Nothing is so reckless as waiting for certainty—that’s a game we are sure to
lose. Anyone who runs a business, chooses a mate, or just drives down the street
knows there’s a risk. When the possibility of power, effectiveness, and freedom
arises, we often find ourselves asking “what if the ball actually goes over the
fence…. What if it doesn’t?” The question of whether something will happen or
not is irrelevant to the phenomenon of possibility. There is no certainty as an
inevitability, or predictability of the outcome—we are the ones
saying something is possible. Real power occurs when we know we have
something to say about the way things are—that we have access to the
state of affairs beyond just reporting.
Creating possibility is risky business. Creation is a great risk, a kind of
ultimate risk—the willingness to take a stand with no evidence. It’s hard to
provide evidence, or make any real argument for a place where life can show up
as a creation, but it is in, although within that that domain that the full world available to us in being human can be
explored and lived. We cheat ourselves when we try to reduce the risk. What’s
critical, what makes a difference, is to be left with a choice. And to be left
with a choice means to be left fully at risk. Stimulating those risks is
inseparable from living.
In virtually every human society, ‘he hit me first’ or ‘he started it’ provides
an acceptable rationale for what comes next. It’s thought that a punch thrown
second is legally and morally different than a punch thrown first. The problem
with the principle of even-numb redness is that people count differently. People
think of their own actions as the consequences of what came before, they think
of other people’s actions as the causes of what came later, and that their
reasons and pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than that of others.
These are positions and ideas we all “wind up” playing out. When we “are” right,
embedded in that truth is an equal truth that someone else is
wrong—it’s not a matter of accuracy, it’s a matter of being.
We can’t be happy, vital, and loving while we’re being right,
making someone wrong, or justifying our positions—one displaces the other. The
“rightness” of our positions also precludes us from being open to seeing other
points of view.
We have a choice about what’s at play. When we elect to transform ways we
wound up being, we move to a place of freedom, a place of possibility.
Our points of view and positions can then move from fixed to malleable, from
closed to open—where each person has an honoured place in the dialogue.
The stuff of wars, soap operas, divorce courts, Hamlet, and more all borrow
on that equation, as do we. While we might wish we’d left that
even-numberedness to our childhood and adolescence, it’s not to be. The
dynamic of dealing with issues that are unwanted, yet persist continues to play
out in board rooms, neighborhoods, marriages, and between nations—we justify, we
blame, we complain.
Issues that are unwanted, yet persist can be a powerful impetus for change,
as evidenced by the progress of human rights, for example. But there’s another
world of things that are unwanted, yet persist—things that we complain about
over and over, like some aspect of our relationships or jobs that is not
working, and yet we find ourselves keeping around.
If we put what’s “unwanted, yet persists” together with “fixed ways of
being,” we get what we call a “racket.” It’s a “mash up” of sorts (a web
buzzword). In a mash up, one web application is combined with another, making
both applications more productive and robust—you get something greater than the
sum of the parts. If you mash up what’s unwanted, yet persists (which is most
likely occurring as a complaint) and a fixed way of being, you also get
something greater than the sum of its parts, but in this case, the yield heads
in the wrong direction—the combination is unproductive or more accurately,
counterproductive.
A complaint is some kind of opinion or judgment of the way things
“should” or “shouldn’t be.” The evaluative component isn’t a commentary on facts
that are true or false, accurate or not, but again how we think things
should be. By fixed way of being we mean acting in a
predictable and repetitive manner (like always frustrated, always upset, always
angry, always nice, always annoyed, always suspicious, always confused, etc.).
Whatever our fixed way of being is, it’s not something we have a choice
over. It’s just there—it shows up automatically when the complaint shows up.
It’s also worth noting that a recurring complaint doesn’t cause the way
of being, nor does the way of being cause the recurring complaint—they
simply come together in one package. The whole point here, though, is that it’s
a fixed way of being, not a possible way of being.
The term “racket” comes from the days of big-city gangsters and street-level
criminals who conducted questionable activities—loan-sharking, bribery,
larceny—usually set up to get some kind of payoff, camouflaged by an acceptable
cover above suspicion. In a “racketeering” operation, the efforts at concealing
what’s going on behind the scenes can become quite elaborate so as to protect
and ensure the success of the operation. We borrow the term racket as
it’s applicable to our contemporary lives and because it carries with it many of
the same properties—deception, smoke screens, payoffs, etc.
