More Brené Brown, sounding familiar.
“I’m good at anger and only so-so at vulnerability, so armoring up before a vulnerable experience is very attractive to me.
Luckily, my work has taught me that when I feel self-righteous, it means I’m afraid.
It’s a way to puff up and protect myself when I’m afraid of being wrong, making someone angry, or getting blamed.”
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More Jean.
They’re back.
The last of the garden blooms.
Easter, 2021.
The children are in Sydney, and I in Castlemaine. It feels a bit out of context, abstract, spending Easter without them. A disembodied experience of sorts.
The Castlemaine festival is wrapping up beautifully, the weather is heavenly, the town is bursting with actions and opportunities: giant Scrabble battles and epic theatrical performances here, open studios and exhibitions there, music, free and not, appearing regularly. Every pub has a few gigs, unusual stages appear in parks, reserves and streets.
We played a concert on a reactivated car park, the warming up looked like this, was joyful and the general feel was extremely positive.
Yet I feel unsure.
Warm feelings give place to confusion, and the need to brace myself for any self confidence bubble to be busted. What did I miss, what did I not pay attention to? Joy seems a somewhat selfish feeling.
Brene Brown writes about foreboding joy, bracing ourselves for disaster as a classic armor strategy. We refuse to express and experience joy because joy, and the inescapable loss of it, exposes us as being vulnerable. When joy leaves, or is taken away, it leaves us vulnerable to disappointment. Hence, when experiencing joy, we’d rather brace for disaster. It seems safer.
Could it be the other way? Could the longing, the pursuit, and the experience of joy be a diversion from exposing ourselves to our own vulnerabilities, a fragile attempt at avoidance? Are those two propositions even any different?
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The antidote to foreboding joy, she suggests, is to practice gratitude.
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I feel grateful for my children to be safely celebrating Easter with their mother in Sydney.
I feel grateful for a beautiful evening filled with support, talks, walks, random encounters and wholesome connections.
I feel grateful for my parents, calling me from France, and loving me.
I feel grateful for a different Easter experience.
Gouttes d’eau & feuilles de Songe
Obsessions
La Incondicional, de La Dame Blanche. En boucle depuis 24 heures. Over and over and over.
Certains morceaux me touchent droit au coeur. La dernière fois que j’ai ressenti ça, c’etait en écoutant Beautiful You, de Bumcello.
En remontant le fil des ans j’ai retrouvé MC Solaar, Caroline
Je me suis souvenu avoir enregistré Love Street, des Doors, cinq fois de suite sur une cassette. Les obsesssions a l’époque c’était beaucoup de travail.
Après, bien sur, on pourrait parler de Renaud, Brel, Bob Marley, Miles Davis, Mickael Jackson, Manu Dibango, Fela Kuti et tant d’autres, mais pour une raison ou une autre, ce sont ces trois morceaux qui me sont revenus aujourd’hui.
L’avenir nous dira si La Incondicional passe l’épreuve du temps.
Time will tell.
The Disengagement Divide
“Here’s my theory: Disengagement is the issue underlying the majority of problems I see in families, schools, communities and organizations and it takes many forms, including the
ones we discussed in the “Armory” chapter.
We disengage to protect ourselves from vulnerability, shame, and feeling lost and without purpose. We also disengage when we feel like the
people who are leading us -our boss, our teachers, our principal, our clergy, our parents, our politicians aren’t living up to their end of the social contract.
Politics is a great, albeit painful, example of social contract disengagement.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle are making laws that they’re not required to follow or that don’t affect them, they’re engaging in behaviors that would result in most of us getting fired, divorced, or arrested.
They’re espousing values that are rarely displayed in their behavior. And just watching them shame and blame each other is degrading for us.
They’re not living up to their side of the social contract and voter turnout statistics show that we’re disengaging.
Religion is another example of social contract disengagement.
First, disengagement is often the result of leaders not living by the same values they’re preaching. Second, in an uncertain world, we often feel desperate for absolutes. It’s the human response to fear.
When religious leaders leverage our fear and need for more certainty by extracting vulnerability from spirituality and turning faith into “compliance and consequences,” rather than teaching and modeling how to wrestle with the unknown and how to embrace mystery, the entire
concept of faith is bankrupt on its own terms.
Faith minus vulnerability equals politics, or worse, extremism.
Spiritual connection and engagement is not built on compliance, it’s the product of love, belonging, and vulnerability.
So, here’s the question: We don’t intentionally create cultures in our families, schools, communities, and organizations that fuel disengagement and disconnection, so how does it happen? Where’s the gap?
The gap starts here: We can’t give people what we don’t have. Who we are matters immeasurably more than what we know or who we want to be.
The space between our practiced values (what we’re actually doing, thinking, and feeling) and our aspirational values (what we want to do, think and feel) is the value gap, or what I call the disengagement divide.”
Brené Brown, Daring Greatly
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And this, too.
The sounds and coulours of an illuminated building and a park submarine.
Deep in the night something happened in Castlemaine.
Reactivate the night, Castlemaine Fringe Festival, 2021
Fruits de la passion
We spoke for ages about retrofitting an old dishwasher in my pastry section at work.
All along I was reticent to the idea.
It finally happened, this morning.
I really didn’t like it, then I really loved it, then the machine broke down. All within my five hours work shift.
Here’s from R. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, on machines and peace of mind:
“Peace of mind isn’t at all superficial, really,” I expound. “It’s the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind.
The ultimate test’s always your own serenity. If you don’t have this when you start and maintain it while you’re working you’re likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.
[…]
The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. If the machine produces tranquillity it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed. The test of the machine’s always your own mind. There isn’t any other test.”
A pretty fitting take on this story, to be continued.
Some pumpkin pride.
Brené Brown, Daring Greatly
Sidney’s moods.
Saturday, march 20th.
I asked him who those moods were, but I forgot his answer.
I will ask him again, hoping he remembers.
EDIT
He remembered.
Cheecky. Grumpy. And Bored. There are just days like this.
Back door ideas
The last seedling I saved from the compost pile yielded this.
Will I get lucky again this time?
I shall hope so !!!
Documenting Benoit 