“Patience is also a form of action.”
~ Auguste Rodin

I’m a rusher.

Busy busy busy.

Rush rush rush.

And sometimes moving at a rapid pace is the right thing to do – no getting bogged down in miscellaneous detail or perfectionism or the trickling away of courage that can sometimes happen.

And sometimes moving at a rapid pace just doesn’t help.  You make everything urgent, you skip details, you do it OK rather than extraordinarily.

Even though I’m quoting Rodin at the top of the post (and of course I’m writing this because I need the reminder even more than you might), I might just end with Einstein.  He said…

“Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

I think you can replace “simple” with “as fast” and “as slow” … they make an equally powerful point.

==> Where do you need some patience right now?

One company that’s seized my imagination – and others’ too – is Innocent in the UK.

The create fantastic fruit smoothies and other uber-healthy things, all done with a sense of joy, fun and not-taking-it-all-too-seriously.  (It’s worth buying their products just to read the labels on the bottles.  Yep, they’re that good).

Looking at their website recently, I noticed a “lest we forget” page.  On it is a photo and homage of everyone who’d ever worked at Innocent.

Is that an act of generosity, community and simple brilliance?

There’s no commercial reason why you’d do that.  But as a reflection of what’s really important – for instance, actually believing the phrase “our people are our most important asset” – this is about as good as it gets.  Great Work needs great people, and realizing that includes much more than just those in the building is essential.

(It’s also a reflection of how community and connection works today in this era of FaceBook, LinkedIn and the like).

Long live Innocent, is what I say.

Way beyond the usual ones (Here’s what’s flashing through my mind: “Is this Great Work?”  “Should I get a haircut?”  “Does my bum look fat in this?” etc)

These are mind benders from philosophy, and well worth getting stumped by

A favourite writer of mine is Italo Calvino.  His *Invisible Cities* is a masterpiece of imagined futures, short prose gems in which Marco Polo and Genghis Khan tell stories of cities where the truth of how we live is build into the architecture of these ephemeral places.

Suffice to say it is firmly rooted on the top shelf of my personal Great Work library.

Calvino was due to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton lectures in 1985, and was in the process of writing these when he untimely died.

The five lectures are published in *Six Memos for the Next Millennium*, each one with a theme (the sixth “memo” was themed but never written).  Calvino’s chapters are erudite, literary and elegant … a daunting standard for me trying to follow in his footsteps.

However, I’m using his themes over the coming weeks as a springboard into what it might take for Great Work to flourish in this world of ours.

Every Monday I’ll address one of these themes in the same order Calvino did.  We’ll be looking at:
1. Lightness (Monday Dec 1st)
2. Quickness (Monday Dec 8th)
3. Exactitude (Monday Dec 15th)
4. Visibility (Monday Dec 22nd)
5. Multiplicity (Monday Dec 29th)
6. Consistency (Monday Jan 5th)

It’s the fundamental question about Great Work, the starting point.

Are you up for this, or are you not?

Are you stepping forward into Great Work or stepping back?

Of course, the slippery easy answer is:  “Yes, sure I’m up for it.  Why not?”

Easy because it looks like the right answer, because it’s a sign of weakness to say you’re not, or you’d feel guilty that you might not be willing to tackle Great Work.

But the truth of it is that most of us never quite get clear if it’s a yes or a no, and so spend the time paralyzed, working hard, missing Great Work, but never committed enough to go:  Yes, I’m up for this.  Or No I’m not.

At least the answer of: “No, I’m not” is an honest answer, a recognition that some days, some months, some years are just not ones for Great Work but rather for retreat and renewal, for safety and tucking your head in not sticking your head out.