free.

A few mornings in, I asked Ian why he's here. Why it matters to drive all this way, peel yourself into a wetsuit, and take your board out into the hyperthermic waters to ride a few waves. He had just returned from the ocean, and was crunching through an apple, watching Nick finish up his last wave. I got out and leaned on the car with him, and squinted into the glare. Me with my notebook, Ian with his apple.

"Why do you do this?" I asked him.
"Because it's who I am," he replied, then paused, "but only as long as I'm actually doing it."
He talks like this a lot.
"You don't feel like a surfer unless you're surfing?" I ventured.
"No, I still feel like a surfer, for sure. But that identity requires some action, you know? The longer I don't surf, the more I become a person who used to surf, not a person who actually surfs."
I looked at him and blinked twice, and he took another bite of apple.
"It's about identity," he continued, "by doing this stuff, I'm revisiting my identity, empowering it somehow."
"Empowering it?
"Yeah, I'm empowering myself, my belief in myself. It's one thing to become who you want to be in life, but a whole other challenge to stay there. Over time we can start to question ourselves and our abilities, and we can start to doubt ourselves."
"And our identities can lose their way."
"Exactly. Our identities get blurry. And the only way I know to return to clarity is to act. To do something today that reminds me of who I am."
"And who are you today?"
He laughed. "I am a person who surfs!"

Nick appeared on the path just then, and we headed back to the homestead for breakfast.

-

In storytelling, there is always a tension between a character's aspiration and their reality. There is a version of themselves they WANT to be, or that they THINK they are, and then, there is who they REALLY are. It's a gold mine for writers, exploring those gaps, revealing to the protagonist their reality and pushing them off the cliffs that will grow and transform them.

A character can be amazing, but think they are nothing special. Or they can have some serious flaws, but think they are just perfect. In the end, what they, or others, say about themselves doesn't matter half as much as what they do. Like Ian observed: identity needs action.

After that conversation with Ian, I had to ask myself the same question: "Why am I here? Why did I travel a thousand kilometres to a surfing station when I don't surf or fish?" It was an identity question.

While Ian and Nick were revisiting and strengthening their identities as "people who surf", I found myself revisiting childhood memories. Hours of wandering in white-bright sand dunes, playing with shells, drawing in red dirt, watching the shadows from stones stretch out across my bare toes. Being at peace with the nothingness of those places.

By joining Nick and Ian for the trip, I became what I always thought I was, but perhaps hadn't acted on for a while:

A person who seeks wonder and beauty over comfort or progress.

It just took a few thousands kilometres to remind me it was true.

Peace

When I think of peace, I think of silence. Not sounds particularly, but more an attentive quietness of mind. That space between the asking, and the answer.

Peace isn’t a boring thing, and it isn’t a forever thing. It’s a breath, a beat between moments, that point at the top of a roller coaster, where time slows and memories freeze and every single piece of existence just presents itself for inspection, as if it has all the time in the world to be taken in.

And then the rollercoaster drops, the next battle starts, the question is answered, and the whole machine of life flies into action again, all go and hustle.

And that moment, forgotten by our surface consciousness, ends up being the most memorable and nourishing morsel of the whole day.

The gold we don't know we have

Some beautiful friends will meet us at a cafe in an hour. It's been a while since we've caught up, and they have stories to share: stories of losing a baby, of living through cancer, of managing rambunctious kids, of working in their own businesses, of just trying to survive.

I wonder how their faith is now. And their relationship? Do they still have that spark, that driving love for each other that was so evident the moment they met? How hard is life for them, and how can Rach and I best give love? Be love?

What is it, to be a friend?

Perhaps, it is to sit with when times are hard. To encourage when feeling down. To listen more than speak. To intuit, towards wisdom. To be love, in as many different forms as possible.

Also, perhaps, it is to create experiences that last. Tell a story that is funny. Remind them that they are loveable. Place them in a scene where they are the hero. Encourage the parts of them that they can’t draw out on their own today.

