Jumping Ship

Jumping Ship

Jan 22, 2019 | Presence, Truth

There is something to be said about jumping off of the proverbial ‘Millennial Falcon,’ this notion that people in their 20s and 30s do not just understand social media better (and they do), they understand more about life.

It is impossible that any one generation has THE answer(s), but millennials benefit from the visual nature of social media, which ‘captures’ their enlightenment. It is a preposterous idea, but one marketed to great effect.

Imagine if Baby Boomers had access to such technology in the 60’s? Surely, their message of peace and love seemed right. We see copious footage from TV and movies that demonstrate the force of their beliefs, but what we are missing is the platform of social media afforded to millennials that codify their ‘brand’ of knowledge.

What do millennials know? They know how to use technology, and this singular bit of knowledge bleeds into other areas of life and society. They know things, and with the click of a button this knowledge will be imparted to all.

There is something magical and yet predictable in the knowledge of young people. They KNOW, because they do not know what they do not know. Add on 15 years, a divorce perhaps, the birth of a child (or two), debt, wrinkles, the loss of one’s hair or job, and what you have is reality.

Reality is not pretty, nor do millennials possess a deeper understanding of it than anyone else. Like anyone, everyone, they are what they are, and it is neither good nor bad.

It is time, however, to abandon the ‘Millennial Falcon.’ Like all modes of transportation, it will eventually run aground or get blasted from the sky.

It is time to jump ship…

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what’s important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

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Looking Back

Looking Back

Oct 3, 2018 | Time, Transformation, Truth

We are What We Were.

That statement seems obvious, but society encourages all to have no regret, look forward, soldier on, and display a fierceness that is not only questionable but disturbing. Why can’t we look back? Why can’t we take the time to examine who we are in the context of what brought us here?

The Future is Not a Fact. It is a Theory

There is no such thing as destiny or anything that had to have been. Rather, everything results from everything else, a progression of circumstances, events, ideas and feelings that eventually somehow led to now. Today did not have to be this way.

The value in looking back is directly proportional to the amount of time we question ourselves. This is not a questioning that takes place on Facebook or in the tinny light of an overcrowded coffee bar. This is a questioning that takes place when no camera is rolling, no buttons are pressed and no evidence will ever exist that it took place except in the content of our character.

If we do not know who we were, how can we appreciate what we are?Looking back is sad, often laconic, generally bittersweet. It is indeed a mixed bag of “stuff.” Easier to let that stuff stay in the corners of our selves, right? Why dredge up memories that may still hurt us today? Why look back?

If we look back far enough, we can see our future selves. There is a tremendous sense of place that can arise when we dig into our past–for better or worse. Ultimately, we are slaves to our pasts unless we take the time to place it in its proper perspective. It is not an easy process nor is it necessarily going to yield anything tangible.

Are our lives random, isolated moments? Do they connect? Where are we going? Look back and find yourself, all your selves. They are all within us, waiting, watching in space-time. Look back far and hard enough and you just may be the one looking back at yourself.

The song of ourselves may be faint, but the melody lingers on…

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what’s important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

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  • Paid membership opens full access to courses, live sessions, and the complete Field Guide.
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The Answers

The Answers

Sep 26, 2018 | Presence, Time, Transformation, Truth

We have all seen it, right? The look on a millennial’s face when he or she discovers THE answer on their phone.

They are surrounded by individuals who experience the same thing, and these moments of bliss are captured and disseminated through social media channels at nearly warp speed.

Isn’t it natural, though, for all younger people to feel as if they have the answers? The difference now is that younger generations are able to capture these moments with technology and promote them. Might Baby Boomers have experienced such things, too?

What will happen when today’s younger generations grow older and time seems less infinite? There is something deeply disturbing about the march of time. It goes on without us, and that reality is obvious the older we get and the more we see change, yet stay the same.

Do millennials have the answers to life’s mysteries? Media coverage seems to suggest they know something profound. However, might it be that millennials know technology better than older generations? They know how to use technology, but that knowledge seems to bleed into the arena of life itself, which is profoundly problematic.

