I turned 48 this week. My friends and family helped me feel loved. My 14-year old son Michael, for example, tweeted “Happy Birthday father o’mine.” And a new dear friend sent me a photo from the Tibetan Plateau:

She wrote it just days after helping a few dozen boys, students at a monastic school in Tagong, move into a new home and school–a building that a few of us came together to purchase on behalf of the monastery.

I first met the monks in Tagong in September of last year when a few of us drove for four days on fairly tricky roads to bring supplies from Chengdu into Yushu where an earthquake had destroyed so many homes. Depending on the roads, Tagong is a day or two drive from Chengdu. (See this post: How I Spent My Summer Vacation)

When I first encountered the boys, I could barely contain my desire to help. That September, though, we had another mission–to get to Yushu.

Later, last January, I came back…to Yushu, to Chengdu, and to Tagong. I wrote a post at the time asking, quoting Tracy Chapman, if you knew you would die today, saw the face of God today, would you change? I vowed to help move the boys from a shelter that was little more than tree branches and plastic sheeting into something safe and warm.

Months of discussion, planning, more discussion, lots of tea (sweet and butter), lots more discussion (this is, after all, Tibet), and just about a week ago, the boys moved into their new home–a recently renovated, three story traditional Tibetan-style building. They are warm and safe and the snows have just begun.

My new dear friend wrote to a few of us:

We just returned from a trip to Tagong to help students and teachers move to the new school. Everything went smoothly and every one was very happy about the new school…on the 9th we had breakfast at 9:00 am, and then went to the old school to help the students move. Students, teachers, and helpers from the town had already started moving…the school also had five tractors to help haul large items like furniture and firewood.

Everyone was happy to work and help with the move. Everything but firewood was moved before lunch. For lunch we had a very simple and delicious meal prepared by the students in their new kitchen. After lunch the students drew numbers for their new beds, then they made their beds and put all their things away. The helpers from town, the TVP [Tibetan Village Project] team and the teachers started moving and stacking firewood. We spent the whole afternoon on this task; it was tiring work but we are happy that students have a stockpile of firewood for the winter. We worked until 5:00pm but there was still some firewood left to move.

On the 10th we had breakfast at 9:30am and then went to the school to visit the students and teachers. It had snowed overnight, so the students were busy outside clearing the snow, in addition to stacking the rest of the firewood…on the morning of the 11th [we] visited the school’s greenhouse. We were excited to see that the vegetables in the greenhouse were growing very well…the students were still busy cleaning the new school, and they expressed happiness and satisfaction with the new school. When we asked for their opinion of the new school, they told us that the new school is warmer and bigger than the old one, and that the new school has a big yard outside where they can play, eat, and enjoy sunshine. They also said that they want to study very hard and be beneficial to people in the future.

A few weeks ago, during that last trip to Tibet, I traveled with some old dear friends. They rightly asked if, given the enormity of the poverty in the region and the systemic changes that will need to be made to create enduring prosperity, for people to move from trying, as they do now, to live on 12 cents a day to be lifted into the magical realm of living on more than a dollar a day (and thereby no longer be classified as “ultra-poor” but merely poor), did it make sense to invest in one school, one village, one building.

As I lay on my bed that night at the lovely Heavenly Jewells [sic] Hotel (by far the nicest hotel in Tagong), I came across this passage from The Gift by Lewis Hyde:

The begging bowl of the Buddha, Thomas Merton has said, “represents the ultimate theological root of the belief, not just in the right to beg, but in the openness to the gifts of all beings as an expression of the interdependence of all beings…The whole idea of compassion, which is central to Mahayana Buddhism, is based on an awareness of the interdependence of all living beings…thus when the monk begs from the layman and receives a gift from the laymen, it is not as selfish person getting something from somebody else. He is simply opening himself to this interdependence.”

I knew then that I would make the gift that would catalyze the purchase and enable the boys to be warm before the snows came.

A few days before their move into the new building, I was in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I’d been invited to come during my last trip, a trip I wrote about in the post Born Somewhere Else.

Over the course of five days I did six talks. My talks ranged from the pragmatic to the esoteric; from How to Lead and How to Raise Capital to How to Survive the Startup Life. The latter talk, essentially a distillation of the workshop Ann Mehl and I developed around my post, Disappearing into the Fire, seemed to be especially poignant for people.

The night before that talk I woke from a hazy jet-lag troubled sleep and, sitting in my room at the Union Hotel, I changed the presentation, adding some pictures from my trips to Tagong.

I was nervous when the talk began because I had shifted things and didn’t know how the 150 or so folks in the audience would respond. I had nothing to fear; from their tears I knew I had touched their hearts.

My intent was to use the photos to talk about the work being done in Tagong. I shared that work as an example of a way in which I try to embody my one-third, one-third, one-third life balance rule. One third for the inner you; one third for the outer you; and one third for the Other–those who embody our interdependence, those to whom, out of the depths of our compassion, we save not only them but, in the process, ourselves.

In my mind the Indigo Girls are singing She’s Saving Me. And the last lines–She’s saving me I don’t really think she knows it/It’s a strange way to show it as distant as last night’s dream unravels/She’s saving me I’m a very lost soul/I was born with a hole in my heart as wide as my land-locked travels–repeat as if the needle is stuck in the groove.

Earlier this week I saw my Buddhist teacher, the one who gave me the gift of “the one-third rule.” He asked me about my trip to Slovenia. With just the slightest hint of pride in his student, he said, “Ah, I see. You are giving them, the Others, the strategies you’ve used to save yourself.”

The gift of giving to the Other is the most powerful salve for closing that hole in your heart, the one that’s as wide as your land-locked travels. Placing alms in the bowl (be it a building in Tagong or a strategy to survive the every day violence of work) feeds not only the begging monk before us but the begging monk within.

Jerry Happy Birthday.

Related articles

• Road to Tagong (turtlestravel.wordpress.com)
• Motorcycle Monks and the Yak-men (turtlestravel.wordpress.com)

Adapted from the forward I wrote to a friend’s new book…

Connect. Think. Do.

I’d first gotten the call, an inquiry call for coaching, two weeks previous. In a follow-up conversation, one of the team, one the five co-founders of a hot  local startup, came to the phone with a simple plea: “Help.”

In the year since they’d begun their efforts, they’d successfully raised the necessary capital, begun operations, and even turned a small profit. But this tight-knit team was at each other’s throats. We agreed to meet for an all-day session, all five of them, for six hours, starting early on a Sunday morning. It was about the third hour when the breakthrough happened.

The presenting agenda was, as I call it,  “The five-year old” soccer team problem: everyone wants to chase the ball and no one wants to play their position. It’s a common problem and one I felt at ease in addressing. But, as the morning unfolded, it quickly became apparent that the roots of all the fighting, all the chasing of loose balls, were layers of unmet needs.

And then there was the breakthrough.

I’d spent part of the morning briefly but consistently modeling one of the aspects of Nonviolent Communications (NVC) techniques most useful in the workplace. The aspect was around giving feedback using of the model of OFNR, Observation, Feelings, Needs, and Request. (I’d honed these skills working with my friends/teachers, Miki Kashtan, Martha Lasley, and Marie Miyashiro as they developed a program called Making Collaboration Real for using NVC in the workplace.)

As the morning progressed there came a moment when Mark felt compelled to respond to some things Nicole had done.

“Nicole,” he began with some coaching from me, “I notice that you prefer to work on a single task at a time.” He paused and I encouraged him to check that out.

“Is that right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s hard for me to move onto the next task when I feel the first isn’t complete.”

