This is an invitation for us to discard the logic and unease of urgency
I could have written a polished description,
listing features and outcomes,
Again.
Explaining why our upcoming course on the Thinking Environment is valuable.
I could have “marketed” it.
But my body… and my soul…
Quietly refused.
Because taking the time to think
is not about saving time… or wasting it.
It is a pause
An ecology.
An ecology of presence, of relationship,
of interest, and courage,
Of grief, of love, of wonder.
This is a place where you think,
and no one rushes in to judge you,
interrupt you, or correct you.
You pause…
and nothing falls apart.
You feel a thread rising
and someone waits
without grabbing it.
This is what we call a Thinking Environment.
A space where your mind…
remembers its dignity.
If you’ve forgotten
or if you’re simply curious
about what it feels like
to think well,
for yourself and with another…
Come sit by this lake…
What on Earth?
What is time? What’s in time?
We can’t see our entire world
We can feel only a part of us
And yet, we’re igniting each other
Silent swirling hive
Wild and slow meander
Welcome to the chemistry of two.
Meanwhile
In One Second on Earth
100 lightning strikes
20 billion litres of rainfall
Infiltrating the soil
I’m listening like water
In One Minute at the Beach
The whale’s heart beats 8 times
You spoke 125 words
Listened to 400 of them
You thought of 900 ideas, words or feelings
There, in between, flourished all the connections
And this is why
I promised
Not to interrupt you
In One Hour at the Lake
Billions and billions of neurons fired, and more
We mustered the courage
To explore the chemistry of two
We travelled hard and far
In many streams of your mind
You dismantled pressuring prophecies
By being in a space free of judgment,
A place where your thinking boldly unfurls
You softened imagined truths
That no longer serve you.
In One Sunny Day
My friend, the astronaut, flew 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets
That mayfly laid thousands of eggs and then died
Mamita took two hours to get some fresh water, but slipped
And broke her leg.
She waited on the side of the road
Until Luongo came along to help her
The water was abandoned,
But attention remained.
In One Month of Existence
Baby piled up 868 grammes
Gran’s cells forgot to multiply
This fleeting white butterfly
Pollinated and got gobbled up
We meet three times
Over three days
And re-learn to give attention
Exquisite stretches in a place hardly ventured
Just there at the back of your head
A supple yet firm tether to climb out of the loam
We practised hard and with care.
In One Season of Life
Grief Needs Time to Think
Look, I open a little window on
A composted friendship of mine
Lif-ing across time…
Dear You
Thinking in partnership with you
Continues across oceans,
Across years, even across death…
I haven’t had the time to say goodbye
But you’re resting and living through my memories
And the rhythms of our philosophy
The symbiosis of our souls
Continue their work
Goodbyes were imprinted in our relationship from the start
We never knew whether it would be
The last time we saw each other.
This was our encouragement, our equality
The recurrence of our lost togetherness
The rawness and tenderness of knowing the thinking continues
After your accident, you became someone else
And more of you
In the silence
I am no longer emptiness.
I am not the absence of sound
I am the womb where your thoughts grow shoots.
The thinking and feelings of our partnership
Transform and live beyond what we knew.
Expectations of closure
Came in to fix. To advise. To solve.
But the room asked her to wait.
To listen. To feel the shape of the unsaid.
So I sent Closure back on her way with a dollop
Of our joys, our pains,
Our doubts, our stupors
And our surprises.
Closure is now making peace with
Our continuous communing.
Look at her
She is quiet.
Welcome to our chemistry of two
Neurons want to fire all the time
But our brain can’t handle them.
Here’s a piece of bread
And fresh water too
Let me wrap you in ease and attention
Let the thinking soil in-“form” you
Find a shape off the closely tangled mesh,
A thread that matters to you.
Now, if I may ask again, not what is time, but
What becomes possible when you are given yours?
Do you long to recall how to think well
In the company of another?
Would you like to be met by someone who
Waits for the thread to rise within you?
If you’d like to experience this and practice,
Don’t sign up,
But slow up.
I offer this Thinking Partnership Course (when you are 2 people) and the Time to Think Foundation Course (when you are hosting a group)
They are for remembering the future.
We don’t fix, we don’t rush, we don’t perform.
We think.
Together.
So you can find your thread.
So you can feel what it’s like to be met
—not for your output, but for your becoming.
If something inside you stirred,
Perhaps it’s time to follow the thread.
I’ll be waiting by the lake.
Listening.
