I watch you closely. I can't watch you any closer than I watch you. I'd
have to skin my eyes literally to watch you any closer
than I watch you.
I get who you are. I get what you do. I don't so much
understand who you are and what you do as much as I
get who you are and what you do ie as much as I
grok who you are and what you do (as Robert Heinlein may
have said). Who you are rings throughout my very being,
vibrating through my every cell like the sound of the massive brass
gong echoing through the
monastery
calling the monks to meals,
meditation,
and
prayer.
As I watch you, as I listen you, my respect erupts, bubbling up like
the question "How do you do that?" blending
perplexity evenly with awe.
When I ask you "How do you do that?", what I mean
by "do" is "enroll the world". You've enrolled the
world. How do you do that? How do you enroll
the world?
As I watch you, I answer my own question. Like this.
Here's how to enroll the world:
Just be ... in a way that your essential
human-ness is unmistakenly visible and available to anyone and
everyone around you. That's how you make people comfortable
reciprocating, revealing and making available their essential
human-ness to you. That's how you inspire people.
Speak specifically into peoples' listening rather than
merely lecturing regardless of anyone listening. Intending people
hear you gives them an opportunity to get to know
who you really are.
Listen and be open to what people say now in response to your
speaking, rather than merely sticking unswayed to a prewritten
script. Listening to what people say gives them the experience of
being
free
to participate, and of being heard. More than that, it's farther
reaching impact is it gives them an opportunity to hear themselves.
Speak the truth. Speak what people naturally know to be
true, yet may not have the courage or the audacity to speak aloud for
themselves. Speak what people naturally know to be true, as ordinary,
normal, and no big deal. The truth is, after all, ordinary, normal,
and no big deal. It's just the truth. It's just
what's so.
Take care of your body. Be responsible for your health. It's not
necessary to be a fitness fanatic. Taking care of your body
shows, and it shows you respect your body, which shows you respect
other peoples' bodies. People respect that.
Be comfortable in your own skin, and let it be seen you're
comfortable in your own skin. That speaks volumes. It's magnetic.
Almost as much as if not more than what you say, being comfortable in
your own skin communicates evidence of a life loved, of a life worth
living. It's what everyone wants, so be willing to share it. Be
willing to give it away. Let people get it from you.
One way to live is to come from
something's
wrong,
living life moving forward toward fixing it. Another way to live is
to come from
it's OK the way it
is,
living life moving forward enjoying the space which opens up in front
of you ongoingly. Choose the latter. Living this way is more
powerfully enrolling than all of peoples' best arguments,
disagreements, justifications, persuasions, rationalizations, and
reasons to the contrary combined. It cuts through peoples' guilt
trips and skepticism like a hot knife through butter.
Enrollment isn't convincing or persuading or selling. Enrollment is
being. That's it. That's all. Plain and simple. Just being.
Nothing else. No doing required. You being
who you are
is enrolling and inspiring. Absolutely completely sufficiently totally
enough. Being
who you are,
you don't have to do anything or even discuss anything to enroll and
inspire poeple. You could simply stand up and read the dictionary or
the telephone directory, and people would be enrolled and inspired.
To be sure, regardless of how enrolling and inspiring you are, there
are those people who make it their business to find something to
criticize. When you read the dictionary, they grouse the story has
great potential but the author keeps changing the subject.
When you read the telephone directory, they complain it has a rich,
extensive cast of characters but not much of a plot.
These, of course, are the same armchair pundits who kvetchGod
is a little too bossy.
I don't watch them. I watch you - closely. You've enrolled the world.