“When you do that it makes me anxious that all the things we need to do won’t get done.”

“I have a need,” he continued, “in fact, the company has a need, for multiple things to be worked on simultaneously.” Pausing to make eye contact with me, he took a deep breath—courageous conversations require vulnerability–he then made a request, “So can you tell us what we can do to help you handle more things simultaneously.”

Not bad, I thought, for a guy who’d just started the practice of giving nonviolent feedback. But then something really magical happened: Nicole’s eyes began to soften, to “shine”, as some say.

The nervousness in the group was palpable; they wanted to move on—we so often turn away from another’s pain simply because it’s not bearable to us, it’s too evocative—perhaps—of our own stuff. I knew they had to hold steady.

I checked in with Nichole; I held a space that Mark had, in fact, opened by his honest sharing of his inner motivations, his inner needs.

“Nicole, how are doing?”

“Well, I was thinking about Mark’s observations. I started paying attention to the feelings I was having, the tightness in my own chest even as he made the observation.

“He’s right,” she continued, “but I started to ask myself why I needed that. And then I realized…I’m afraid I’ll get hit if the thing I’m working on isn’t perfect.”

The pain that had been in the room had now been named and everyone in the room connected with it. Nichole told a story from her childhood of literally being hit if she didn’t get everything on her homework correct. And she wept.

Suddenly this disjointed, angry, fighting-at-cross-purposes team of brash, young, brilliant start-up executives jelled into a single, compassionate, and loving unit. Suddenly the arguments over who got to play CEO and who took notes and got coffee during the meetings became far less important and everyone, myself included, connected with that kid inside all of us who worries about failing and disappointing an aggressive and demanding parent.

The story of this team, and so many other stories from my coaching and venture practices, resonated with me as I read the first drafts of Marie’s new book, The Empathy Factor. Over the years, I’ve served on more than a few boards of directors, worked with both for-profit and not-for-profit companies. I’ve watched companies get born and grow into success stories. I’ve watched large companies falter and miss opportunities. I’ve watched small not-for-profit organizations struggle through the maturation process; some succeed, many fail. And every one of them, and every one of the people endeavoring to do the sacred work of creating something of lasting and enduring value, could benefit from the lessons laid out in The Empathy Factor. (Marie’s got a compelling video on the underlying precepts here.)

My clients, the startup team struggling to become a Team, underwent the process that Marie refers to forming as “an empathetic connection,” a necessary step before educating, explaining, or justifying; she calls it “Connect-Think-Do.”  And, in doing so, they experienced the transformative power of empathy.

She writes:

Any form of educating, explaining, defending, or justifying before someone feels heard or understood, creates more separation than connection in my experience. Therefore, I like to ask people if they would find value in me explaining something before I begin sharing the information with them. When they’re not ready to listen to what I have to say, they likely have needs for understanding, expression, more information, or the like. This is a clue for me to connect with their feelings and needs. When they’re ready to listen to me, they might pause and stop speaking in such a way that I notice they’re now open to hearing what I have to say. Many times I’ve had people say, “Now I’m ready to listen to you.”

On that Sunday morning, the team created a connection that was so powerful that when it came time to explain, to educate or even to understand, the mutual empathy was so great that, unmet needs could be spoken aloud and the foundation for those needs to be met was laid. They were ready to listen to each other.

Marie makes a compelling case for wider-spread use and awareness of the core NVC techniques not just in situations where the violence of our interactions is so apparent but also in the places where we don’t necessarily see the violence done everyday in the name of productivity:

“As I studied the model of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) that Marshall [Rosenberg] taught,” she writes, “I understood what he meant. I could see the unconscious and unintentional disregard for the feelings and needs of people, both in everyday relationships and in the world of the businesses, nonprofits, universities, and government agencies with which I worked. I observed that the workplace is full of what I call silent pain. I like to tell the groups I work with that I estimate about 30 to 50 percent of what is said in workplace meetings is not what is heard.

She goes on:

Our workplaces are two-dimensional because the process of empathic connection requires a literacy and comfort with two human qualities that have been systematically devalued and misinterpreted in the world around us. Our organizations are born out of this same consciousness and simply replicate this world condition in our workplaces. These two misunderstood qualities are:

1) Our ability to be fluently aware of our feelings without judgment of them and 2) our ability to then connect these feelings to related human needs that are being met or unmet.

 

“Our problem,” she adds, “seems to derive from our entrenched conditioning in using the emotions of fear, guilt, shame, and anger, as workplace motivators [my emphasis] instead of proficiency with connecting to our own or one another’s feelings and needs.”

Is it any surprise that people joke that work is a four-letter word?

The Empathy Factor is a call for ending the subtle, persistent, and awful violence to the Self done everyday in the name of profits and productivity. But more than a call to action, it also offers proof that–ironically–building a more compassionate, empathic workplace is precisely the path to greater productivity and, consequently, profits.

Indeed, one of the most highly regarded business writers, Warren Bennis, asserts in his classic treatise, On Becoming A Leader:

In order to lead a Great Group, a leader need not possess all the individual skills of the group members. What he or she must have are vision, the ability to rally the others, and integrity. Such leaders also need superb curatorial and coaching skills—an eye for talent, the ability to recognize correct choices, contagious optimism, a gift for bringing out the best in others, the ability to facilitate communications and mediate conflict, a sense of fairness, and, as always, the kind of authenticity and integrity that creates trust. Nothing about the world today is simpler than it was or slower than it was, which makes the ability to collaborate and facilitate great collaboration more vital than ever.* [my emphasis]

Marie details how The Empathy Factor facilitates this vital collaboration. More important, she shows how managers can build organizations where empathy is the core driver of their success.

Last week, I met with one of the team members of that original group. In the months since our first meeting, there’s been pain and growth, laughter, success and failure. As we talked about his transition, his taking of his seat as the leader of the group, he reminded me of the transformation possible by simply pausing to check in on yourself and the team. Connecting with the on-the-ground reality creates a tremendous basis for the hundreds of decisions that have to be made every single day.

We laughed as we enjoyed a moment of recognizing both the work that’s been accomplished to date and the fearsome work that has yet to be done. And I watched as this first time CEO manifested not only Connect-Think-Do but the even more powerful Connect-Think-Lead.

 

*From the revised Introduction to On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis, Basic Books, New York. 2003

Related articles

• The Power of Knowing Your Feelings and Needs (alwayswellwithin.com)
• Chapter One NVC – Interacting Skills (dfolstad58.wordpress.com)
• Monster hijacking (navigatingbyheart.com)
• Making the Link: Nonviolent Communication & Reflective Teaching (tokenteach.wordpress.com)

Caren Maio had an iced coffee and, despite what it does to my stomach, I had a mocha: French Roast on 85th and Broadway on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Days after she’d walked out on the stage at Webster Hall, opening Techstars New York’s Demo Day. Days after, despite a slight malfunction with her wireless mic set up, Caren and Nestio had killed it.

“I looked out at the audience and I saw you and  Eric Friedman and I knew it was going to be alright.” Eric, one of Nestio’s mentors who included The Gotham Gal, Joanne Wilson, and the brilliant, omnipresent, Beth Ferreira, sat three or four rows behind me. We didn’t plan to make certain that at least one of us were always in sight in the hundreds that crowded the floor; it just worked out that way.

“So what was it like,” I asked. “Really?” And of course I asked in that voice that, regardless of my words, tends to induce tears. (Those who have experienced it know the awesome tears-inducing power of the Yoda of Silicon Alley. To those who haven’t experienced it yet I quote my favorite Bible passage: Be not afraid. I live by Uncle Ben’s dying words: With great power comes great responsibility.)