I don't have the answers. This isn't that kind of post. And I'm honestly not very good at maintaining a lot of friends. But I'm tremendously interested, as an observer and a participant in this magic that happens between friends. There seems to be a third entity that is created when two people converse: something neither of us could create on our own. In community, we seem to draw out parts of each other that are hidden.

We mine the gold we don't even know the other has, and the tools of discovery are love, encouragement and compassion.

I would like today's conversation to be something like that. Just find the gold, allow it to be its own expansive entity, and when we say our goodbyes, we all somehow walk away with the treasure.

Vulnerable Storytelling

Earlier this year, Rach and I attended a dinner event. We barely knew anybody there, but they were the kinds of people that were important to our work, so we decided to pay the $150 per ticket and just see what happens. This is often how our business life goes - We step into a space with open hearts, and see if there are connections with others. We each share stories, perspectives, ideas, and look for a fit.

It was dusk, and the restaurant overlooked the river, whose surface danced with oranges and purples, and the city lights from the far shore. We sat at a table of six, everyone looked dashing and beautiful, and the wine was paired perfectly with the seven courses. It had all the makings of a truly enjoyable and meaningful evening.

I think the way a culture evolves is very similar to the way a conversation evolves. We all start off separate, nothing to relate to, outside of our geographical setting, and then we start to talk. And the more we spend time together, the more we learn about each other, the more we discover we have in common, the more interesting the other party becomes. We start to assign value to differences, considering where in our lives their pieces can fit.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, where we each have a pocketful of pieces, we’re all slowly revealing what we have, and together finding the right fit for each piece, slowly building the masterpiece.

The first course arrives, and the conversations begin. This magical potential to add some more pieces to the great jigsaw puzzle. Rach compliments someone’s choice of earrings, asks about the story behind them. I share about my day, some of the challenges I got through to get to this moment. Across from us, a doctor shares a dramatic story of life-and-death pressures at work, while juggling a young family at home. The earrings, it turns out, were chosen because the owner loves to paint. But she can’t find the time for arting, because of her myriad other commitments of life. The doctor, it turns out, struggles with expectations, and a feeling of never being good enough.

This is the evolution. We start at the surface, we find similar experiences or feelings, we build some trust, and then we dive deeper. And as the conversations become more vulnerable, the level of connection between us grows stronger, the potential for deep insight increases, and we start to attribute this conversation to be “meaningful”, or “worthwhile”.

Absolutely worth the $300 we paid for the tickets.

The trajectory of the evening was looking great. The way things were going, we might not only find ourselves in some really deep and meaningful conversations, but we also may end up with some work collaborations in the future. It seems simple: We share our stories, we increase the vulnerability and the connection, and we land on a meaningful experience.

But, what happens if some of us as the table choose NOT to share their stories honestly? What happens if, instead of vulnerability, they share dramatic self-aggrandising stories? Or melodramatic soap operas? Or judgemental black-and-white opinions?

..

By the second course, the conversation has already commenced its downhill run on the dark path of melodrama. Two of our party, long-time friends of each other, began to share their stories. Long, detailed accounts of their own lives, monologued at a “here’s what happened” level without ever allowing insight as to what they made it mean for themselves. They were so proud of their lives, that they lost sight of anyone else’s. And, by generating such a dramatic, surface-style story energy, they were essentially demanding that we all respond with this same style of story: If anyone is to join this conversation, they must bring an equally sensational story to the table. And then we’ll all decide who’s story is better.

Rach and I went quiet. The plates came out, one after the other, and the monologues ran longer and became more sensational. We couldn’t find the space to speak, nor the energy to turn the conversation. Our pockets were still filled with our jigsaw pieces. The others in our circle had pockets filled with jigsaw pieces. And on the table was the jigsaw, with just a handful of pieces from these two conversation vampires, being swished about as if they can fill all the gaps on their own.

We left at midnight completely exhausted. The food was delicious, the guests all looked beautiful, but the conversations shattered us. Like a facebook feed, we were just bombarded with drama and self-promotion. We did not evolve that night, and it took us a week to recover.

