I recently had a delightful lunch with a colleague from my past. My colleague
\nand I worked closely together nearly 20 years ago when we shared the passionate
\nidealism of youth for innovation within our chosen calling of education. As
\nit happened, during the time we worked together my friend witnessed my
\ntransition from idealism to a disillusionment which led me to leave education
\nto pursue a career in private business. <\/p>\n
In the meantime, my colleague has risen to a senior management position.<\/p>\n
During the course of our lunch she surprised me with the question "Do
\nyou like yourself as much as you used to?" When I look back on my decision
\nto leave education, I am left wondering if it was the right decision or was
\nit just based on chasing personal financial gain. I miss teaching. But as soon
\nas I think about it long enough, I know I don’t miss schools and neither do
\nI miss the bureaucracy that surrounds them. Regardless of how my decision
\nwill weigh in the balance of my future, it has given me the opportunity to
\ndo things I never would have if I had stayed in teaching.<\/p>\n
Surprising as it may seem, running my own business has given me the opportunity
\nto know myself more fully. To be truthful, given my personality, I think I
\nwould have learnt more about myself whatever I did. Indeed, as I will come
\nto shortly, I think my colleague’s question was prompted by her reflection
\non her own actions in the positions she has held and the personal dilemmas
\nthat go hand in hand with increased responsibility. <\/p>\n
Staying in the moment however, my immediate response was I thought I Regardless of all this and more, I have had the opportunity to look into This all led to me to reflect on my colleague’s question and pose it back It made me think of two young revolutionaries who met many years later. If However she went on to speak of the decisions she now makes. I thought she Oh, the dilemmas of leadership. As young revolutionaries So do I like myself as much as I used to. Once I find it within me to I recently had a delightful lunch with a colleague from my past. My colleague and I worked closely together nearly 20 years ago when we shared the passionate idealism of youth for innovation within our chosen calling of education. As it happened, during the time we worked together my friend witnessed my transition from idealism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,26,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-relationships","category-love","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nliked myself even more than I used to. As I have pursued my business interests
\nI have had to reflect on the decisions I’ve made. On occasion I have trusted
\npeople I ought not to have trusted. There are times when I have invested time
\nand money in ventures that were unlikely to, and in fact did not, succeed.
\nAs I reflect on those actions I have looked deep into myself to understand
\nwhat attracts me to trust untrustworthy people and what attracts me to invest
\nin unsound investments. In this deep reflection I have discovered a lot about
\nmyself. I have a tendency to avoid the difficult decisions – so it is easier
\nto trust someone than probe their integrity. I believe in myself but I am afraid
\nto really present myself because you may not share that belief – so it is easier
\nto hope that the unsound investment might come off rather than confront what
\nI am not<\/em> putting into it.<\/p>\n
\nand have a glimpse of my deepest self. When I speak of this to some people
\ntheir reaction is to regard me as self obsessed, that I think I’m better than
\nother people. One associate in a potential business venture, with undisguised
\ndisdain once said to me "You
\nthink you’re so special." That hit me hard and forced me to think. After
\na moment or two’s thought I told him I did think I was special, but equally
\nI thought he was special and indeed every single one of us is special. No one
\nof us is more special than an other but we, each of us, are very special.<\/p>\n
\nto her. "You wouldn’t like some of the things I do." She replied,
\nemphasising the "you" meaning, I thought, me in particular. I took
\nthis to mean that after the idealism we had previously shared, I would think
\nshe had sold out on some of the principles we once shared.<\/p>\n
\nI enter this analogy, my colleague’s original question seems on the surface
\nto be the wrong way around. In this scenario, I am the one who sold out. I
\nleft the revolutionary army to join the bourgeoisie, while she remained true
\nto the revolution and, in this play, is indeed now a senior member of the new
\ngovernment.<\/p>\n
\nwas going to fall into the jargon of saying "decisions she has to make"
\nbut either she corrected herself before the words came out and said instead,
\nor always intended to say, "the decisions I choose to make." <\/p>\n
\nwe could criticise our incumbent self serving and incompetent masters. When
\nwe find ourselves in their position however, things become so much more complicated.
\nThere is never, as it once seemed, one single obvious solution to a problem.
\nNo matter what we do, someone will be hurt, we will under-resource,
\nor cut a program that should not be cut, we will never have a complete command
\nof the whole picture and, being human, from time to time we will simply make
\nbad decisions. <\/p>\n
\nforgive myself for my mistakes I truly can say I like myself more than I used
\nto. A teacher in one of my postgraduate programs once made the comment "We
\nmiss out on so much in our organisations because we can’t bring ourselves to
\nforgive." In
\nmy personal journey, I have found it necessary to learn, and to continue to
\nlearn, to forgive myself as well as to forgive others. Indeed to forgive myself
\nbefore I can forgive others. I am human. I make mistakes. I often don’t care
\nas much for those close to me as I want to. I get bound up in my own selfishness
\nwhen others around me offer me so much. Yes, all of that is true. If, however,
\nI can accept that as my human frailty find forgiveness I can move on to generosity. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"