So what was it like? “I’ll tell you. You guys couldn’t see from the audience because of the way you were sitting but when each of us would finish our presentations and make our way back upstairs to the gallery above the audience, we’d be greeted with high-fives and hugs.” The biggest, most powerful part of the Techstars experience, for Caren was the support, the camaraderie of the other companies, the “Davids,” and the mentors who made it a point to be able to make eye contact with their mentees as they stepped into the glare of the New York fundraising scene.

I contrast that with this email exchange I had with an earnest, smart-as-shit, entrepreneur trying to make it in Ljubljana, Slovenia:

Hello Jerry!

We’ve met for a couple of minutes on Friday 8th, after your presentation at the US-Slovenia business bridge in Hotel Slon in Ljubljana. You’ve met many people that day, so I don’t expect you’ll remember talking to me but I just wanted to share my opinion and feedback on your presentation, as there was not much time available at the meeting and you had to juggle with many interested in talking to you.

It was refreshing to hear from someone that not only understands, but also lives in the today’s entrepreneurial mindset. We’re used to college professors that teach entrepreneurship, but never been one, or finance guys that »direct« entrepreneurs, but don’t understand one. And we unfortunately live in a country (or region) that publicly wants entrepreneurs, but ignores what entrepreneurship is. I’m aware that it is not much different in other parts of the world, and that these problems will fade and be solved with time. And I share with you the “gut” feeling that things are changing. But the pace is way too slow for these times.

I’ve asked you only one question in our short chat; “What was driving you to invest in Twitter and Zemanta?”. You answered, without hesitating: “My gut”. Your presentation touched a topic that I believe is crucial for every entrepreneurship; “selling the vision”. It is hard to sell the vision in a region that does not value it, but only values the fast ride to profits. In the end, projects are created that have only one goal: profit. The “change the world” part vanished, or rather, never existed. Unfortunately all institutions, from the government down to universities don’t value visionaries, because they need maintenance and maintenance requires money. The money is here, but is rather spent on projects that create jobs not because they solve a problem, but just because they “modernize” the same old problem. I’m aware capitalism drives everything to profits, but I refuse to believe profit is a sole measure of success.

The glimmer in the eye of the entrepreneur, the one that triggers the investors “gut” feeling to go or no-go is a worthless distraction here. Selling the vision is regarded as impossible, because it does not fit into a business plan. Those who don’t turn to markets other than local are doomed without strong ties to those that control. That lethal combination led to a market where IT companies either work for foreign customers (mainly or only) or just ignore the local market and move to a better environment. The problem is widespread, from private companies, universities, banks, investment companies to the government itself.

The environment is key, as you said. Slovenia has a perfect position to offer the best environment for IT companies. The infrastructure is well developed (widespread FTTH, UMTS), people are hard enough to shift to new technologies to prove that if a technology passes here, it will pass in western countries. And the most important one, Slovenia is small enough to make it a “cheap playground” for new ideas and products.

I’m 27 and after more than 8 years of trying here, last year I decided to move to a new environment and my “gut” told me London is the target. I’m not seeking for easier ground, I’m only seeking for a better opportunity. I’m full of energy, full of ideas that may be worthless or golden, and I’m also full of raw passion to create and evolve. I would be more than happy to create here, prove the concept and then cash in on the big markets, but I can’t. Not because I’m afraid of failure, but because the environment is so scared of failures it simply seeks sure-bets. Pioneers are regarded as “born somewhere else”.

I apologize for taking valuable time from you with this lengthy feedback, but I wanted to share my point of view as I think it is the least I could do to return the favor after you shared your vast experience with us.

Hope you’re doing fine and enjoyed your stay in Ljubljana.

br,

Miran Hojnik

Maybe my powers work on me as well but I was moved to tears by that note. Not only for the kindness implicit in his comments about my talk but more to the point, in the all-too-common difficulty inherent in his choosing the startup life. I found this passage especially poignant:

“I’m 27 and after more than 8 years of trying here, last year I decided to move to a new environment and my “gut” told me London is the target. I’m not seeking for easier ground, I’m only seeking for a better opportunity. I’m full of energy, full of ideas that may be worthless or golden, and I’m also full of raw passion to create and evolve. I would be more than happy to create here, prove the concept and then cash in on the big markets, but I can’t. Not because I’m afraid of failure, but because the environment is so scared of failures it simply seeks sure-bets. Pioneers are regarded as “born somewhere else”. ”

Are they? I suppose they are; I suppose pioneers, entrepreneurs, people who believe they can change the world, are, as Hugh Macleod suggests, considered delusional and “born somewhere else.”

Every week I hear it, hold it, and do my best to comfort, to empathize, and then offer suggestions for living the startup life. Some weeks I hear about the Twitter-squatter who has stolen a dozen iterations on my client’s company’s name. Or I hear about the co-founder and best friend from middle school who, it’s painfully clear, needs to be fired. Or the guy whose wife is selling the kids’ clothes on eBay so they can buy food.

Of course it’s not the same stories; but it might as well be since the pain is the same.

Buried amidst the torrent of wonderful suggestions about funding, strategies, and even the occasional brilliant meme like that started by Ben Horowitz on the need for a CEO to manage their own psyche is the simple recognition that this life, this startup life, is damn hard.

Over a year ago I wrote a post called Disappearing into the Fire. It remains one of my most popular pieces. Last December,  Ann Mehl, a brilliant and wonderful fellow coach and I did a first iteration of a workshop building on that theme. We’re at it again. This time we’ll be doing a version of a the workshop in partnership with our good friends at General Assembly that seeks to address to core elements of surviving life in a startup. It’s not for everyone but it is for anyone who’s struggling with living through the vicissitudes of the roller-coaster, the psychopathology of everyday life where the payroll is uncertain, paying rent is a dream, and keeping would-be copycats from squatting your social media avatars.

I am often frustrated by time. I wish I could see all those who’d like to see me. I wish I could scale my business to a point where I can see all those who need help. The truth is, I love entrepreneurs and I want to see them succeed (however that’s defined). But I can’t. And doing these workshops helps foster a sense of collective support. Brad Hargreaves, my colleague at General Assembly, said it reminds him of the “Founders’ Therapy” collective effort that seems to have died. For me, I just want to catalyze those moments of high-fives and hugs that made Caren’s experience so powerful and, in the end, bearable.

Related articles

• LIVE FROM TECHSTARS NYC: The Standout Startups Of The Morning (businessinsider.com)
• Nestio plans to make apartment hunting smart, social and easy (thenextweb.com)
• Spring Break – Ljubljana, Slovenia (travelpod.com)
• The ultimate pitch: 11 startups, 8 minutes, 500 investors (money.cnn.com)

In Change, Tracy Chapman sings:

If you knew that you would die today,
Saw the face of God and love,
Would you change?
Would you change?

Would you?

That question’s been stuck in my head for the last few weeks as I’ve been processing my recent trip to the Tibetan Region of China. Over here are copies of the letters I sent—journal entries, really—from the trip.

Briefly, though, I went back for three reasons. The first was to revisit Yushu. The region was devastated by an earthquake last April and in September I helped bring some temporary housing to ease the suffering of some folks made homeless. I wanted to, needed to, see how things were—this despite the frigid cold and lack of power.

The second reason was to participate in a process of helping local business people, local entrepreneurs get training in business planning fundamentals and to talk about the ways to use microfinance credit while also exploring opportunities like tourism. Tourism represents a huge percentage of the GDP in the Tibetan Region of China.