Aristotle writes that when storytelling goes bad, the result is decadence. I think he may have been referring to a decadence of ego. A story requires more than surface action: it requires vulnerability, emotion, a heart-response. Sharing our successes alone, without admitting the terrors and self-doubts and weaknesses that preceded the success, does our audience, and our culture, a great disservice.

Revealing our jigsaw pieces to the world takes courage. Sharing any part of ourselves with another is hard. But this is how we are built: The evolution of our culture, just like a meaningful story, just like my next conversation with you, requires more than the story of your success.

I need your honesty.

Dipping reality into whimsy

I’ll be honest with you, I’m a dreamer. I have an over-optimistic worldview that has often been criticised in the past. I’ve been attacked for being ignorant, for not having appropriate concern for reality, for not behaving logically, rationally, maturely. I’ve been told that I hope too much, that I believe in impossible things. That I’m too whimsical and romantic for real life.

While the engineers are building bridges, I’m the artist swimming in the sea.

Ever since I was little, I’ve seen the world with filters. I’m sure everyone has - The filters of their culture, upbringing, beliefs, values. My filter was spiritual, and magic, and wonder, and love. I grew up looking at the world through whimsy-coloured glasses.

I just don’t see why it’s so bad to rewrite our reality. When I was working the corporate office life, I would catch a train every morning, during peak hour. We’d all be jammed in like sardines, pressed up against shoulders and backpacks and windows, with all sorts of strange smells and sounds. The “reality” of that scene is pretty dull. A daily-nine-to-five-grind-get-me-out-of-here-as-quickly-as-possible reality that we're all familiar with.

I remember it a little differently:

It’s 6:23am and the sun has just made it up, but already it's lost behind cloud. The morning was chilly enough for a jacket, and my collar is still popped from the raw winds on the platform. I’m pressed up against the window now, right in a corner, with barely enough space to turn a page. Under my nose is an issue of Kinfolk, it’s clean page layouts a wide-open field to me. Tiny words and a heap of white space.

I’m reading an article about slow living, written by Carl Honoré, and it’s fascinating to me. In my mind, the world has slowed, vignetted away so that I am a rock in a stream, untouched by the eddies around me. I turn a page, my arms all praying-mantis-like, while even more people cram into the carriage and I am pushed further into the window.

And then all of a sudden, two things happen together: Our train reaches the bridge over the river, and the morning sun breaks through the low cloud. Vintage golden light is splashed over my page, over the shoulders and hats surrounding me, dancing over the river below us.

I look up from my magazine and squint into the light, and imagine it to be a cloud of magic, a portal between times, a conversation between God and me, and anyone else listening.

I breathe it in - the light, the warmth, the smell of eternity. I hear messages in the cloud - of love, of hope, of peace. It tells me that life is beautiful. Every moment of life is magic. Each scene is interesting.

And then it’s gone. Our train has crossed the bridge and is heading underground, the light is replaced by darkness and screeching of brakes on rails. But I feel like that moment saturated me, and ten years later I’m still damp with the sunlight.

CS Lewis writes that myth and fantasy are not retreats from reality, but rediscoveries of it. He says that when we dip reality into story or myth, it becomes more savoury, we see it with clarity and wisdom. The real things become more themselves.

When I dip reality into whimsy, I see things afresh. The dullness of familiarity is washed away, and I rediscover a life of joy, hope, purpose and meaning.

How should a human being lead their life?

Aristotle poses this question in his writings in Ethics, and it’s one we all ask ourselves at some point in our lives:

“How should I lead my life?”
“Why am I here?”
“What is meaningful? Worthwhile?”
“What’s the goal, outside of survival?”

I doubt there will ever be absolute definitive answers to these kinds of questions, but I want to share a storytelling perspective that I just find useful to life-hack some meaning into my days:

For some context, when writers and speakers craft their stories, they have certain intentions. They might want to move the audience. To elicit an emotional reaction. Or tell a story that is considered meaningful, memorable. Or they have an idea to unpack, a vision to share, an inspiring something that could spark change in the audience.

