I had a few thinking sessions this week that explored what’s happening between the thinking and the doing, the sometimes knotty, rugged, honey-ey, numbed liminal space. A sweet anaesthesia.
Meanwhile, we – and the outside world – judge ourselves harshly about the absence of visible action.
Yep, it’s hard to sit between the thinking and the doing.
This in-betweenness often sedates because it resists legibility.
We numb not because nothing is happening, but because too much is happening without a script we know. The nervous system goes, “Nope, I don’t have a category for this,” and pulls the emergency brake.
This in-betweenness between thought and action shapes the ethereal ID card that precedes us, that follows us and that, unwillingly, pushes others to define us when we least need it.
It destabilises your teachers because they crave coherence.
It shakes your business partner, who is waiting for a green light
It troubles modernity, that trains us to believe identity lives in statements and acts.
But identity sometimes needs to sit on the moss and hum, and smell and feel what is really needed in the moment.
No, I don’t have to cram years of learning into 1-hour tutorial
No, I don’t have to demonstrate 47 competencies in 37 minutes of conversation about a life time of worries about age and belonging for a credentialing body.
No, I won’t talk about conflict, productivity, sales or efficiency in numbers scattered in an Excel sheet.
Who/what are we trying to soothe, really?
When we sit just a little longer on the moss… we’ll find a space where accountability hasn’t hardened yet.
Where action hasn’t calcified into reputation.
Where possibility still leaks lavender oil without staining our clothes.
It’s where harm can still be averted, or amplified indeed, but without anyone noticing.
That’s why our thinking time on the moss in the presence of an interested listener matters.
That’s why it follows us and doesn’t want to go…
So when I write this proposal, I am going to put just what’s needed, with ease, without per-forming, just in-forming. As Gregory Bateson thought, adding just the wee difference that makes a difference.
I will be seeing this in-between moss between Thought and Action not as a corridor, but as a being, that brings in all the nourishment I need. Like I do for friends, listeners, and other critters around.
Not a gap, but a companion.
One that doesn’t have to be perfect to be faithful.
One that is alive enough to travel.
And I’ll breathe.
How does your liminal Thinking-Doing moss feel right now… does it tighten… or soften? What shapes does it have and what sound does it make, if any?