Lastly, I wanted to revisit an orphanage in a remote part of Sichuan. My hope is to help in a sustained way, to work to improve their lives.

Who knew, though, that I would see the face of God and love?

Here’s an excerpt from my Letters…this is about visiting the orphanage and sitting down with the monks who run it to see what more can be done:

1/26/11

Destination: Tagong

We left Kangding early for the three-hour drive to Tagong. With us in the van was Abu. Abu had attended the training session we did in Chengdu. He’s been a friend of the NGO’s with which I’m traveling for years. He’s the Shrine Keeper at the monastery in Tagong (which means, among his other duties, he sleeps in the temple when he’s on duty.)

I first met Abu in September when I visited the orphanage in Tagong.

The drive was easy; in so many ways, I feel like a part of me comes home when I visit Tagong and that morning, I was anxious to see the boys again.

Pulling out of Kangding, I could feel my breath ease. About an hour out of Kangding, you officially enter the Tibetan plateau. The air is thinner, colder and the skies clear and the Colorado blue sky blinds you.

In the car, I think of the John Muir quote: The mountains are calling me and I must go.

We stop to use the W/C (or the rural China equivalent of) and Abu runs out of the car, sick to his stomach. Bad omen? I hope not… he comes back smiling and laughing at his own misfortune; laughing at his own misfortune.

Pulling into Tagong we drive straight to Abu’s house. His mother lives across from the monastery and we’ll be staying with her, Amma. Amma’s yak yogurt is the best in all of Kham and I take mine with just a little bit of sugar and I snack on the fried breads she’s made especially for us.

We put our bags in the guest room and head out to see the boys.

In September, when I first met the boys their schoolroom was a tree-branch-and-plastic sheeting construction in the middle of a muddy yard. When I left, I arranged for a brand new, warm 45 sq meter tent to be put up and for gravel to be put down to keep the courtyard warm.

Shortly after that, the landlord took back the land. So, again, the monks and the kids have improvised a shelter. Like so many things in this land, frustrating.

Walking in, we interrupted the boys in their studies. After some hellos, and our shaking each hand of each boy. I stood in the middle of the room and handed out the presents, the New Year’s presents I told them. A hat, scarf, pair of gloves, and pair of socks for each boy. “Good quality,” Abu said in Tibetan adding, “and not crap.”

I also tossed out dozens of toys…basketballs, soccer balls, badminton sets, ping-pong balls, puzzles and games. Within minutes the boys were all over me to help them open the damn plastic packaging.

Within minutes, I stood and watched a group of six playing with a sort of dominoes set I’d given them and I wept.

God I wish I could take home each one of them.

Later we walked with Abu and some of his fellow monks to look at land they’d like to buy. For about $10,000 to $15,000 they could buy the land and build a school room and housing for 60 kids.

We walked back to the monastery and joined the boys for dinner. Our little group, plus five of the monks and 55 kids sat in a circle. They served me first, the boys fighting to be the one to bring me my bowl.

One gorgeous boy handed me the prized bowl of watery rice with a few slices of potato. As he handed it to me, a tiny bit slipped over the side. Another boy rushed up with a tissue and wiped (or, really, polished) the side of my bowl.

Everyone else received his or her portion and then the kenpo of this monastery said a blessing. We ate silently. Some of the boys licked their bowls after slurping the dinner. Others, especially the boys who’d worked in the kitchen making dinner, watched me closely. They smiled and laughed when I told them it was good. And it was good. Maybe the best meal I’ve ever had.

Later, the boys wanted to treat me so they took turns “massaging” my back…basically punching me. I can’t remember laughing so hard.

Later still, over tea and around the hot cast iron stove burning wood, coal, dung and anything else that would burn, we worked numbers on a blackboard. What would it take to build a school that could feed and house 60 boys, whether or not they want to become a monk? How many teachers? What subjects? What about medical visits and what about clothes? (Earlier the boys all showed off the brand new Tibetan style winter-coat robes my colleagues at this NGO paid to have made for the boys).

We left the discussion with nothing resolved except that I would help Abu make sense of his long term plans (help him think about a long term plan in the first place).

Still though numbers swirled. And of course my head spun…how could I help? How can I help them get to a sustainable place? A school isn’t just about the bricks; it’s about the long-term support.

One number, though, stands out in my head. And that night, back at

Abu’s mother’s place, as I finally settled onto the bed in my sleeping bag, with the indoor temperature reading 10 degrees, one number stuck with me: 1.5 Yuan per meal per kid. That is, 23 cents.

The premise with Tracy Chapman’s question is wrong.

The implicit notion is that, after looking into the face of love, you have a choice: change or not. I don’t think you have a choice. You change. The real question then is simply this: What do you do after you’ve changed?

You integrate, process and sort through.

One day, last April, I woke to read of an earthquake in a part of the world I had never given thought. Now, less than a year later, I’m trying to figure out ways to integrate all of my experiences, all of my various past lives, to come together to solve what seems to be a relatively easy problem: how to use good, smart economic development to create opportunities for people who need a hand.

Another excerpt:

1/27

In the morning we visit an ironworker. A recipient of a microfinance loan, he’s paid back the first loan and is looking for a larger second loan so he can expand to meet demand.

His welding mask is a children’s Halloween mask (best I can tell it’s Casper the Ghost) supplement by a pair of knock-off Ray Ban Aviators (the two are taped together with black electrical tape).

He’s already employing two people and he could expand to three more. His little shop fixes everything. They make iron decorations for atop buildings; the decorations are simples of the dharma and the Buddha’s teachings (like kneeling deer that would flank a wheel of the dharma, symbol of the Buddha’s first turning of the wheel–teaching of the dharma–in the deer park at Varanasi.)

There are parts of motorbikes and stoves everywhere in various stages of repair. He’ll get the loan (of I think $1000), which will enable him to not only hire and train more people but also expand his inventory of motorbike parks. This is the type of micro finance that works. The ironworker was orphaned as a boy and raised on the streets of the village. I can see someday he’ll be the village leader.

Over dinner earlier this week, as I showed him photos from my trip, and spoke about how overwhelming it can feel when I think of the enormity of the problems, a friend challenged me: You’ve done bigger things, he said.

You’ve challenged and poked and prodded and built bridges and made connections that have changed lives before. Do it again.

Would you change?

Would you change?

Now that you’ve changed, what will you do?

I turn the questions over and over, daily.

I see connections to work I’m doing here to the work I think I need to do there. Before leaving, my Buddhist teacher, told me: Don’t you know, Jerry, your karma is to combine business with the spiritual and to make spiritual undertakings more “business-like” more sustainable?”

One foot in each of two worlds.

A last excerpt:

1/29

Destination: Chengdu

We’ve a long ride ahead of us. I’m overwhelmed with ambivalence. I know getting to Chengdu is the first part of my making my way home (to what is clearly the NEW Land of Snows–NYC).

But so many images and feelings are tied to this land, this people. David Whyte has a poem called House of Belonging and in it he writes:

This is the bright home in

which I live,

this is where I ask my friends to come,

this is where I want to love

all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love.

This is the temple of my adult aloneness

and I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life.

There is no house like the house of belonging.

I belong in NY. Of that I have no doubt. But it is a wondrous experience to travel to the other side of the world only to feel, again, as if I’ve entered another House of Belonging.

More photos from the trip here and videos below.

Subject: Hi from China

1/24/11

Tashi Delek everyone.

Forgive me for not writing sooner.

I am well but I’ve been having a difficult time writing and it’s been dislocating to me to not even feel like journaling.