They essentially craft stories to describe their own beliefs and values, in such a way that strangers will be moved towards those values in some way. They have this crafting toolkit that allows them to build meaning and influence into their scenes. They have the ability to generate an interesting and engaging story, that forces an audience to sit up and listen.

It's a bit manipulative really, but a good storyteller will deliver their content in such a way that others’ attentions are captured, their interest held, their hearts awakened, their imagination alive, their minds intrigued and challenged. And when the story is over, the values of the audience may be slightly more aligned to those of the teller.

That’s a really powerful skillset. And no, I don't think the ability to influence others makes life meaningful.

What interests me is WHY storytelling elicits this engagement at all. Do we, the audience, respond to good stories because they are told well, or are good stories told in response to our natural predilection to respond to those deeper elements contained within?

The storytellers of old may have developed their craft out of necessity to be paid, but the chemistry works for a reason, and I think it’s this: We all respond to STORY because we are built to engage in the deep elements within the story.

Conflict. Meaning. Love. Loss. Transformation. Everything we respond to in a story is a reflection of what resonates in our real lives. The story is simply the archetype of a truth that we all deeply and intuitively understand.

For example, let's say we have a protagonist in a story who gets removed from office through a nepotistic process. The storyteller is describing an injustice, a bullying, and we the audience immediately feel it. Not because we have been specifically overlooked in favour of the boss’s daughter for a "logistics role" at work, but because in our deep human core of universal understanding, we have felt the same. The surface experience is different, but the underlying philosophical base is the same. On the surface, there are a billion different stories, but below, we are the same.

When searching for meaning, this concept really makes my heart leap, and it's at the core of my story coaching work: how to get past the surface differences, and realise that we are the same. We’re all in this together. We are human.

We need to get over, get past, get beyond our assumption that whatever is happening on the surface is all that is happening. The surface is not the truth. The surface is just “life”. It’s the stuff that’s happening. But below it is where the storyteller works: In the realm of what we make those surface experiences mean. This is the space I want to consider a whole lot more often: what did I make that mean?

So this is where I find meaning for myself. This is why I’m still learning and researching how storytellers craft their stories. Because within that crafting is a deep insight into the human condition, and a whole toolkit for creating meaningful life experiences.

These days, my question is this:

“By implementing the ancient tools of story in my actual day-to-day living, can I generate new life experiences that I and others would find interesting and engaging? Could I create life scenes that capture attention, hold interest, awaken hearts, revive imaginations, intrigue and challenge minds?”

And my answer is yes. I absolutely can. It will be a life’s work, and it will be infused with hope and love and conflict and mindfulness. But also, a little more meaning.

Transformation

In storytelling, there is always a great emphasis on making an audience feel something, or think something, or change somehow. We ask "how will this story transform my audience?"

But why is audience transformation important? Why bother considering who we are speaking to, or writing to, at all?

For many, especially in academia, considering one’s audience is not their highest priority. Their concern is for the integrity of the content, the completeness of the information. And that’s okay. They are doing exactly what they should be doing - accurately documenting a concept for historical record, for education.

The subtle (but actually enormous) difference between information-sharing and storytelling, is in the intent:

Storytelling intends to move others.

Storytelling is social change-making, idea-sharing in a way that is memorable and transformational. So, how the audience responds to your ideas does matter. A well-crafted story allows your reader or listener to easily take your ideas with them. Like a passenger on a road trip, your idea is driven to fresh places, introduced to new friends, shared and enjoyed.

It's transformation, not documentation.

Storytelling is a relationship. It seeks permission, it respects all parties, it builds trust. It opens possibilities for your audience, but doesn’t coerce change out of them.

Whether we are on a stage, writing a book or in a conversation, wherever our ideas are being shared it is vital that they are delivered with care and consideration of the audience in front of us. If we cannot make our audience care somehow, our stories will go nowhere.

When an audience is open to our message, then our ideas, our contribution to the world, have the best chance of making the personal, societal or relational impact they were conceived to make.

