Jetting to Neutral

It is a quiet and grey morning. The house is still asleep: all eight of them—nine including Perry sleeping under the dining room table. The weekend’s perfect early summer weather has turned grey and brooding. It’s time for another trip around the world.

This past week has been so amazingly busy I have hardly been able to think straight. And before that, there was the planning and prep for last week. The conference (you can click here and read about it) was amazing. I am moved and amazed by how much I learnt, how deeply collaborative the space was, and how urgent our need to get education into a new place—now. The environmentalists I talked to are not kidding about the peril our world is in. I feel a renewed sense of an emotion that sometimes threatens to tip over into desperation. What kind of world are we leaving our children?

Then a Leadership Development Programme where we tried to help our programme participants think hard about systems and how to understand them and manage them and make powerful decisions inside them. We taught at Lake Okatina which must be one of the most beautiful spots in the world. I love that work at least as much as I've ever loved any work in my life.

And then the weekend. First the late Halloween party where we all dressed up and had American candy that Carolyn brought over. This was to mark the loss of actual Halloween which Caronlyn’s kids said goodbye to as they crossed the dateline on the way over. Then the Kapiti Coast Arts Trail where we wandered under cobalt blue skies through the village and into artists’ open workshops. I ran into people I knew from work, and the whole mob of us—my family and Carolyn and two of her kids and our lovely American WWOOFer—were dizzied by the magnificence of the place.

And now it is Monday morning, my 18th wedding anniversary. The conference is over. The Leadership Development Programme is over (until February). The Arts Trail is over. Carolyn’s visit is over. And another trip to the US is beginning for me, a packed-solid set of work and partner meeting and a new gig at the Kennedy School of Government (check this out: I'm the Growing Wisdom one). And I am melancholy like the weather.

It’s this whole split life thing of mine. I love the life I have here, and love the work I do. I find that my love for New Zealand gets more and more fierce all the time. But I also love the work I do across the world, love the opportunities I have there. And so my life here is punctuated by blank spaces where I disappear from here and pop up over there. My children complain. My husband gets sad. My work colleagues move on and make decisions without me. My chickens lay eggs I won’t eat, my garden grows, days pass that I’ll never get back. And I am changed by these trips in unanticipated ways.

So today I’ll walk on the beach in the rain. I’ll hold my children more tightly before they leave for school. I’ll try to figure out how to get from Philly to Boston next week. I’ll pack my hat and gloves—which I just stopped wearing here. I’ll turn to the issues I haven’t had time to face because I’ve been too busy (how will I organise my time? What will I do about the loss of my publisher now that the book is nearly done?). And I’ll know me in a different way next week and next week before a long trip back to summer and life on the beach.

Last week I taught about change and about the Neutral Zone, a powerful space of possibilities, but disorienting because you don’t know what’s next. Each of these trips across the Pacific is a movement into the Neutral Zone, the belly of the 777 neatly transporting me into the liminal space from which some unknown new will emerge. I’ll remember to fasten my seatbelt low and tightly around my hips and hope for as little turbulence as possible.

Pictures today are of Ryan in the garden, Michael's birthday and our silly Halloween party