I learned that paying whole attention to someone is giving them a huge gift; it gives them space to breath, to think, to experiment; it offers them lightness of mind to play and to wonder and to get things wrong.

I learned that we are all responsible for fixing the problems in front of us; that we all have something useful and unique to contribute; that with clear intention, we can probably find a solution to anyting.

I learned that leadership comes from within, and is a deeply personal thing; that any leader who doesn’t understand that is flawed or weakened by it; I learned that there is intelligence within the group that vastly outweighs the sum of its parts.

I learned that if we choose to honour each other, we open up a crack in our daily defences that allows our deepest selves to connect. I learned that such connection is the source from which everything else springs.

I found, too, that I’ve spent most of my working life in my head, being logical, rational, political, and hierarchical, when my heart – which offers a different wisdom – is firmly rooted in my body.

I found that there are lots of people thinking and feeling the same things as me, and wanting to do something about it, who are also taking first steps out on the ice when they don’t yet know whether it will hold.

I learned that courage isn’t something that dispells fear, it exists alongside fear – it’s the handrail for the slippery walkway. I learned that *now* is the right time for the first step; and that courage will meet me in that step even when I don’t realise it’s there. I learned that the universe is on my side when I align these different parts of me, and that it offers me support beyond anything I could organise for myself.

What is my intention after all that? I want my daughters, and other children like them, to grow up with a clear sense of centre, with a way of being that doesn’t allow others (especially those further up the hierarchy) to pigeonhole or control them.

I want organisations to re-structure to enable grown-up, respectful conversations between respectful people.

I want conflict and disagreement to be something that we all have effective tools to deal with in a functional and progressive manner.

I want to be part of making that possible.

The Sunday evening saw us all come slowly together in the main hall, where the walls were covered with our intentions, sent in soon after registration; conversations started; groups formed and melted; ideas already started to provoke.

The next day started with breakfast together, during which Michael Chender spoke about Authentic Leadership, clarifying for me that leadership at a global scale is, or should be, the same as leadership at a personal level: the times are uncertain; any answers we had have run their course, leaving us in the current state of confusion over climate change, peak oil, population growth, etc. His speech was quite brilliant, although I struggled to remember much of it afterwards – I’m still waiting for the audio to be made available on the website for another listen.

Thereafter, we all sat for meditation talk and practice. I’ve never meditated with that number of people before, or with gongs, bowls and bows. It was tremendous. This took place morning and evening every day of the week, and was a wonderful sanctuary of peace amid a hectic week.

Then, in order to focus all our minds on why we were there, a world café was held to investigate the question “what time is it in the world?”. I joined in lots of conversations, and witnessed the summation of others. And that little piece of magic aligned us all together for me, because we were all seeing similar problems and opportunities, and we were all being driven by similar hopes and fears.

That afternoon, we had the first session of our chosen modules – this was the Embodied Leadership course with Wendy Palmer that was the reason for my attendance. In a just-large enough room, with bright winter sun bouncing off the snow in through the windows, we started. Suffice to say, it was excellent, fascinating, and challenging in equal measure.

That evening, we had a fabulous treat – a piano quartet playing the most hypnotic piece by a Dutch composer that I could have imagined. It beguiled me into it with simple repetitions and variations. I thought I was simply listening, but when it ended seemingly mid-note, I stopped breathing too, and realised that it had quietly taken control of me in the gentlest, sweetest manner possible.

That was an amazing evening – to be the audience at a private concert was an incredible privilege (and not the only time I felt that way during the week).

I learnt much with Wendy and her other students; with Liane Stefan who led the Deep Listening creative workshop; with the leaders of the meditations, with the speakers, and also with my fellow participants. The hosting group refered to us collectively as a community from the first moment, and I learned that ‘community’ is the right term. We are not a group of people who have come together, had a good time, and gone our merry ways. We are a community spread right across the globe, one that I hope will grow, and one of which I have every intention of being an active member.