Three layers of questions I ask everyone

I'll let you in on a secret. This business I'm running, where I help you write your best books and tell your best stories, is really just a trojan horse. It's a useful by-product of my real journey to find all the ways to craft a meaningful life.

Every hour I spend researching storycraft, and narrative theory, and story philosophy, I am learning how writers engage their audience, how they create meaningful moments, lasting change, character transformation. And it's incredibly powerful to master all these techniques, so that our stories can be powerful and memorable. But beyond the creating of stories and content and ideas, I'm finding myriad crossovers with the living of meaningful stories.

Everything we respond to in storytelling also holds a truth somehow in real life, and this fascinates me. I think it is important, and you'll find a lot of my writing is trojan-horsing these ideas into the conversations. Just wanted to give you the kind of heads-up that the city of Troy would have no doubt appreciated.

One such story/life crossover is in the questions writers ask of their characters.

When writing engaging characters, we ask questions in layers. From the external layers at the surface, through the feelings and emotions of the internal layers, all the way down to the philosophical beliefs and worldviews that a character has. Finding the answers to these questions helps us to understand and identify with our characters, and also develop deeper more meaningful interactions with them.

Thinking in this way was extraordinarily useful during all the interviews Rach and I conducted for the book we published a few years ago, and it has become something I apply in my daily conversations now, to craft more meaningful interactions.

Here are a few examples of how this External-Internal-Philosphical framing reveals more of a character, enough that we might actually start to care about them a bit:

CONFLICT:

What is the external problem?
"I lost my job, I've lost my cashflow..."

What internal discomfort is being caused as a result?
"I’m frustrated, afraid, anxious..."

What is the philosophical base of all this?
"I care about what others think of me... Status is important to me."
"I don't know if I am enough? Do I have what it takes to choose a new path?"
"Being fired for good morals was wrong, and unjust!"

AMBITION:

What is the external desire of the character?
"I want to exercise and get fit."

What is their internal desire, the subtext, the “why”?
"I want a particular person to find me attractive."

What is the philosophical base? Why is that “why” so important to me, or to the world?
"I believe appearances contribute to attraction."
"I don't think I have anything else of value inside me, so how I look matters."

CHANGE:

After everything, what has changed externally?
"I’ve lost weight, I’m fit now."

What has changed internally?
"I’m confident, I can trust myself with my choices, I actually like myself now."

What has changed philosophically?

"I believe I am loveable and valuable. Appearance doesn’t matter as much as I thought, but self-worth, that’s the big thing!"

—

Obviously these answers can go in so many directions, but hopefully you can see the potential in asking the questions. We uncover more about a character, and eventually we will land on something that resonates with us. I may not care at all about your job, but I totally understand the tension around "do I have what it takes?" I don't really care about what actually happened at recess, but I do care about how it made my child feel, and what he believes about that interaction.

Whatever is going on in another's life, asking questions from all three layers can help us find the common ground, and make their stories matter.

Where boredom can't touch us

To be alive is to be in perpetual conflict. We are always lacking something, we always desire things.

When we LACK the lacking, when we are comfortable and have no desire, when there is no conflict, we become bored.

So, if we were in a story, our writer would add some complication to the story, on one of three levels of conflict:

  • Internal (thoughts and emotions)

  • Relational (relationships with others)

  • External (external places and activity)

    *read more about multi-level conflict in Robert McKee's epic book "Story: substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting (1997)

And that's a brilliant thing to do, because conflict infuses meaning into stories. The writer must introduce some conflict into our story, or nothing meaningful can happen.

But where should the conflict go? Internal? Relational? External? (spoiler: I'm encouraging all three, simultaneously...)

If the writer chooses to only work on one of these conflict levels, she would need to employ a big cast of extra characters, or have a huge amount of locations, just to keep the boredom at bay. To keep it interesting for our audience.

  • Our Internal conflict would need so many people to populate memories and imagination.

  • Our Relational conflicts would require a soap opera full of different relationships, in different places.