I’m in the lobby of my hotel in Chengdu (where there’s wifi) and it’s cold and damp. (Apparently it’s common in China to turn the heat off

at night even if you’ve got staff people sitting behind a front desk.)

Chengdu is weird city trying to be beautiful but failing partly out

of an obsession with doing everything cheaply AND gaudily.

(There are buildings, for example, wrapped in neon with colors that flash and change minute by minute and yet inside they use 10-watt compact fluorescent bulbs so it feels perpetually dark and cold.)

The air is filled with a pungent aroma of two rivers as sewers (on their morning walks, people think nothing of walking to the edge of the river, dropping their pants, and taking a dump–sorry to be so graphic).

There’s a smoggy, foggy cloud most of the days. It may be nothing more than condensation; Chengdu is a very humid place. But I’ve my suspicions about what’s in that miasma.

And the pervasive cigarette smoke reminds me of Vegas in the 70s.

Am I complaining too much?

I’m tired.

The first and second of three phases of this visit are over.

The first phase of the trip–the visits to Xining and Yushu—were emotionally challenging but rewarding.

I flew from the States to Beijing, spent a night in Beijing and then flew to Xining. Xining is this large, recently built city on the edge

of the desert and surrounded by gorgeous mountains (a little like the American Southwest). It’s a classic case of the government, faced with huge populations in its “inland” cities, firmly encouraging the creation of cities in the west.

It had been a sort of cross roads of cultures (Moslem, Tibetan

Buddhist, Taoist Han Chinese and now it’s mostly Han Chinese). But it’s well designed and it functions.

I spent two days in Xining waiting for the next flight to Yushu. While there, I spent Sunday morning hiking through the huge and wonderful Kumbum Monastery, the home of, I believe, the leader of the Geluk sect of Tibetan Buddhism…It was an early Sunday morning hike and the old Catholic altar boy in me felt comforted by spending a Sunday morning hiking past prostrating circumambulating adherents and sitting in quiet meditation in ancient temples.

Later, I had the second best vegetarian dumplings of my life in a restaurant in the Tibetan section.

That night, before flying to Yushu, I wrote in my journal of my increasing anxiety. I was having near panic attacks. I thought it could be the PTSD returning (it flared up after my attack in October) but realized that, no; it’s simply a reaction to the notion of returning to Yushu.

My last visit had been so hard, so painful and my body–my subtle body–was remembering.

Before leaving Xining, we visited a Tibetan-owned solar lighting and other products company. It was wonderfully impressive.

Later, flying into Yushu, the mountains were snow covered. I felt again that thrill of actually entering Tibet.

The drive from the airport into town showed significant improvements.

Huge new earthquake-resistant buildings going up for a new hospital, new schools, and a brand new, state of the art, military camp.

In the future, if the military again need to be deployed to Yushu it won’t take days to get there as it did in April after the earthquake.

The rubble and tents are still everywhere. But it’s a bit more, I don’t know, orderly is the word I suppose.

The streets are clearly delineated now. Tents housing shops sit in front of piles of rubble that had been the owner’s shop.

The Muslim butcher selling Yak meat is still where he always was–only in a tent now.

While there, we visited three businesses that had received tents in

September. One woman wept and pulled at my hand in gratitude as we

stood over her stall where she sold Yak butter and cheese. Her parents

were warm and comfortable living in the tent.

As she cried and pulled at me, as I wanted to feel the release of crying with her, a crowd surrounded us. As one of the only Westerners in the area, I was constantly stared at, poked, touched. In most cases, it was simply a little kid practicing his English: “Hello. How are you? I am fine.”

In some cases, though, it felt threatening…painfully, frighteningly so. (Was it my PTSD again?)

In that moment, I pulled away from the grateful woman and tried to catch my breath, thinking at any moment the police would come and yell at me for causing a scene.

Rural life in Yushu is hard but somehow I connect with it better.

I don’t mind the lack of facilities there. I’d wake in the morning in a mud-brick room that was freezing with temps barely above zero because overnight the coal/dung fire in my cast iron stove had burned out. But, under my quilts and in my sleeping bag wrapped in my woolen underwear, I was fine.

I’d rise and quickly dress, journal and meditate (which, by the way, was an amazing experience in itself…meditating in such a place) and meet the family around the kitchen/dining/living area stove. We’d make tsampa and sip hot water and enjoy the quiet. On my last morning there, it snowed and Tsering and I walked through the village within the town where she and I her parents live and visited older folks in tents, eating tsampa and sipping hot water and brought them blankets.

Those folks had been organized into a sort of senior housing facility with each older couple or individual in a private tent with a wooden door. The organizing group had received a tent from us in September; a large 45 square meter tent which they use for communal dining and meetings (and visits from a local doctor).

We also visited some families and individuals whom we’d helped in

September. One in particular, an old man who was clearly devastated by the loss of his wife was caring for his terribly disabled niece. Sadly the niece died shortly after our visit.

One of my most painful and powerful memories of that trip was in visiting the old man and the young girl. I cherish a prayer flag (a Gesar flag for those who know such things), which the staff here at secretly signed by many of those who’d received tents that we donated.

One of my favorite pictures is of the old man and the young girl smiling as they signed the flag for me.

The last few days, the second phase of the trip, has been very rewarding (despite my complaining) but it’s activated a different part of my brain. We spent the last four days (and today is the last day) in a conference (in a meeting room at this hotel) with 30 or so other Tibetans from all around the Plateau talking about micro finance, building businesses, and eco-tourism. The meetings move smoothly from Tibetan (and each of like a dozen dialects) to English and back.

At times I’ve felt like my old VC self.

There are about six folks from Yushu here (including Tsering who works for the sponsoring NGO). One night, she asked if I could spend some time with one of close girlfriends. When we were in Yushu we’d visited her parents in their temporary tent home.

Her family of 15 (extended uncles and aunts and cousins and such) lost 5 people in the earthquake. This girl/young woman was in Xining when the earthquake hit and like many took a bus for 16 hours to get home.

When she did, her parents asked her to bring water since there was none in the city but the military had commandeered everything and so there were no supplies. She got to her family’s home…what was left

of it…and began helping to clear the rubble. That’s when she uncovered the bodies of her 3 and 11-year-old nieces.

Sitting in a tea bar here in Chengdu, she wept uncontrollably as I sat with her, listened to her story, cried with her. Her hair is falling out, she says. She thinks she’s sick. She is overwhelmingly depressed and guilt-ridden and her college professors in Xining told her she’s too sensitive.

There are two attendees at the conference I asked to spend time with her. One is a traditional Tibetan doctor; he gave her “medicine” for her hair. The other was a monk (Abu, he runs the orphanage I visited in September and with whom I will visit again in a few days. A GREAT guy who’s smile is infectious.).

They will sit with her.

I’ve had my aches and pains (and frequent runs to the bathroom). At times I’ve thought I was sick with a cold (or worse) but later realize it’s just me being the somatizing Jerry.

The conference has been empowering for the attendees and gratifying for me. I spent time with three young guys from Yushu this morning that are trying to start an adventure travel company to promote tourism in the Yushu area (it is spectacular outside the town).

They want to learn about Internet marketing.

We’ve done training sessions on building business plans, the effective use of capital, ways to build locally owned businesses and the local term positive effects of building efficient local economies.

But really it feels like we are training a new generation of social entrepreneurs–people who see the value in solving their community’s problems by building small, nimble organizations that can have a lasting impact.

Tuesday we had out of Chengdu for the third phase of the trip…a visit to Minyak and Tagong. The latter is to see Abu’s orphanage again and the former to see a new tourist “camp” where Westerners can come and spend a week living like a nomad.