I had revealing conversations almost every time I said hello; in fact, one of my deepest conversations used no words or noise whatsoever. I was surrounded by people who were curious, intelligent, and who are experts in asking questions.

My vague thoughts and feelings crystallised over the week, by immersion in this testube, into an intention that I can work with, that I can find a first step for. It amuses me that, even now, I can’t quite verbalise that intention – I have no elevator pitch for it yet – but that might be because, as Valmae said on the first evening, it’s the questions that pull us forward into the future.

The week closed with music, drama, dance, massive calligraphy, and a communal witnessing along Quaker lines, where those moved to speak stood up and said their piece.

I came away refreshed and full of so much hope for us – if we can all learn to be this open, this interested in each other, then surely there is no problem that we can’t overcome.

I had a fantastic few months at home, picking up odd pieces of work, playing with the baby and our 4-year old, and of course my girlfriend. Playing. Hmm. I started thinking (again) about the value of the work I’d been doing to the future generations. No value whatsoever, that I could see.

Furthermore, it became clear to me how fantastic kids are – in the early years, before we get to impose on them too much, and I looked at the kind of person I have learned to be – very much rule-bound – and I realised that I didn’t want the same fate to be waiting for my daughters.

A direction opened up for me when a friend asked me to teach her son – my first daughter’s age – Ki-Aikido. This is a practice that I’ve been studying (and teaching) for some time, and one that I believe to be very practical in daily life. Could this be the tool to help growing children keep a clear understanding of who they are in the face of constant and almost overwhelming external pressures?

I googled for information on teaching kids, and came into contact with an American teacher called Paul Linden, who happened to be running a course on an Aikido-derived conflict-resolution method in London the following weekend. This struck me as the first piece of serendipity I’d been aware of in years, pretty much because this was the first time I’d looked beyond my computer monitor in years, so I followed it up.

Serendipitous moment #2: I had a Twitter search running, showing me tweets that included the word “Cambridge”, my hometown. One of those that caught my eye was a tweet about a workshop giving teenagers confidence by a woman called Corinna Gordon-Barnes. Over the course of a short email conversation, she told me that she was registered for a freebie 2-day course based on Wendy Palmer’s work.

I’d first come into contact with Wendy’s book, The Intuitive Body: Discovering the Wisdom of Conscious Embodiment and Aikido, in 1988, and was very impressed by it. It was by far the best Aikido-inspired book I’d come across.

Corinna put me in touch with Ann Lyons & Chris Grant, the course organisers, and I was able to join in a great day of playing with a mix of arts folk. At the end of the day, Chris told me that part two would be run by Wendy herself. I signed up straight away.

The second day was brilliant – a week into a new contract in London – I enjoyed myself a huge amount, and began to see the potential for making the principles of Aikido available to non-practitioners. At the end of that day, Chris mentioned that Wendy would be teaching a 5-day module at ALIA Europe in January.

By the end of 2009, I had an urge to re-align the work I’m doing, and a number of paths I could explore in order to work out how to make that change. I also had a time and place for playing with those ideas and clarifying where I should aim and what next steps I should take: that was ALIA Europe.

Thus, my 5-year old defined her (hopefully – first) foray into the fascinating and tough arena of international diplomacy.

The bad people, it turns out, have been “putting fires in everyone’s roofs and homes, and stealing things.” And, no, I don’t know where this particular story-line has come from.

I asked Tilly why she was going to fight these people, and whether she thought that this would be the most effective course of action – she is, after all, a five-year-old on the short side, and she’ll be dealing with more than one bad person at a time.

Her Mum suggested – in fairly typical Mum-stylee – that she issue a warning, after which further transgressions would see the removal of certain toys and privileges. Whilst I can see the effectiveness of this tactic in a domestic setting where the transgressor is the child and the authority is a parent, I’m very much unsure about it in an international crisis situation, especially when the authority is likely to be much younger than the transgressors.

I suggested that she ask why they are doing these bad things, and that she try to find out the reason behind them. There followed a wonderful conversation as Tilly thought her way around the problem.

