Illusion of Communication

November 14, 2022

Good morning! For you, my clients and faithful readers, I am enormously grateful you are here; thank you! More from last week:  

“The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion it has taken place.”  (Shaw + James)

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”  (Frost)

a propos to the Feast coming in just ten days, don’t you think?  Make peace at home — and then sustain it.

“Another flaw in the human character is everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”  (Vonnegut)

• It felt sacred — and a bit mysterious.
  • My mother very rarely accompanied my Dad on the 3-mile daily trip to town as it was mostly about bringing the milk and eggs to market, and maybe a little bit about catching up on the latest news at the local hardware store or the grain elevator.
  • But I remember election day quite vividly, maybe three or four of them from my childhood.
  • Mom went along with Dad on those days, maybe even a separate trip after the chores were done.
  • For us kids left at home it seemed more sacred than going to church — and maybe it was because it happened so infrequently and with an aura of reverence.
  • They never shared how they voted; after all, it was a secret ballot.
  • We didn’t have a television and so the act of two people voting — or, of witnessing the after effect — was intrinsically powerful and sufficient.
  • History had been made by these simple sharecroppers and not much more needed to be said.
  • There was never mention of their votes being more important or less important than somebody else’s. 
  • I hiked one urban mile to our polling place last week — and back home again after filling in a few circles, making sure I didn’t mark outside the lines.
  • I thought of what it must have been like for my Mom and Dad to make those private, poignant, and pivotal pilgrimages to town many years ago.
  • I hope some of what they had is not lost.
• Possessing and cultivating a genuine, healthy curiosity continues to climb the ladder on a list of characteristics a successful leader should have.
  • Think about all the good paths to be explored with a never-ending curiosity.
  • How to lead with genuine and respectful curiosity (Engel):
    1. Ask questions for clarification;
    2. Pause to reflect on your own emotions and reactions;
    3. Seek to learn from others;
    4. Form opinions based on the overall (big) picture;
    5. Hold space for others — meaning leave room for them inside your own ego;
    6. Seek to nurture and strengthen relationships.
• Are you an umbrella or a funnel?  (Kaplan)
  • Do you serve as an accelerating, amplifying conduit for distractions, requests, meetings, deadlines…?
    • OR
  • Do you serve to deflect those things so as to give your people the enormously important resource of focused time?
• Maybe coffee is addicted to me?  (As seen in a store window)

Feeding the World

By Michael A. Mullin

I watched with rapt attention and fascination

as a steady stream of tractor trailer trucks disgorged

autumn’s harvest into the massive silos alongside the Mississippi.

Each brimming conveyance took its five-minute turn depositing the farmers’ yield,

golden kernels from area fields mixed with trillions of others

all destined for New Orleans by way of a steel barge.

Dozens of drivers dismounted nearby

awaited their turns to unload; they told stories, some of them true,

about when times weren’t so good, the harvest so plentiful,

losing money each minute they waited.

Forty trucks filled a cavernous barge.

Nine or twelve or even fifteen barges joined together

made the journey to the Big Easy with merchant marines marking twain.

What then?

The world gets fed.

And everyone goes back for another load, another bumper crop,

all relying on the farmer who rises at dawn

and goes to work without anyone telling her she must,

without anyone telling her she must.

And the world gets fed.

©2017 Michael A. Mullin