I’ve such a mix of feelings that it’s often hard to simply be. Last night I slept for 10 hours. I miss exercising, deodorant, and smoke-free restaurants.

But I’m grateful to be at the point in my life when I can give back to people in this way.

I miss you all and think of everyone often. The next few days I’ll likely be even more out of touch as we move back into some very rural (and cold!) areas.

With love,

Jerry

———- Forwarded message ———-

From: Jerry Colonna ‪

Date: Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 5:51 PM

Subject: Another installment from Jerry in China

Sorry for the length of this one…thanks for reading.

1/28/11

Kangding, Ganzi, Sichuan, China

Friday night and the honky-tonk border town that is Kangding is all flash and neon lights, this despite the sub-zero temperature. New Year begins next week so the stores are all decorated with pictures of little bunnies…next year is the year of the Rabbit.

Kangding is a sort of crossroads where people from the rural villages come to load up on fruit, vegetables, jeans, underwear…you name it, they sell it.

We arrived back here around 4 p.m. and, after showering and putting on clean clothes and checking email, we went out for dinner. Great local

Tibetan restaurant. Joining us at dinner was the kenpo or abbot of a monastery in one of remote villages we visited earlier this week.

The keno is sort of thin and tall with a quiet intensity that seems sort of regal. Dinner was tense because the dormitory that the local

NGO with which I’m traveling supports hasn’t been finished as promised. The dormitory is part of a clinic the kenpo, the people of the village, and the NGO built.

We were there earlier this week and, after dropping off boxes of donated medical supplies…but I’m ahead of myself. Here are a few notes from the last few days, this phase three, as I termed it in my last message.

1/26/11

Destination: Tagong

We left Kangding early for the three-hour drive to Tagong. With us in the van was Abu. Abu had attended the training session we did in Chengdu. He’s been a friend of the NGO’s with which I’m traveling for years. He’s the Shrine Keeper at the monastery in Tagong (which means, among his other duties, he sleeps in the temple when he’s on duty.)

I first met Abu in September when I visited the orphanage in Tagong.

The drive was easy; in so many ways, I feel like a part of me comes home when I visit Tagong and that morning, I was anxious to see the boys again.

Pulling out of Kangding, I could feel my breath ease. About an hour out of Kangding, you officially enter the Tibetan plateau. The air is thinner, colder and the skies clear and the Colorado blue sky blinds you.

In the car, I think of the John Muir quote: The mountains are calling me and I must go.

We stop to use the W/C (or the rural China equivalent of) and Abu runs out of the car, sick to his stomach. Bad omen? I hope not… he comes back smiling and laughing at his own misfortune; laughing at his own misfortune.

Pulling into Tagong we drive straight to Abu’s house. His mother lives across from the monastery and we’ll be staying with her, Amma. Amma’s yak yogurt is the best in all of Kham and I take mine with just a little bit of sugar and I snack on the fried breads she’s made especially for us.

We put our bags in the guest room and head out to see the boys.

In September, when I first met the boys their schoolroom was a tree-branch-and-plastic sheeting construction in the middle of a muddy yard. When I left, I arranged for a brand new, warm 45 sq meter tent to be put up and for gravel to be put down to keep the courtyard warm.

Shortly after that, the landlord took back the land. So, again, the monks and the kids have improvised a shelter. Like so many things in this land, frustrating.

Walking in, we interrupted the boys in their studies. After some hellos, and our shaking each hand of each boy. I stood in the middle of the room and handed out the presents, the New Year’s presents I told them. A hat, scarf, pair of gloves, and pair of socks for each boy. “Good quality,” Abu said in Tibetan adding, “and not crap.”

I also tossed out dozens of toys…basketballs, soccer balls, badminton sets, ping-pong balls, puzzles and games. Within minutes the boys were all over me to help them open the damn plastic packaging.

Within minutes, I stood and watched a group of six playing with a sort of dominoes set I’d given them and I wept.

God I wish I could take home each one of them.

Later we walked with Abu and some of his fellow monks to look at land they’d like to buy. For about $10,000 to $15,000 they could buy the land and build a school room and housing for 60 kids.

We walked back to the monastery and joined the boys for dinner. Our little group, plus five of the monks and 55 kids sat in a circle. They served me first, the boys fighting to be the one to bring me my bowl.

One gorgeous boy handed me the prized bowl of watery rice with a few slices of potato. As he handed it to me, a tiny bit slipped over the side. Another boy rushed up with a tissue and wiped (or, really, polished) the side of my bowl.

Everyone else received his or her portion and then the kenpo of this monastery said a blessing. We ate silently. Some of the boys licked their bowls after slurping the dinner. Others, especially the boys who’d worked in the kitchen making dinner, watched me closely. They smiled and laughed when I told them it was good. And it was good. Maybe the best meal I’ve ever had.

Later, the boys wanted to treat me so they took turns “massaging” my back…basically punching me. I can’t remember laughing so hard.

Later still, over tea and around the hot cast iron stove burning wood, coal, dung and anything else that would burn, we worked numbers on a blackboard. What would it take to build a school that could feed and house 60 boys, whether or not they want to become a monk? How many teachers? What subjects? What about medical visits and what about clothes? (Earlier the boys all showed off the brand new Tibetan style winter-coat robes my colleagues at this NGO paid to have made for the boys).

We left the discussion with nothing resolved except that I would help Abu make sense of his long term plans (help him think about a long term plan in the first place).

Still though numbers swirled. And of course my head spun…how could I help? How can I help them get to a sustainable place? A school isn’t just about the bricks; it’s about the long-term support.

One number, though, stands out in my head. And that night, back at

Abu’s mother’s place, as I finally settled onto the bed in my sleeping bag, with the indoor temperature reading 10 degrees, one number stuck with me: 1.5 Yuan per meal per kid. That is, 23 cents.

1/27

Destination: A small village called Dora in the Minyak region

Tenpa is a colleague from the NGO and Dora is his home village. It’s about three hours northwest of Tagong and consists of about 40 families.

We’ll be spending the night at his family’s home. Our main destination is a monastery and medical clinic.

In the morning, before leaving Dora, Abu showed us the temple at the heart of the monastery. It’s the second oldest temple in all of Tibet.

I’m finding that meditating in such places, places that are more than a thousand years old, shakes me to the core.

The monastery we’re headed to is about an hour to an hour and half from Dora. Driving through Minyak, driving past Dora and towards our next monastery, I’m floored by the jaw-dropping beauty of the area.

By far, this is the most beautiful of all the places I’ve visited in

Tibet. Its remote, pine-covered, snow-capped mountains remind me of

Patagonia and the San Juan mountains of Colorado.

This latest monastery is a new location with new buildings and a new temple, all paid by the 200 or so families of the local village.

Set hard against a hillside, it has some of the beautiful views I’ve ever seen. A quick tour, a chat with the local monks and then it’s off to the visit the clinic. We’re dropping off supplies when our car is quickly and somewhat oppressively surrounded by villagers. As word spreads that some Westerners are in town, the crowd grows. I start to panic. It’s that same panicky, Stranger in a Strange Land feeling I had in Yushu. Then, my anxiety made me focus on the police as a threat. This time, there are no police and I start to feel like I can’t breathe. Too many faces staring, too much energy from them drawing me in. I lean back against the car when I hear a very loud and distinct and friendly, “Haaallooo!”"

Tenpa is talking and laughing with two young folks in the crowd and what at first feels threatening to me quickly feels like simple curiosity. Then I find out that a number of the people in the crowd were Tenpa’s students when he taught English in middle school. I’m shocked. I’ve spent weeks with Tenpa and never knew.

