tired but happy

It was a lovely early autumn day in Wellington, but it’s pouring here on the coast, murky sky touching the sea and turning everything to grey. This is not a metaphor.

My quiet is because my week was so intense, and because every day there has been so much to do that I can hardly contain it all. This week I held the first of three Subject-Object Interview workshops that I’ll teach over the next eight weeks. These workshops are to help people begin their journey toward thinking about and using the SOI, the interview that measures adult development using Bob Kegan’s theory. It’s a hard thing to do, and so filled with richness that I can hardly talk about it without sounding like a total geek. And the SOI workshop is an intense experience, much like an SOI itself.

Of course, though, I usually teach these in the US. The one I teach in two weeks will be in my regular home base of Cambridge Mass and with my regular teaching partner Jim. The workshop I finished yesterday was in Wellington, and I planned for it and did all the intro prep thinking I’d do it on my own. In the end, though, the workshop got larger than I expected, and I asked the only other person I know of in the whole country if he’d like to help facilitate. Thankfully Keith said yes, and we were off.

There’s always this question about whether ideas and techniques will translate across cultures and countries. The group was eclectic—some of my friends and work colleagues, some people I have been wanting to work with but haven’t much, some people I never saw before. The outcome felt very familiar, though, a circle of intensely smart people paying seriously close attention to the deep thinking of others. It was a space—as it has been in other groups, in other countries—where we can talk about the growth and development of love, about how majestic human sense making really is, about the implications of our ability (and lack of ability) to see shades of gray.

I went home each day filled with joy and questions and emptied of energy. It was a fair enough trade-off.

And now I’ll do it again, in a country on the other side of the world. I’m facing this trip to the US with trepidation and exhaustion. I don’t want to leave my new house, my family, my dear friends. And the trip has gotten all out of hand because of some strange scheduling issues, which leaves me in DC too short a time to actually see friends and colleagues there. The serious benefit of that scheduling glitch is that Dad will fly up to New York and we’ll spend two days together there—an unexpected joy. And then the flurry of speaking in Bob’s class, of teaching the next SOI workshop, and of catching a plane back to NZ to give my first keynote address in Auckland.

Now watch this: I am dreading this trip to the US because of all the wonderful things I’m leaving behind here. I am loving this New Zealand life. But if I focus on the particulars of the trip, what I see is a time filled with possibility, doing work I love with people I love, seeing both parents and some of my dad’s family. And so it’s a mix. Leaving the things I love here, my partner and kids, the folks who are newly excited about the SOI and dying to talk about it, the dear friends I have (especially Carolyn and Jim, who only have a limited amount of time in NZ anyway) and the work I’m loving. And I’m going to things I love there—good work, fantastic friends, family I miss. Ahh, there’s always a mix, isn’t there? Human sensemaking is a beautiful thing.