Some answers are known by each generation, but the question becomes what kind of answers are they? Can a 29 year old advise a 60 year old on the complexities and nuances of life? Maybe. Do millennials fundamentally understand aspects of life? No way. Technology, however, provides photos and videos of them in that sort of nirvana that only exists for younger folks.

As we age, the excitement of what we think we know is tempered by the experiences that make up entire decades of what we do not know. What would it look like on social media to see pictures of 85 year olds staring at each other in rapture and clicking buttons? We would surmise they have dementia? After all, what can older folks know, right?

What those who are older know, however, cannot be measured by Google analytics or captured in an online review of a local vegetarian bistro. Rather, it is the actual content of a life that has been lived and all the detours and nuances that result from the pain, loss, tragedy and triumph of existence.

Do millennials have the answers? Sure, they are exuberant and bring fresh perspectives to age-old human foibles. Have they experienced decades worth of life and loss? No, they have not.

Ask a 25 year old what is life, and he or she will look toward the future. Ask a 50 year old the same question, and he or she will turn around and look back…

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what’s important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

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True Love

True Love

Sep 2, 2018 | Love, Presence, Transformation, Truth

In this day and age where we seemingly must “crush” everything in sight in order to prove ourselves to a world that seemingly watches our every move, is there a place for love anymore?

True love. What is it? Why does it matter?

True love may not even exist, but the idea of it is massive, and it exists in some form else how can we account for people that lose their lives saving the life of others? How can we account for this tremendous disparity in our world between what we say to people out loud, but privately value in our own heads and hearts?

True love matters. It is a feeling, a glimpse, a window into something better inside ourselves.

Is it better? Well, that is arbitrary, but when many people love well, it not only makes those around us feel better. It actually makes us feel better, too, right? The difficult thing today, however, is that acts of love and kindness are often not able to be caught within the frames of life we stare at on our phones, tablets, and computer screens.

True love is often quiet and sometimes is counter-intuitively experienced as pain. True love is not easy.

Is anything really easy, however? Can we click a button and really get that thing we desire, or need, or want? True love starts inside the mind with an idea. We can either fan its flame with breathe or extinguish it with the hardness of 21st-century thinking.

In a world of Big Data, true love is still not something that can be measured.

Just because something is not measured, though, does not mean it does not exist. Like a graviton, true love has never been captured, but evidence for its existence lies all around us?

Where do we find this evidence of true love? Close the door and look inside yourself.

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what’s important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

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The Isolation

The Isolation

Aug 18, 2018 | Presence, Truth

For those of us who sometimes feel isolated and alone, social media can tend to make us feel worse about ourselves. We are not part of the scene that is social media. We don’t have as many “likes,” “shares,” or “follows.”

Whatever social media is measuring, we don’t have enough of it. We are always missing out on something. Did we see the latest tweet or Instagram post of whoever is trending at the moment?

Honestly, do any of us really remember the most impactful Facebook post of our lives? When was THE moment we saw THE post that unlocked THE answer? There was no such moment.

The world is not a static image that one may ‘click’ at one’s leisure. It is a world of loss, tragedy, murder, rape, love, hope, deception, hunger, homelessness, awful humans, and much, much more.

Social media enables us to look outward so we can avoid looking within. It is not all bad. There is beauty in it, too, but there is also something very isolating about the experience of it.

Social media packages reality into sound-bytes and pictures that show others what we want them to see. It is a carefully, although often thoughtlessly, curated experience that does not reveal the fact that our lives are lived in our own heads.

How do we capture the reality of reality in a format that primarily reveals the lives of others through images and/or videos that capture very limited points in time? There is no context for what we are seeing, no before and after, which is real life.

Do you have “friends” on Facebook that in fact have no idea who you really are? Were they high school friends that you have not seen in 20 years? How are we using the term “friend” now? Are you our friend?

There is something subtly quite isolating about social media. We can connect with the world without ever leaving the screen of our handheld device. No, that is simply and utterly false.

Regardless of one’s age, we make time to physically meet the people that matter — and that number may be in the single digits. Social media allows us to participate in something without really being part of it at all.

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what’s important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

  • Free membership gives you access to community conversations and introductory resources.
  • Paid membership opens full access to courses, live sessions, and the complete Field Guide.
Explore The Commons

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