We head home to Tenpa’s house and I fall asleep in the car. I’m exhausted.

Tenpa’s house is classic Tibetan architecture–the animals on the first floor (to stay warm) and the family on the second and sometimes the third floor. There’s an intricately decorated with paintings and carvings central room where the main cook/heating stove sits. There are the classic wooden intricately carved and painted benches that serve as communal seating and convert into beds.

Piles of food come out cooked mostly by Tenpa’s sister-in-law (who, in classic fashion, is married to two of Tenpa’s brothers (Tenpa’s niece, gorgeous, bouncy alive, and seven climbs from person to person.

It’s not quite clear which brother is her father but it doesn’t really matter.)

I ask how long his family has lived here. He tells me how his family has been in the village for generations but, during the Cultural Revolution, because they’d been landlords, they lost everything. “My father and mother went to the woods,” he says, “they had no where else to stay. He even started hunting and fishing to find food.” Tibetans do NOT hunt and they do NOT fish. They may eat meat but they revere sentient beings too much.

“Sometimes,” he continues, “They even had to eat…bon.”

“Bon?” I repeat not understanding.

Frustrated he makes a crushing movement in his hand…”How do you

Say?…bon, bon, no wait, bone.”

“They sometimes ate crushed bone?” I ask to clarify.

“Yes. Crushed bone mixed with tsampa.”

Later Tenpa’s Uncle joins us. Now a 78-year old monk, Uncle was fighter. It is said that the only people the PLA feared when the annexation took place were the khampa fighters who took to the hills and fought long after the ’59 absorption (re-absorption depending on your perspective). I am sitting around a stove, eating dumplings, sipping sweet tea, with people who have lived through some of the most dramatic and heart-wrenching events of the 20th Century. I’m holding hands with a man who, after fighting desperately for his country, his people, his way of life, devoted himself to teaching and living the dharma.

I wander off to bed as the talk continues deep into the night…butter tea and whiskey fueling the words.

1/27

In the morning we visit an ironworker. A recipient of a microfinance loan, he’s paid back the first loan and is looking for a larger second loan so he can expand to meet demand. His welding mask is a children’s Halloween mask (best I can tell it’s Casper the Ghost) supplement by a pair of knock-off Ray Ban Aviators (the two are taped together with black electrical tape).

He’s already employing two people and he could expand to three more. His little shop fixes everything. They make iron decorations for atop buildings; the decorations are simples of the dharma and the

Buddha’s teachings (like kneeling deer that would flank a wheel of the dharma, symbol of the Buddha’s first turning of the wheel–teaching of the dharma–in the deer park at Varanasi.) There are parts of motorbikes and stoves everywhere in various stages of repair.

He’ll get the loan (of I think $1000), which will enable him to not only hire and train more people but also expand his inventory of motorbike parks.

This is the type of micro finance that works. The ironworker was orphaned as a boy and raised on the streets of the village. I can see someday he’ll be the village leader.

Our last activity is to visit an area Tenpa wants to turn into a campground. Using a classic nomadic yak hair “black tent” as a centerpiece, he wants to create a base camp to bring westerners too see the gorgeous scenery that is Minyak. Sitting on a cliff edge, surrounded by endless mountains, pine forests, and barley grass fields, overlooking a river that would be a perfect Class I or II whitewater experience, the spot is perfect.

I see families coming to camp, ride horses into the mountains, raft, and experience life in a tiny village at the rooftop of the world. We tell him he has to build showers (solar-heated) and at least composting toilets.

1/28

Destination: Back to Kangding

We wake early and frost is everywhere (including on our breath) but the night was warm and comfortable. Four of us, including Uncle, slept in the same room and so the various sounds of middle-aged men rocked me to sleep.

Before saying goodbye, we walk to a recently completed stupa. Built with the funds of Don, one of our companions, it contains precious relics each of the village’s families have held for generations.

We stand before it, watched over by yaks. Uncle conducts a fire puja ceremony, blessing us, our work, the stupa and all who visit it. As the juniper bushes burn sending out the cleansing, blessing smoke, seven-year old niece hopes over, back and forth through the smoke. I keep thinking how blessed she is.

We pack up to say our goodbyes. Tenpa is nervous because it’s snowed in Kangding and the pass over the mountains from the Minyak area into Kangding, dicey in good weather, will be treacherous. With chains on the 4WD vehicle, we head off. The variety of vehicles we pass, chained and unchained, amaze. Motorbikes carrying TVs and cast iron stoves trying to negotiate a winding, switchback road with a 7% grade and a surface of slick ice stuns.

At the top of the pass, we stop at a stupa for pictures and videos and the wind is so strong we can barely stand.

We continue on, stopping occasionally to check the chains and eventually drive into Kangding, Phase Three is officially over.

1/29

Destination: Chengdu

We’ve a long ride ahead of us. I’m overwhelmed with ambivalence. I know getting to Chengdu is the first part of my making my way home (to what is clearly the NEW Land of Snows–NYC). But so many images and feelings are tied to this land, this people. David Whyte has a poem called House of Belonging and in it he writes:

This is the bright home

in which I live,

this is where

I ask

my friends

to come,

this is where I want

to love all the things

it has taken me so long

to learn to love.

This is the temple

of my adult aloneness

and I belong

to that aloneness

as I belong to my life.

There is no house

like the house of belonging.

I belong in NY. Of that I have no doubt. But it is a wondrous experience to travel to the other side of the world only to feel, again, as if I’ve entered another House of Belonging.

See you all soon.

Losar Tashi Delek.

Jerry

I remember years ago, when I worked for CMP and had first one and then two kids in the company’s daycare center. I remember leaving whatever I was doing—even if we at the magazine where I worked were on deadline—to run downstairs to feed Sam and Emma lunch. My friend Rob and I would often bump into each other in the hallway, the skin on our faces plastered back, our mouths slack and open like those guys strapped into land-jets in the Bonneville Salt Flats trying to break the speed of sound, racing to meet the deadline, relieve the caregivers, and feed our kids mashed peas.

It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now.  Talking to a client this morning, he reminded me that running faster often feels like working harder. “If I’m not panting,” he said, “I don’t think I’m working.”

It’s a lousy strategy: It feeds the anxiety of never enough; it gets in the way of thinking clearly; and it convinces you to mistake motion for meaning.

I understand where it comes from. First, the adrenaline is addictive; it’s such a rush to, well, rush from task to task. Moreover, it can also feed a sense of superiority: “Geez what I’m doing must be so important, look at how fast I’m moving. Look at how slowly you’re moving.”

More deeply, it’s also fed by the enmeshing between work and identity. I am what I do and if what I’m doing is fast and, therefore, important than I must be worthy enough to have earned your respect, your love.

While everyone—myself included—can fall prey to using work as a prop for self-meaning, I find that founder/entrepreneurs are particularly susceptible to this loss of self. This despite the fact that the ultimate expression of the trend is a narcissism that borders on socio-pathology; think of the many, many asses in business whom we admire precisely because they have a single-minded focus on execution, causing everyone around them to pant their way through the workday.

Of course we don’t put it that way. We admire them, we say, because they are successful.

Unfortunately then we never get around to debating the meaning of that word: successful. We too infrequently pause and consciously, and with all of our adult awareness, define for ourselves success.

Months ago I wrote about Disappearing into the Fire…the seductive lure of losing one’s self in work. This enmeshing, this panting, this forever chasing higher and tougher goals is yet another form of Disappearing.

