Mary Panttaja

(Continued)

Stillness is not something we experience very often. It is hard to come by.

In fact, the opposite is more likely. Momentum, the strong tendency to stay in motion, predominates most of our lives. (And we are not talking about jogging here, we’re talking about compelling doingness, ongoing activity, mental striving.) Momentum is defined as “the impetus and driving force gained by the development of a process or course of events.” What are our lives if not a continually evolving course of events? And each of those events tends to generate it’s own momentum.

Where does all this motion come from?

• Some of our ongoing actions are truely updrafts, us catching and participating in inspired action.
• Regularly, we start or commit to extended projects—like, say, we have children or an idea for an extended product development effort. Then the momentum of life and work becomes in many ways determined for quite some time, and while it starts as an updraft, habit can keep it moving even if the updraft changes.
• We create many “support” activities in our lives or businesses (cleaning house, keeping the lawn, financial accounting). Sometimes we let these activities take over much of our effort, and over time they can lose their meaning if they don’t relate to the support of an updraft, the support of some inspired activity. Then they just become busy work, sapping our potential.
• Often, instead of catching our updraft, we adopt a goal from someone else. “That looks nice/profitable/doable.” And while, sometimes that puts us on our own path, sometimes it has nothing to do with who we are, and so, for us, there will be no updraft in it and therefore much more effort, though the other guy/company may have really had an updraft.

And I can see that all of these things have played out in my life, some more than others. I particularly fell for trying to do what others were doing because they were having some success—and surely I could do what they were doing. But it wasn’t my updraft and it was a struggle all the way. And I find it easy to get distracted by “life” stuff—fixing the house, keeping the garden, cooking the meals—and while they are an important part of life, it’s easy to let them take over. (A form of keeping up with the Joneses.) (Now sometimes these things are someone’s updraft, and sometimes they are not. Learning to know the difference is important. And difficult.)

An Illustration of the Metaphor

In the spring in northen California, the raptors, red tail hawks particularly, have a beautiful dance they do in the skies above us. They spend hours catching updrafts in the bright sun, partners looping around each other, following, spinning. They are experts at the subtle process of staying in the middle of an updraft. If the red tail hawk set his wings a certain way, deciding in advance what he should do, how he should “act”, what his “action plan” would be, he would glide out of the center of the updraft and lose it. And from there on he would have extra work to do to move upward—he would not be gliding but fighting to create upward movement. But, with a high degree of sensitivity and subtle engagement with the air current, he maximizes his potential in the updraft and soars thousands of feet into the atmosphere.

And this subtle sensitivity is why an internal state of stillness is so valuable.

Updrafts can be roaring storms and when they are, it’s not hard to get into middle of that motion. In fact, it would be hard to resist. But updrafts are equally likely, maybe more likely, to be small shifts in the current. These are easy to miss. And if you miss them, in a short time, you can be way off base. And over time, you can find yourself adrift—without inspiration or meaning, or understanding how you (or you company) got lost.

(to be continued)