T (Tilly): They are setting fire to people’s homes and hurting them because they want to steal what the people have.

M (me): Do they really want to steal, or do they want to have?

T: I don’t understand.

M: Why are they stealing these things?

T: Because they haven’t got them, and they want to have them.

M: How do we get things we want?

T: We buy them with money.

M: Where does the money come from?

T: We work for the money.

M: Do these “bad” people have money?

T: No.

M: If they had money, would they continue to steal things?

T: No, they’d buy them.

– pause –

T: Hold on, I’m thinking of a plan.

– another pause –

T: I have a plan.

T: I’ll say to the bad people “Don’t turn round!”, and then I’ll walk up behind them and shout “Boo!” and “Grrraaaah!” (making the shape of claws with her hands as she speaks).

M: Why will you do that?

T: To scare them, so that they know what it’s like to be the people whose houses they put fire in; so they know how scared people feel by them.

T: Then I’ll bring them together with the other people and teach them to sing songs together.

T: And then they’ll all dance together.

But, you say, that’s ludicrous behaviour, why don’t you just put her back in her cot? Yep, my thoughts exactly, but apparently it’s not that simple. Never one to avoid a challenge, I’m gonna conflict-cloud this one out.

You’re gonna what?

1. State the behaviour that you want to get rid of
I don’t want Shona needing to be on top of us in order to fall asleep.

2. State the need that is being met by the undesirable behaviour, or which drives us putting up with it
Shona gets a good night’s sleep when she gets to sleep quickly and quietly.

3. State the behaviour you desire, which is the opposite of D
I want Shona to go to sleep in her cot.

4. The need that the desirable behaviour fulfills
We get a good night’s sleep – once the midnight feast is over, we can put her back and go back to nod.

5. The objective that the needs fulfill by both being present
Well, Sherlock, if we all get enough sleep, we have energy to deal with Shona and her sister, Shona has enough energy to be in a good mood during the day.

Huzzah, there’s the conflict – obvious, really, innit. Now how to resolve it?

Day Two for Shona - best way to handle this new life thing!

She’s beautiful, and loud. And I’m very, very proud.

I had a printout of the route from Aberdeen to Boat-Of-Garten from the AA website. Matt had his TomTom. Rather than shuffling papers, I agreed to use the gadget, so Matt tapped in Boat Of Garten, and off we went.

Despite knowing that Aberdeen airport is northwest of the city, and that we would be driving further northwest still, I didn’t complain when the TomTom took us around Aberdeen and southward down the coast – after all, there was bound to be a good reason, wasn’t there.

We were also extremely hungry and looking for food as much as roadsigns. (Incidentally, we found the first ever chippy that’s asked me which of a selection of batters I’d like – how good is that?).

The mileage remaining got less and less, and we were still driving along a large clear road in a fairly low-lying area, but my suspicions were rising. When we found ourselves on the Dundee bypass, I knew something was up. The TomTom was taking us to a non-existent destination, which had added two hours to our journey.

Finally, we got onto the main road north, and hammered along in the gloaming. Fantastically for a southerner, the sky remained light until 11pm, so the driving wasn’t that painful. But, even so, we had a deadline: the B&B owner wanted us there by 10pm, so we made a series of grovelling phone calls as we got closer and closer.

It stuck in my memory as just another random irritating drive until reading Those wacky agile zealots are at it again, when the greater implications became clear.

Even when the route, timings, are as clear and as well-defined as they can possibly be, we still need to keep our eyes on the road, not just for rabbits and corners, but also to check that the route is correct (or, in this case, the destination).

It seems that you’ve all found my blog, and I got several positive responses to it. Thank you so much for that. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been lagging new content recently. Your comments will do much to change that.

All the best to Dave, Pete, Pete, James, Jack, Andy, Raf, and Scott,
James

P.S. Talking to Pete S., a new subject appeared: two companies working for a single client, and the politics that so often get in the way. I’ll think on’t.

P.S.S. Anyone heard from Tim W.?