A block from my office on one of the squares there’s this guitar player and singer sitting on a bench providing folk music for the passersby. It’s not music I’d actually go out and buy (probably why he’s playing from a bench in the square), but its good in its environment. It’s down to earth, raw, natural and centering. When I’m half bonkers from all the hubbub, I’ll drop by and listen – it helps to get centered.
At the center there’s a clearer, more peaceful world that’s difficult to access among the daily nabob nattering (see Spiro Agnew) and incessant activity. Yesterday, after completing my centering ritual by listening to “Old Mountain Dew”, —
Well they call it that good old mountain dew
And them that refuse it are few
I’ll hush up my mug, if you’ll fill up my jug
With that good old mountain dew
— back at the office I started thinking about blame while reading some comments regarding the ongoing real estate bog. Blame has little meaning at the center. Some are blaming the media while others blame lenders, foolish buyers making foolish choices, greedy sellers, Greenspan’s years at the helm of the Fed, on and on it goes.
Here’s what Peter Senge writes about blame in his book, The Fifth Discipline:
We tend to blame outside circumstances for our problems. “Someone else” — the competitors, the press, the changing mood of the marketplace, the government — did it to us. Systems thinking shows there is no outside; that you and the cause of your problems are part of a single system. The cure lies in your reationship with your “enemy.”
Senge goes on to talk about putting pieces of the puzzle together to gain an understanding of the whole, how to look for leverage in the midst of fundamental problems in order to create fundamental solutions, rather than get mired in symptomatic problems and tinkering with symptomatic, short-sighted solutions.
Blame tends to lead the mind in wrong directions and use up energy better spent on fundamental solutions. Every day I’m given what is, and I can recognize it and work with it or complain about it and Read more