  • Our External conflicts would look like a big action movie, full of travel and movement, but with nothing happening internally.

It’s story, and there is conflict, but it’s still a huge struggle against boredom.

Let's be honest, we do this in our lives, don't we? To avoid the boredom. We dive into multiple relationships, surround ourselves with friends, facebook, community. We try desperately to keep the excitement strong with spicy romantic upsets and best-friend fallouts. This is the soap opera of our lives, and we are scrambling to keep our lives interesting.

Or, we make up our own huge stories in our head - all the others who love us/hate us/have hurt us/deserve to be with us. All the locations we’ve been in or want to be in. Real or imagined, we just keep it all going, to avoid the boredom.

Or we live out the action movie and just get out there and DO. Go all the places, do all the physical things, stay busy, all the while avoiding any internal conflict negotiation. We become high-functioning robots. We look good on the outside, but to keep anyone’s attention we have to move even faster, do even more, keep performing. Our greatest fear is that if we stop, then we’ll be bored with ourselves. And others will be bored with us.

*Please know that I write this as someone who has often directed such a boring life scene for myself that I want to walk out of my own movie. It's common, and it's okay. But I'm learning to create better scenes in my life, hence these articles.

To truly write a meaningful story, that engages our audience and destroys boredom completely, we have to design our conflict better. We need to make things simpler, and more complex, at the same time. And that involves working with all three of the levels of conflict simultaneously:

  • Internal conflict - We courageously negotiate feelings of self-worth, love, compassion, mindfulness.

  • Relational conflict - We build relationships with a few great people, and don’t shy away from conversations and moments that are uncomfortable, and allow a deepening of the bonds of friendship and love.

  • External conflict - We exercise our internal beliefs and personal relationships in an external physical way - to do work that matters, actions with purpose and meaning.

If we aim to reduce all those extra characters, reduce all those locations, and simply concentrate on the richness of multi-level conflict , then our lives will fall into something deep and meaningful, where boredom can’t touch us.

On dreams and actions

Dreams are like ideas in the wind, as common as leaves in Autumn. They land in any open palm, and then they lift and fly off to the next hand.

Dreams are the payoff without the work. A man dreaming of his great future can spend an entire day in the vineyard without harvesting a single grape, while another bends to the work, with dreams only of presentness, and takes giant steps forward, purposeful within each moment, acutely aware of her surroundings, of time, of all the senses, and of the edifying joy of completing worthwhile jobs for a present goal.

In the past, I have judged those who didn't dream. I privately pitied them for their lack of ambition, or lack of hope, or whatever else I thought they lacked and I didn't.

I did this unconsciously, because I wasn't like them. I am a dreamer, after all. I burn hours of my day creating ideas out of nothing, and then sending them back to nothing. My mind is a firework of WTF and at the end of the day I have achieved nothing. The leaves fly to another hand.

Thankfully, I'm growing out of that mindset. My twelve-year-old son started a YouTube channel last week and has already posted three videos. I've had a channel for 15 years, and have posted once. Ever. No, I can't judge those who act more than they dream.

I still absolutely believe in hopes, dreams and ambition, but I'm developing a deep respect for the clean minimalism of a mind at work in the present. Of doing the work of today, before dreaming about all the tomorrows.

Active audiencing

I love being in an audience. Whether it’s a stage show, a concert, a standup comedy routine or a cinema, when I am in the audience I feel safe, and ready to experience a world that is different to my own. As a spectator to a story, I have permission to open up my mind, consider beliefs and perspectives that I normally wouldn’t ever consider.

If the protagonist on the stage (or in the movie) is stricken with poverty, then I can safely subscribe to that identity, and for a moment walk the same path. I begin to understand why she would steal that loaf of bread, lie to her children, sleep with that man for money. As myself, I would stand strong in my narrow-minded worldview that stealing is wrong, prostitution is wrong, etc. But as a spectator, I can agree that in this world stealing is vital, the prostitution was necessary, and in fact if I were in that situation, I may take the exact same actions.

