It was a Friday night in Singapore. We all met at an art
opening where we enjoyed some fancy mock cocktails (non-alcoholic because our New
Year’s resolutions are still in sight) and lots of excellent snacks. The room
quickly filled with oddly dressed artists mixing with bankers in blue suites. Best
of all for some, there was free wine: Always a good thing on Friday night to decompress
from long work weeks. I was looking around feeling superiority over not
drinking, watching others spilling their drinks, when I dropped the dribbly
contents of some pastry wrapped delicacy down my shirt.
When the noise levels rose sufficiently, we were spoon on
glass “tinged” into silence for a speech. There was lots of clapping and a few
jokes, while the photographers ran around snapping shots of people’s nose
hairs, and models dressed in tall black boots and black lipstick, smiled
prettily. I reflected that it was a friendly gathering, and not too pretentious
all things considered. We even bought
some art, well sort of. Like many other people there, we exercised an option to
buy a few square feet of one of the several very large wall sized paintings. But
we will all have to wait until late April, though, at which time our respective
selections will be cut out of the canvas and sewn into handbags, document valises
or a phone covers. Maybe this is the right way to treat modern art? Hope I can
remember to pick up our document valise.
Eventually another couple and Irena and I settled down to a
real dinner a short distance away in a river side eating establishment, owned
and run by friends of our friends. A light breeze rolled in off the river
waters, as we took in the boats full of tourists passing colorfully to and fro.
I had a moment of gratitude as I sipped
my water, glad at that moment at least, that I was here and not in Canada where
I would definitely not be just the right temperature in shirt sleeves. Eventually
the conversation went from catching up with each other Christmas family events to
what next”, or more accurately, “How now”.
Of the four of us, one of us has
cancer, mercifully not Irena nor I, and the other three of us are suffering
from an acute cases of mid-fifties ambivalence. How in the world we have the
temerity to be ambivalent about our lives when we are sitting next to a loved
one struggling for life with cancer, I have no idea. But there I was, at least,
I am embarrassed to say.
As we spoke of our choices, and I of my ambivalence about
being back at work in Singapore, I had a blinding flash of the obvious. For a
long time now, I have been trying to find my way back to the positive,
proactive person I believe myself otherwise to be. But lately, I have been
drowning in the negativity of my judgments - judgements about the world, politics, The
Banks, taxes - all the of the usual rants, whatever. Then I got it. It’s a choice,
stupid! Like the section of art canvas we had selected an hour before, we all get to choose what part of the over all piece we choose to live with. We don't get to make the overall picture, but we do get to pick what part we want to own. At our age, we have enough experience and
knowledge to justify being cynical. But does that help? We are all faced with a choice between cynicism and engagement. Why pick cynicism?
This week past I was facilitating a workshop on coaching
skills. One of the models we were learning was about behavioural shifts, how we
pass sequentially through a number of stages:
awareness -> acceptance -> skill development -> behavioural
shift -> mastery. Well hello Awareness! Hello Acceptance!
I think for many of us in our 50s, with the age of 60
looming, it is way too easy to slip into cynicism, by default, simply because
we fail to be aware this is happening. And then we fail, therefore, to choose engagement.
Since it’s all made up anyway, we might better chose to live inside a story of
proactivity and optimism. In the words of Captain Kirk "Engage!"
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