A friend said to me today, “You can’t take people deeper than where you’re willing to go yourself.”
That struck me as rather profound. It applies to every level of leadership and management, any stripe of mentorship, and certainly all parenting. It is relevant for poets, for artists, for coaches, for social change agents and counselors.
Our global village often is a mile wide and an inch deep. All around us lurks a conspiracy of shallowness, a pervasive context of speed, commodities and disposability that keeps most panting for their emotional breath. There is plenty of knowledge, but so little wisdom. What sells is not simplicity but the simplistic; not one man’s treasure but too many men’s trash.
Depth cannot be micro-waved. It cannot be tweeted, updated, manufactured or constructed by plastic surgery. It arises from the stillness and silence found in pause. It emerges when some catalyst leads you to the edge of madness and you finally shout back at the world, “Enough!”
What is preventing you from getting still and quiet right at this moment? You owe yourself something more than an excuse.
