#stayingstill

I can choose to be bitter

about things I can not control

I can choose to hold grudges

from bitter memories

I withhold

I can choose to try

or I can choose to stay

murky smoke billows

the only calm

to light my way

Staying still was difficult today because of the how the morning unfolded. I was caught in a predicament whether or not to get in touch with my partner at work about a project that needed closure. I was also asking myself if I should ask my staff to just put closure to the project so that we can move on.

Closing cycles are not as easy as people think and this particular cycle was a difficult one because of last week’s events that created such a tension to a team of people who wasn’t used to a new way of thinking about designing spaces to influence culture and interactions.

Suspended between those thoughts, I had asked my staff to just send out the message informing our involvement with the project would be ending but she had taken a while to send this message and I had to initiate things instead. Replies from my partner had also taken time because of how he was caught up in other urgent things that he needed to take care of.

I don’t deal with unresponsiveness quite well. My thoughts get noisy and I begin to ask questions about how important is my work and how significant are my contributions to be responded to with pauses and silence.

Answers to me are signs that I am moving somewhere. There is progress. Even if the answer is “I don’t know.” Interactions especially those that are not done face to face, cannot have ellipses.

I have been reflecting a lot on this thought of “not knowing everything” and this has been something I’ve been mulling over the past couple of days. How comfortable was I to not know and be suspended between that time of unresponsiveness from two people I expected immediate response from?

It’s hard for me to understand why people become unresponsive and it puts me in real dis-ease and staying still becomes an ordeal after that.

That’s how my morning began and I wasn’t really happy about it but I know that these reactions from people are never within my control.  Hence, my wanting to work on my own responses to their lack of responsiveness.

Moving from restlessness to staying still today happened mostly towards the end of the day.  Seeing how responses still moved at snail’s pace from my partner I realized that I had best give up the chase else I will be grumpier when I meet him tomorrow. Finally when he had responded he explained the hectic events of the day in not more than three lines.  I exhaled and resigned to the moment where there is really nothing within my influence and just worked on getting my mind clear so that I can be in a better disposition tomorrow.

Weight lifted off my chest when I thanked him for his perseverance to deal with the pressing issues that required his attention at work. It isn’t his normal response to be this hands on so I know he is stretching. Extending that grace even if I didn’t really feel like it was most likely the Holy Spirit’s doing.