I wish that…

The other night I took my fiancé out for dessert and as I sat happily eating tiramisu, she looked up from her chocolate mud cake and said ‘I wish that..’

At that moment, a few quick sparks shot through my mind and a thought formed.

We all make wishes. We wish for a better job, more money, a bigger house, a flatter stomach, better weather, health, a beautiful partner, safety, world peace, equality, an end to suffering and the list goes on and on and on. A wish is wanting a shift from the current position to another; struggle to wealth, sickness to health, sad to happy. How many wishes have we made up until this point? How many birthday candles extinguished, falling stars dreamed upon and eyelashes gently blown off fingertips?

Have we really thought this process through?

Perhaps our wishes are being granted, but the process is random and limited. Rather than asking which we would prefer, the genie picks a wish out of a hat and the chance of any one wish being selected is relative to the number of wishes it contains. If we have 1000 wishes in there, what are the chances of a worthy selection? Is the hat full of high quality wishes we really desire or is it diluted by frivolous, meaningless wishes that were made in a moment of weakness. Maybe at a time when circumstances existed that were not to our liking or didn’t meet our expectations. Like a cold and rainy day on a beach holiday – ‘I wish it was warmer’. There may be an opportunity cost component to wishing that we have been neglecting, as each wish may lower the chances of an alternative being granted.

Imagine someone that you consider successful. What wishes have got them there? I wish I had this skill, I wish to meet this person, I wish this deal goes through, I wish for a bit of luck, I wish for… Imagine that their actual success was determined by a focused wishing practice where each wish aimed them down a particular path. This meant that all of the wishes in the hat were consciously invested so that any one wish chosen for granting was definitely one that furthered their journey. Sounds ludicrous right?

Everyone realises that for the most part, success in anything does not depend on wishing. It depends on ideas, development and action. It takes patience, control, direction, knowledge, movement, training, practice, failure, learning, discomfort and numerous other skills. It takes work.

Most of our wishes are directed at things that either we cannot change, such as the weather – or another person. Things we are impatient to get or for which we are unwilling to invest energy, such as our fitness level or financial security, also claim a number of wishes. If we prioritise our wishlist by sorting it into categories and doing a little research on each we may better understand what is going on.

Perhaps headings like: what we can affect, what is valueless to our big picture, and what we feel we have no power over would be suitable sub-categories. Once listed. the things we can affect, we attempt to do. The useless we drop. And, the things we can’t affect, we accept and then possibly find value in them as they are.

I will assume that most, if not all wishes, are inherently selfish by nature. We wish for power, prestige, respect, attractiveness, material items and social status. We wish that others will move so that we don’t have to. We wish for our side to win and our position improved. We wish to succeed in all we do. We wish for the world to be different, less volatile, less risky and more peaceful.

In uncertain economic times, the desire for stability increases. Wishing for company success, government saviours, changes in culture or institution is probably not an effective use of our time. Neither is denial, distraction or ignorance to these areas. To move from one position to another with a certain amount of accuracy, intention is required. ‘I intend to…’. But as we know ‘the smallest deed is better than the greatest intention’. The smallest deed meaning: action. Not just any action though, action with a conscious intention to move in a specific direction. It doesn’t mean that we are forever tied to this path and without it we have failed, just that it is a directed movement away from a starting point. Once moving, options increase and as knowledge deepens and widens, the course can be adjusted. If we are looking for cultural, country or global movement, it takes the concerted effort of many hands working together with each hand knowing it has a certain responsibility to uphold as an individual.

This is obviously a little tongue in cheek but consider two things:

1) When we make a wish for the sun, growth also requires the rain.
2) Be careful what you wish for, as you might just get what you ordered.

My current wishlist? I wish for the strength to accept the responsibility of my experience, the power to help those I can, the ability to challenge my understanding and the courage to know and be myself. And just in case none of my wishes ever get granted, I will work hard to improve myself each day so that I may continually bring some value to this world.

Oh, and my fiancé wished that she could always be this happy. Good mud cake can do that to a person.

What do you wish for and what will you do about it?

Taraz Kanti-Paul

Scaling what we think we know

Where are our preferences and impressions formed, are our feelings ours, can we truly take another’s perspective, is there an alternative? What we really know and why to take the journey for answers.

Get on the scale

As we travel along our journey, our experiences, training, parents, friends, media, governments and thoughts come together to create a scale rating system. Most times, this scale is created passively as our mental systems manage and compile information in the background into a rulebook that then dictates our impressions of the world around us.

To evaluate something we compare it against our personal reference scale to tell us what sounds, looks, feels, smells and tastes and weigh it as good, bad and everything in between. But, these scales are built to appraise more than just our physical senses. We develop these for psychological and emotional experiences too. Interpersonal relationships, beliefs, values, likes and dislikes, actions made personally and by others, and a vast amount of other aspects that we place judgement upon. Essentially, these scales create our position on all matters that concern us (and many areas that don’t).

