"…you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
— Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1954)
To all who are disappointed by the outcome of the election (no matter who you voted for), I am grievously disappointed.
(To those of you who are glad about the outcome, I am not ready to write to you. I feel I will never be.)
And, yet…
I'll go on.
How will I go on?
The sun hasn't risen. But it will. And when it does, I will see:
I am in the countryside with a Vistage group on retreat. A dozen souls: smart, earnest, kind-hearted, ambitious, trusting, trustworthy.
This is a useful place for me: where I can be helpful, where the place and people can be helpful for me.
After breakfast, we will convene for our day together. I'll offer some thoughts.
Here is the outline.
1. What Do We Have Here?
We live in a nation, a state, social lives, and our own companies where the decision has, for many (if not all), split us.
As leaders of teams (at work, at home, in the community), we need to recognize that this is the challenge facing us. How to reunite. How to go on.
2. What Is Your Role?
In conversations that happen — today, now — what is your role? What are the edges and boundaries of your role? What are you obliged to step up and do? What stepping up and doing might be overstepping and overdoing?
Where are you — today — on this familiar cycle? How about the person beside you? A reasonable question is to ask: where are you on this graph?
What does it mean to be where you are? What level of patience or impatience do you feel?
4. Consider the Three Steps That Naturally Happy People Take When Facing Crisis.
(I'll post on this during the coming day or so. For now, this is a placeholder for my outline.)
5. What will you do today?
I don't believe any of us walks away from yesterday — and the year that led to it — uninjured. What is one step you can take today to help yourself heal?
I will spend the day with others, not alone. I will call my loved ones and hear their voices. I will walk in the countryside.
And I am writing this post, inquiring about your well being.
"Perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
— Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1954)