Of course, this is one of the goals of storytelling - to move the audience towards new ideas, feelings, perspectives. But the role of the audience as spectator is not a passive one. To be an observer is to invest time into someone else’s story. But more than that, it suspends judgement, observing with an open mind the perspective of another. One of the first things a storyteller needs to create is a world that feels TRUE to the audience, and the great power of observation is when you can accept another’s experience as true - even if you don’t agree with it.

When we experience a great story, we have all willingly opened our minds to it, acknowledging that “though I do not agree with this worldview, I feel completely safe to subscribe to it for the duration of the story.”

Imagine if we held that attitude in our everyday conversations?

Imagine listening to another’s story, and not immediately defending your own worldview, announcing your own belief system, arguing your truth versus another’s. It’s not that impossible to observe without judgement, listen with an open heart, consider that there may be truth in a completely different set of beliefs. After all, we do it every single time we experience a story.

This week, instead of just information-sharing or social positioning, try some active audiencing with others. Observe with an open heart, a gracious mind and a less-fearful ego. Suspend the judgement, believe that the way life is for another is as true as the way life is for yourself.

Who knows, you may just leave the show with some fresh perspectives and a richer worldview.

A slower determination

Rach and I are reading Margaret Wheatley’s “Perseverance” this morning.

At 5:30am, the sun has just crested the horizon, the sky is already an apricot wash, the temperature is already 12 degrees.

And she and I sit naked in a bed, cradling our coffee cups, reading words so wise, we can’t do more than a page a day.

Wheatley writes that in the Chinese language, the character for perseverance is often the same as the one used for patience. Which I find really validating, to be honest. Perseverance often carries with it the expectation of pushing through, being tenacious, fighting forward. But, the ancient Chinese scribes used the character for slowing down, resting and waiting, managing during a slower organic growing of oneself.

I think it’s one thing to have a deadline, work all night, “persevere" to complete a task - it’s cinematic, right? The audience applauds when the lawyer doesn’t sleep for a week and finds the loophole to win the case.

But, it’s a much more courageous thing to believe, and do, over a longer, slower period of time. We need more than adrenaline when the timeframe is months and years. When the work is a life’s work.

We need patience. Grace for ourselves. It’s a slower determination that lasts the distance of a lifetime. And that’s a whole different skill set.

Perseverance doesn’t yield. It sees us through to the end. It sees the difficulties and pushes through. But it’s not a fight. More, a deep resilience that gets us through the mundane, the everyday. It’s a daily acknowledgement:

"I am everything, and I am nothing, both at once.
And I will go softly forward ever forward into this life, with patience and determination.
I will grow as the tides and rivers grow, in ebbs and flows, but ever strengthening.
There is no hurry."

On the road: The Coromandel, New Zealand

(April 2018)

We're returning from the Coromandel, heading back towards Auckland, and I'm in the back seat, staring out the window. Blurs of green and yellow and bitumen blue. In the rear view mirror I can see Tracey, just her eyes, and in the side mirror is Rach, just her collarbone, which I adore.

This landscape is so beautiful. Wide grassy plains, with occasional tightly gathered cows, heads all together like they’re planning a coup.

It’s the horizon that is the most striking now. These fields could belong to my own Australian landscape except for their horizon. Volcanic misty peaks, layered and foliage’d and quietly exciting. Patches of sunlight drift over the trees, like golden jellyfish ghosts.

Our lively conversation of the morning has dropped off now, replaced with a comfortable peace. Tracey reaches for her coffee, her eyes in the mirror are distant, contemplative. I start thinking about connection, how we do it and why. Out here in the vastness, it’s easy to feel insignificant, small, distant.

As if she saw my thoughts in her side mirror, Rach reaches a hand back behind her seat, fingers reaching, her palm a question, “Will you connect with me? Will you bridge this gap?”

My fingertips find her palm, and hers find mine, and we share a moment of no words, conveying soul-thoughts with the lightest touches, telling our heart stories to each other with tiny pressures and traces and piano taps.

