Our partner organization, GTD Focus, has a contract to deliver Getting Things Done coaching, with the stipulation that we can only engage "one live person to one live person." "What no puppets!" was my note in the margin on my first reading. "What if Kermit the Frog applied for a job with us? I'd have to say no?"
I decided to let it go. As it turns out, my favorite way of being is to engage my living self with another live person.
And, yes, there's an irony here, my reader, as this piece arrives to your digital inbox simultaneously with its arrival to numerous others while I am just waking up on a Tuesday morning several days after this typing. Emphatically not one live person to one live person.
Nonetheless, I'm trying to do more one-live-person to one-live-person. This morning, I met Dave for coffee at our local McDonald's. Dave is in charge of the physical plant and all the equipment at Camp Spofford nearby. In order for us to meet, we each have to pass through a small traffic circle, called a roundabout here. Dave and I were observing the aggression that shows up in this insignificant confluence. Dave was good natured about it. "Maybe what they have to do is more urgent than what I have to do." I suggested they might be carrying hearts for transplant at the next hospital. We agreed the thought would make us more generous the next time through the roundabout.
I came home to see that my neighbor, Skip, had removed the rest of the snow from my driveway unbidden. I had done enough to get my car out. Skip has a front-end loader, and is known for his generosity. When I told the person behind the counter of the local diner that I wanted a gift certificate for Skip, she said, "He's the nicest man."
I had two more passes through the roundabout today. I tried on the generosity I've been learning in my one-to-one tutorials. We're all in cars. I have to remember we're still one live person to one live person.
I remembered an ee cummings poem Here's a portion. The link has the rest.
a fine not a coarse clown
(no mob, but a person)
and while never saying a word
who was anything but dumb;
since the silence of him
self sang like a bird.
Most people have been heard
screaming for international
measures that render hell rational
— i thank heaven somebody’s crazy
enough to give me a daisy.