I just finished the excellent book The Wave by Susan Casey, and this morning a seed from the book sprouted in my mind. Casey interviews several Hawaiians about the sea and the surf, and they all talk about not the waves (plural) at a place but the wave (singular) at a place. That is, they (even their ancient ancestors) realized that all of the crests breaking in at a particular spot are the product of a single, unique, stationary entity -- which turns out to be (though perhaps the ancients did not quite understand this part) the topology of the ocean floor at that place. So, each place has a recurring, known and unique set of behaviors under various circumstances, which is to say a way of responding to energy of swells of various intensities and directions. The Hawaiians characterize the whole of these behaviors as a persona: the wave at a place has a personality and a name and a reputation, and you have a relationship with it.
So, I was thinking this morning that the Hawaiians’ view of the wave also reveals their view of a person. They projected onto the wave a concept that they already understood from dealing with each other. They must have already viewed real men and women as being defined by how each refracts, reflects, absorbs, and amplifies the energy in the swells of life to create smooth or rugged, excellent or scary, tubular or foamy, etc waves for the rest of us. When life hits Sam from thus-and-such direction, he does this-and-that. Etc. I think this is a wonderful way to look at yourself, your life, and your relationships -- personal and professional.
Stuff happens, to paraphrase the bumper sticker. We all encounter thousands of different swells -- energy of challenges and opportunities and mysteries -- in our lives. These swells hit us from every imaginable angle and height, so they touch every bend and curve and surface of our character -- revealing a rich and true picture, like a sonogram of our soul. It is a complex picture, and it bears the truth of improvisation: this is not a staged picture; rather, it is a dynamic test in which we see a person “in play in the real world, not posing or reading a script.” And, I think this is the truest picture. Here’s why.
Consider the character of someone you admire. Describe that character with a few words. Now consider those words, and ask yourself: are they manifest in a static environment (no swells) or in a dynamic environment (impacted with swells)? If you used words like....trustworthy, caring, strong, diligent, etc....you are describing someone’s behavior in dynamic environments in which life gave that person every opportunity to sell out or ignore or rest or play. But, this person reacted to those swells by channeling them into something smooth for you. A nice wave.
Life is not stasis, and we are not static models. And the swells of life are not interruptions or disruptions to some hypothetical snapshot state: they are the dynamic energy that allows us to reveal ourselves by how we reflect and refract and absorb and amplify those swells for the people around us. The trick is to learn to channel more types of conditions into clean, smooth, rides -- to avoid producing turmoil and turbulence. We all have good days and bad days, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about patterns of behavior and illusions of an the unexamined life. Take a look at your patterns: what is the character of your wave?
(p.s. -- Your team is a wave, too. How does it respond to dynamic swells to create a great ride?)
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