I think connecting is work, and it’s risking rejection, and it demands a sacrifice of our time and our comfort and our independence. And the more we connect, the more these stakes rise. We sacrifice our reputation for vulnerability, hoping and trusting that this other soul will be a safe place for all of that. And we do it again and again, in so many forms, even after being hurt.

What’s the payoff for all this connecting work? Nothing tangible, really. Just feelings and self-worth and something we call “community”. And that intense heat in our souls that make us want to give and sacrifice even more, even if it costs us our life.

And maybe, also, when we connect we are voicing a solidarity - That us humans, in all this wide open infinite, are doing ok, and are worthy of being here, and are not alone.

Between the problem and the solution

The way a problem works, is that it arrives out of nowhere, we scramble to find a solution as fast as possible to avoid any discomfort, and then when we have the solution, the problem goes away and we move on.

Which, unfortunately, means we’ve learnt nothing about ourselves.

If we are truly going to grow in life, if we are going to actually transcend our “normal” into a life we’d be proud to live, then we need to step back and notice what’s happening between the problem and the solution.

We need to see ourselves, watch how we react, consider why we are doing what we are doing. No judgement, just compassionate honesty.

Is it fear? Chasing comfort? Ignoring the obvious?

If we are not aware of ourselves when a problem hits, then we’ll just automate our response to it, and it will cycle back again.

Being aware allows you to move forward. Grow. And when you’re done, you might even be able to thank the problem, instead of fearing it’s return.

Tonight the sky is exploding

Tonight the sky is exploding.
Trails of fizzy light erupting in spectacular bouquets of pink and green and blinding white. There's so much smoke, we can’t see the stars anymore. Below our balcony, there are heavy grey ghost-clouds just yawning their way through the city, like ancient spectres roused from slumber, and already bored.

I love fireworks, but not for the usual reasons. Celebrations like these are always monstrously expensive, and often just bring out the worst in us. Thousands of humans massing themselves on the foreshore and shouting drunken patriotic slogans at each other all night. I don’t care about that at all. But tonight, I'm only seeing the lightshow in reflections: glimpses in the bathroom glass, the kitchen chrome, the bedside lamps over Rach’s shoulder, and the tiny starfalls in her moon-earrings.

She is watching the sky, and I am watching her. She’s telling me stories of festivals back in her hometown, back in New Zealand. Her face lights up with every firecracker, and in her eyes are sparks of experience, little explosions of whimsy in the deep pools of her memories.

It reminds me of the first time I brought Sebastian to a firework show.
He was barely two years old, and he sat in my lap and laughed at the sky. His tiny hands reached out, grabbing at the fireflies, his face awash with delight and glory.

This is why I like fireworks. It’s the soft splashes of wonder on all the faces.
The droplets of eternity on our lashes.

Is this what I feared?

“Set aside a certain number of days during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress saying to yourself all the while ‘Is this the condition that I feared?”

— Seneca, Roman Philosopher (c. 4 BC - AD 65)

Today we have no plans

I am sitting cross-legged on an excellent chair. Drinking coffee, typing words. Today, we have no plans.

The foyer of this place is beautiful. High arches, wraparound internal balcony on the second floor, domed opaque glass for a ceiling, all lit up by the sun, without any of the heat. The only other soul in this palatial retreat is Rach, curled up and surrounded by her journals, like an intellectual cat.

This week had its moments. Two nights ago I rode my bike out of work at 3am. Last night I had clients until 9pm. This week had deadlines and bills and walls.

But today, it's all done. The muscle of life contracted, clenched, choked, but has now released again. Breathing free.

I suppose this is how everything happens:

Tense. Release.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Conflict. Peace.
Pain. Healing.

I suppose, if I'm being completely honest, today wouldn't mean anything to me without the preceding conflict. It would just be another day. Boring, even. But, because of the perspective afforded by conflict, I can truly appreciate the zero.

Today, we have no plans, and I am joyfully grateful, and I am being in, and enjoying every second of, this moment.