Friendly perspectives

My friend Jane has come from the US to hang out and study with me and marinate in the beauty of this place instead of the bitter cold of a typical Boston January (although there have been record highs in Boston this year—go figure). She’s a doctoral student, studying in the same field as me, and doing similar work. She’s come to learn more about the Subject-Object Interview and how to use it with coaching clients, but she has also been soaking in what it means to have young children around and also what it means to live in this beautiful place. It’s always funny to have others in the house because I learn so much about myself as I watch them watch us. I’ve learnt, for example, that kids are full-on and take heaps of time. This is not an unexpected discovery—I live it each day. But watching through Jane’s eyes, I think about how very full on it all is and ask myself again why it is that people have children. And then, watching Jane play with Aidan or cuddling in her lap and I come to have a surge of love so strong it takes my breath away, and I wonder how anyone can do without them.

Last week I took the excuse of having Jane here and invited a handful of really interesting colleagues to come to my house for a day’s discussion about leadership development. And although I gave folks less than a week’s notice, and although it’s a season where most people are on holiday, and although three of them had to take planes to be here, nearly everyone showed up. It was an amazing day, sitting in my solariage and feeling the wind blow through, having people from different parts of my New Zealand and US lives mingle and spread into one interesting conversation, and feeling astonished that at last I could be the one introducing people together, that I could be building networks rather than being always the new girl who is being introduced. And in addition to the wonderful coming together of these different people from different parts of my experience, there was a moment where the different pieces of my work came together too.

We were talking about leadership development for the future, about what it is leaders might need to be able to do and how they might need to be able to think (in more curious open ways with less attention to single answers and more attention to the process of helping people work better together). And someone asked a friend from NZCER about schools and teachers—the other half of my work. She described what teachers and principals are going to need to be able to do in the future (think in more curious open ways with less attention to single answers and more attention to the process of helping people work better together). And you may notice that those are the same. There was this sharp intake of breath around the room as we all came to the same discovery: we’re not talking about just what one group or another needs to be able to do but rather about what all of us need to do better as a species, about what the world is demanding from humans at this point in history. This makes leadership development a schooling issue and makes schooling a leadership development issue. All of the streams braided together and suddenly my work was a single path instead of these two separate roads I keep trying to walk on at the same time.

So that’s one of the gifts of Jane’s presence, the new perspective her eyes give me on my own life and my own work; in addition to learning about her and what matters to her, I can also learn about me and what matters to me. Another key gift is that Jane and Rob together took care of Aidan for a day and a night so that Michael and I could have our first overnight alone in this country—only our second since Aidan was born. Most of the pictures today are from our journey, which I’ll hope to write more about in the next days (the first picture is of Jane, blissed out at the beach).

So on this Monday morning train ride with an out-of-school Aidan by my side, in some ways I feel more whole and complete here than I have yet. And in other ways, the job in Auckland is still up in the air, my work for the next six months still undefined, and a variety of life crises are happening in the lives of dear friends which brush up against and change my life too. The house I live in still hasn’t sold and the house I want to live in is still a hard-hat zone. So there’s no supposition that it’s all sweetness and light. Wouldn’t want to be too comfortable.