Sometimes persistent complaints originate with us, other times they come
at us from someone else. It’s harder to see that we’re in “racket mode”
with complaints that come at us, because it looks like somebody
else is the persistent complainer, and we’re just an innocent bystander.
But under closer scrutiny, it turns out we too have complaints—complaints about
their complaints. Our matching complaint might show up like, “don’t they
understand, don’t they know how it is for me, why are they nagging, don’t they
see everything I’m doing for them?” When we complain, we feel quite justified
that our response is appropriate to the situation.
We explain the rationale behind our complaints to interested (and
uninterested) parties, and point out how pleased we are with ourselves for
taking the necessary steps to sort things out—we have a certain fondness for our
attempts, for “trying.” We might get our friends, family, or co-workers
to agree that we’re dealing with our complaints the best we can.
If they point
out that perhaps we’re the one perpetuating the problem, we could feel
misunderstood, put out, even busted. Seen from a distance, there can be
something almost endearing about how we go about all this—as if it’s part of our
authentic and sincere spirit—but actually, our rationale for doing what we do is
another thing entirely. This is the camouflage or cover-up part. The deceptive
nature of a racket and the allure of the payoff keep us from realizing the full
impact rackets have in our lives.
The payoffs for keeping rackets around usually show up in several ways: being
right and making others wrong (not the factual kind of right, but thinking that
we are right and the other person is wrong), being dominating or
avoiding domination, justifying ourselves and invalidating others (attributing
cause to some thing or person other than ourselves), engaging in the win/lose
dynamic (not “winning” like a celebration with trophies, applause, or
congratulations to the opponent, but winning such that someone else is the loser
or is lessened in some way).
These payoffs are like facets of a diamond—although
one facet might be more dominant than another (and we might deny or not be aware
that some aspect of a payoff is active in our case), they’re really all at play.
The pull of these payoffs is often compelling enough to get us to give up
love, vitality, self-expression, health, and happiness. That’s a ridiculously
strong force. Those costs are the standard fare of a racket. It’s pretty
obvious that we can’t be happy, vital, and loving while we’re making someone
wrong, dominating someone, being right, or justifying ourselves—one displaces
the other. This is where choice comes into the picture.
Rackets, although one thing, have two forms of existence (somewhat like ice
and steam are two forms of H2O). One form of a racket shows up as “I am
X, Y, or Z.” The second shows up as “ahhh, I have a racket that is X,
Y, or Z.” When we are the racket, it shapes and determines our way of
being. But when we have a racket, it has very little power over our way
of being. We have a choice about what’s at play—about giving up our rackets, our
positions, our unproductive ways of being. When we elect to transform our
default ways of being—being right, coming out on top (the even-numb redness, so
to speak)—we move to a place of freedom, a place of possibility.
The question
then becomes: How do I express my life? What would be, for me, the most
extraordinary, created, invented life? It becomes a matter of art, of design.
How extraordinary are the everyday aspects of our lives; how rich our lives are,
how full of opportunity, when we act on the possibility of living life fully.
Hundreds of flavours of ice cream, countless selections of movie channels, an
infinite choice of mates, our daily round of work and play, our incessant
getting and spending—the world of “more, better, different” is the air we
breathe and its pull is ubiquitous.
It looks a lot like this: we search around and move around and do things and
act and keep expanding and going for more or better and sometimes we get kind of
stuck. But then we break out and we find a new place in life and we are off
again expanding and growing and we keep on doing things and often get more from
or better at doing that. And that’s what life’s like. Growing and expanding and
learning and getting more, experimenting, trying things out differently. We
might avoid the question “is this it” or “is this all there is” for a while,
especially when we don’t have enough of what we’re after—like money, status, or
comfort. But after we’ve got “enough,” the odds are we’ll visit those questions
yet again.
More, better, different is the language of change—it’s comparative,
defined and understood in light of the past. It’s about becoming. The
language of possibility doesn’t necessitate changing anything.
Possibility originates in the future, not the past. It’s about being,
not becoming. Creating possibility is a stand, a declaration of who we
are and what we’re out to create. It’s not taking what is and
changing it—it’s taking what isn’t, and having it be. It’s about creating an
extraordinary life as a place from which to come rather than a place to get—it’s
about living life as a creative act.
