Field Notes #32
In #31, I said you'd be in session four. You're in session three. We caught it straight away, and I didn't re-record. Perfect isn't possible, and I deliberately leave the mistakes that don't matter, so you can notice them without naming them. Spoilers for My Culture follow.
FIVE BLIND SPOTS ARE NOT EQUAL
The cover is my hand on the wheel of a rented Jeep in Maui, the same photograph as the About Me page. Ten days on that island. My wife would never go back. My son would never go back. I would never go back. We loved the Big Island; not that one.
What happened was a collision between two sacred cows. Theirs: the standing of native islanders over the descendants of colonizers. Mine: an Irish islander's refusal to be filed under colonizer by a place that resented my being there and gladly took my money. We are an island that hosts too. We adopt the clan temporarily; you're not really one of us, but we'll make you feel like it. And I carried that expectation into a place that ran the rule the other way. I noticed, then I named, then I judged, then I got angry, and we moved hotels. That's the level of collision. It cost us a holiday, and it cost them a customer, and I take my part: I didn't notice how much naming and judging was going on, and I never took a minute to humanize the people I was judging.
At the back of every workbook there is now a template for your own Snapshot. Print it, take it to the printer, make yourself a portrait card, and write in all five. Then know that they are not equal. They come in different cost levels.
Shrug. You know it's there. Lock it in so you never have to rediscover it, and then spend nothing on it. Me egal, es egal. One, maybe two, per program.
Normal. It makes a mess; you'd like to stop, and it's worth a story that stops you.
Red line. The lights don't go off. There is an articulated lorry hammering down that lane. Look over your shoulder and double, triple-check. Maui was a red line.
One more thing, from #31. If you reach the point of agency and the story you tell yourself is a bad one, the stupid leprechaun, the tarot-card reader, you're done. I won't argue. Sit with it.
"Red liners require you to look over your shoulder and double, triple-check. And you want to know the red liners for every program." – Robert (Sherpa) Millar
Field Note Card: Ten minutes, one take, black and white. Fourth of the five integration Field Notes. Prompted from the Session Four practice page in every self-guided workbook, one session before you fill your own Snapshot. Field Notes #18 to #28 walk mine, program by program; #19 has the rest of the Maui red line.
To continue through the series, click Field Notes #33 below.
To return to the library, click here: Field Notes – Just Now
To schedule an Exploratory call, please go to Contact at the top of the screen.
Fourth of five. Field Notes are notes from the field. These five are Field Notes about Field Notes, about being in the room.
– Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Just Now