Getting emotional

A conflict is created when something challenges our current position. If someone acts out of accordance with our social rules, we feel uncomfortable. If our ideas are questioned or criticised we feel attacked and get angry. And, if we act in a way that breaks our own values, we feel guilty. But, when the situation aligns with the rulebook we are satisfied and if we act to surpass our personal levels, we feel happy and proud. All of our emotions skip and slide based on these judgement scales as they deliver our expectations for the way things ought to be, shouldn’t be, what is best or the worst. We become emotional slaves to an invisible list that we have been programmed to follow.

Another’s shoes

Once a position is held, it is very difficult to move to an unfamiliar one and this in part is why it is challenging to shift to another person’s perspective. It is uncomfortable and sometimes terrible to change perspective but even when a move is made, it is impossible to truly see through their eyes. Having only our experience, our scales, our held positions, we can never fully imagine those of somebody else. We can never completely understand, we can only guess. And because our seemingly objective guesses (born from limited information and a position calibrated from personal experience) match with what we already know, we feel that we have done well and drawn an accurate and relevant picture. Empathy is a skill that is used as an attempt to close the gaps in interpersonal positioning but due to varying experience and the resulting reference points, it is an imperfect tool that can never completely achieve parity between positions. There is always an error.

Closing the gap further?

Understanding. Not an understanding of their position, an understanding of ours. The acknowledgement that no matter how strongly we feel, our gut reactions, our personal experience, our norms and beliefs – have made us biased. Our own shoes affect our thinking on all things. We are attached to what we know much more strongly than to the unfamiliar and are obviously completely blind to what we do not know. To obtain understanding, we have to accept that we are imperfect in our judgement due to our priming and preferences and allow room for errors. In so doing, we leave space for growth because we have a deeper understanding of where we may be, where they could be and where other things possibly lay; and know that we may be wrong. We can build a more relevant map and understand that the blurred lines between locations are a known unknown, but do exist.

From an emotional standpoint, the understanding that our thoughts, actions and reactions cause feelings that may not be entirely accurate (and at times are significantly inaccurate), we are better able to disconnect, observe our position and interject a little active rationality to better understand the situation. Our decision making ability can improve not by the increase in information, but by the increase in awareness of potential judgement errors and therefore the risks involved.

Sail off the edge of the world

The sight of uncertainty raises questions of what is hiding in the fog and like an explorer looking to discover what lays beyond the horizon, we can journey into these areas and begin to clear the air. With a curious mind, and an open heart, challenges are met firstly by acceptance, secondly by questions and hopefully, as the right questions are asked, understanding. When it comes to communication between people, what is often hiding in the murk is a lot more similarity than difference but our positions and the trust in the accuracy of them, work to make unknown waters no-go zones. This lowers the chance of conversation, narrows dialogue between borders and therefore any real, honest and truthful understanding.

Grow together

The fog insulates us from having our position challenged and can help us feel a sense of security but, it isolates us from each other and can make us cold, inflexible and ignorant. When two parties both work to blow the fog from the distance between, they grow outwardly together, and inwardly deeper. An internal repositioning of narrow-minded knowing to open-eyed unknowing, sharing experience and challenging the reference scales opens the possibility for acceptance, understanding and change; and greatly increases its probability.

It takes one

If a question comes from a root to understand, accept and be open, a reply is more likely. The response or lack of one hints at a position which aids understanding and points to roads through barriers so that the conversation can continue. If the reply comes from a curious, like-mind, the conversation is one of effectiveness, development, adaptability and mutual growth. The benefits are large, the implications are huge.

Taraz Kanti-Paul

One voice to start a conversation, two to continue, many for peace. Fear dies with understanding. 

Life under Bridges

Consider the moments that have shaped the person who stares back from the mirror. The events powerful enough to shift course or strengthen resolve. Which are the moments that come to mind?

When asked about defining incidents, people often deliver stories of hardship that challenged mind, body or soul as the river of life swept along. Times of struggling to keep head above water through inner strength, persistence, growth and sheer force until relative safety was found. It seems that most us narrate the story of the fighter within.

Now, imagine a life full of bridges with safe passage over the trickles, creeks, brooks and streams, rapids, rivers and seas of these life-defining events. With each test safely passing beneath the clear path that lay ahead, and at the end of each bridge, a known destination awaits.

From where would advancement come, innovation be derived and victory lay? Where does the inner fighter learn their trade and build skills? A sense of achievement comes from problem solving and travelling an uncontested path offers few real obstacles. Creativity is a response to stimulus, invention to need and success in meeting challenge with limits being unbounded and having no known end-point as each question and conflict met opens the gates for more to pour through.

Looking to the future, most of us hope for a clear path but, if our greatest achievements were built upon the back of adversity, avoidance of difficulty is likely to weaken our potential for personal growth. Stability is comforting only until the clear path falls from foot. Strengthening and reducing weakness in the shallow, calmer waters where consequence of failure is low and progressing to increased challenge means that the endless negotiation with swirling change is likely to be an investment in an improved future position.

Success in turmoil requires a huge dose of luck, heavy reliance on external forces OR enough awareness to continually build skills of mind and body so that options become an endless resource waiting to be picked from the ever-moving flow. And, if the waters do become still and over-crowded, a skilled swimmer can find space to move by taking advantage of the currents that the majority fear; unpressured and calm.

Taraz Kanti-Paul