But, but, but…there is a power in reaching; “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” said Browning, “or what’s a heaven for?”  There’s an audacity in reaching, in dreaming of a new way to change a light blub, search for something on the internet, connect people across time and space. And we should never lose that audacious reach.

But to lose one’s footing in the reaching serves no one.

Earlier this month, I stepped on a subway at the 42^nd Street station. It was the uptown No. 1 train. I felt myself shoved and looked up, angry and startled. This was no ordinary jostle.

The next thing I remember, I’m laying on my back, my head cradled in the lap of a cop, my body covered in blood. Cold-cocked. Without provocation, without warning, I’d been knocked unconscious, the soft tissue of my nose damaged, my cheek lacerated, and one tooth broken. And I couldn’t remember my name, where I was headed, or who’s the President.

Laying on a gurney at Bellevue, as my mind re-gathered itself, I considered how lucky I was to not have been pushed in front of the train or stabbed by the obviously sick and hurting guy who’d done this. In the weeks that followed, I thought often about how fortunate I was to have been able to handle taking time off from work or have the resources to see good doctors and get my body back together.

And while I’m still recuperating, still in a process of healing and pulling myself together after all this, I realized this morning that the most important thing to come from the random, senseless attack was the reminder that panting doesn’t work. That disappearing into the motions of life, losing touch with those inner worlds that define true success, is a lousy way to live.

Next month a good friend and terrific coach, Ann Mehl, and I will be running a one-day workshop on just this topic (Disappearing into the Fire—not being sucker-punched on the subway…that’s a different workshop and I think I’m particularly skilled at teaching it.). It’s a bit of an experiment. For me, it’s a chance to work through material I’ve found so powerful, so life-altering. For our clients, both current and prospective, it’s a chance to dive deep, and ideally find strategies to come home–with each other as well as with both Ann and me.

The ease with which they finished each other’s sentences, completed each other’s thoughts was so graceful, seamless that they could have been sisters. They’ve worked together for years and as they sat on the couch in my living room, on that Sunday afternoon, they nervously fingered the agenda they’d brought.

It was a list of the issues they’d wanted to discuss, a list of potential solutions to their problem. They’d wanted feedback on their proposed solutions. They wanted to remain positive.

“Okay,” I said, “but before we go to the solutions, can you tell me about the problem?”

The eyed each other, paused. K turned to L: “Go ahead. Tell him about the article in the Times.”

An article about a rival organization had come out on a Saturday.  L had read it and understood how the Times had positioned the rival as moving directly into their space, becoming even more competitive. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was how her boss would take it. She knew he’d go ballistic. But, drained from the years of withstanding his tirades, she finished her coffee and did nothing.

She paid for that coffee on Monday morning. The boss came storming into the office, blowing past all of L’s staff, and started screaming at her. He was angry that the Times had gotten it so wrong. He was angrier still that L hadn’t jumped all over this “problem” and alerted him over the weekend. He was angriest that his board members were concerned and had emailed him. He had been unprepared and he was furious.

Of course this wasn’t the first time. It was a long-standing pattern. But K and L wanted to be strong women. They didn’t want to complain. They wanted to find a solution. They wanted to see what I could help them dream up in terms of changed structures or changes in the way they respond to get their boss to stop yelling.

I said, “Other than in case of fire, there’s no excuse for yelling.”

They were shocked. I repeated my line, adding, “If a friend came to you to tell you that their spouse was hitting them, would you sit with them and concoct ways to make sure the spouse didn’t get angry? Abuse is abuse—plain and simple.”

We’ve all worked with bullies and, unfortunately, in the business of early-stage businesses—where so many companies are run by founders and funded by investors—there are a lot of bullies out there.

I was 13. Living in Gravesend, Brooklyn. My bully was named Sal Quartucci. He was a bit of a manic, hyper Chihuahua-type of kid He’d hope around, spit out his ideas for cool things to do, and try to get you to agree with him. One summer night, we were hanging out in front of Sts. Simon and Jude church on Avenue T when Sal got a bright idea. He wanted to cross McDonald Ave.  to “beat up the Jews.” We lived on Italian side of the avenue and there was a fairly large community of Orthodox Jews who lived on the other side.

I was disgusted. I was afraid. I was pissed. Mumbling something about the whole thing being stupid, I turned to go home. Sal leapt in front of me, calling me a faggot, a pussy, for not wanting to be up some old Jewish guys. I pushed past him and he ran in front of me. Again, goading me, hounding me. Suddenly, scaring the crap out of myself, I grabbed his shirt, threw him down on the ground, punched him the nose. I can still hear the crack and still see the blood on my hand. Our friends pulled me off him and I ran home, shaking.

I thought of Sal as K and L told me of the bullying, the screaming, the berating they’d withstood for more than ten years. Part of me wanted to deck their boss but I searched my head, my experience, my heart for advice on how to respond to them.

I then thought of M.

M and I started working together only a few weeks ago. At the December board meeting, one of his board members—his core investor—told him his job was on the line. This investor had put a few hundred thousand dollars into the company 18 months before. It was a first round, and it’d be combined with some friends and family money. This was M’s first business, his first time as a CEO.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about an investor or director expressing their view that the company may be failing, that the CEO may be failing. Indeed, their implicit responsibility is to identify problems in advance.

But what made this bullying was the style. No warning. No discussion. In fact, the month before the same director had told M that he was the best first-time CEO he’d yet worked with. It was the whiplash that was so troublesome.

In our first session, M and I worked through some of his options. When he called for his second session, he surprised me.

He’d gone to lunch with the director and confronted him.

“When you said that to me, “ he reported he told him, “It had the opposite effect of what you’d wanted. Instead of focusing me, and challenging me, you scared me. All I could think about for weeks was what a terrible job I was doing. How does that help our shareholders?”

I was thrilled. “What’d he say?” I asked.

“He apologized. He told me I was right. And then we started talking about the challenges to the business model.” In the end, confronting the director changed the whole dynamic.

A few years ago, a VC friend of mine called me about one of his portfolio company CEOs. The young man is brilliant, innovative, brash and terrific at fund-raising. In some ways, a VC’s dream but he’s also unpredictable, impulsive and a screamer.

I sent the VC  a copy of Michael Maccoby’s HBR article, Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons.

“That’s him,” the VC emailed me, “that’s the CEO. What do I do?”

Maccoby recommends getting the leader a “trusted confidante,” someone who can pierce the narcissism with a straightforward “Cut the shit out.”

I shared the suggestion and added that this guy could use coaching—probably even therapy.

K and L sat quietly as I talked about possibly talking to the boss (as M had done). I suggested trying to engage a board member—we rejected that thought because the boss is so paranoid.

I suggested the Maccoby’s “trusted confidante.” The guy had fired everyone who could play that role.

I suggested trying to implement 360-degree reviews so the board—which is no doubt fully aware of this guys antics but for a variety of reasons unwilling to confront him on his behavior—would have no choice but to deal with it.

In the end, though, I was frustrated. I had little to offer them. I could counsel them, help them get through the week, help them deal with the residual fall out of these tirades but there was nothing they could do to change this guy’s behavior entirely. They could build little coping strategies but they were not going to change this guy.

As they got up to leave, they thanked. ‘This was so helpful,” one said.

“Why?” I asked. “We didn’t really change anything.”

“But we did,” they explained. “You helped us realize this isn’t our fault.”

I realized then beyond making dysfunctional organizations more dysfunctional, beyond getting in the way of actually executing on the business at hand, the true cost of bullying is the damage it can do to one’s self perception. And that’s the real tragedy.