One for all and all for one

NEWSLETTER #3 March 2023

Hello and welcome to my March newsletter.

In January, I reflected on the value of beginning with the end in mind. Last month I wrote about the power of perception to move mountains with your mind. This month I’ve been thinking about people.

Meeting people. Leading people. Understanding people. Managing people. Celebrating people. A huge portion of our time is spent gearing our emotions, attention and actions around people who aren’t us.

And yet, they can be such hard work. Hell is other people, Satre famously observed. So why do we fill our lives with them?

Hell is (not) other people.

The question brought up two abiding memories of where I first about ‘hell’; the church to which I was taken as a child.

In the first memory, I’m 9, and the vicar has challenged me and Steven Potter to race a bible from the back of the room to the front, without stepping in the aisle or pews. No throwing allowed.

I launch myself out the back of the church, sprint around the building, burst through the crèche door, vault over a tide of toddlers, and emerge panting at the front.

But I am too late.

Steven’s bible has already arrived, passed hand to hand by the amused congregation to the waiting reverend, who smiles gratefully at Steven for demonstrating his point.

In the second memory, I’m 13, in a cross-legged circle of pubescent Pathfinders (Christianity made trendy for teenagers), looking up at our leader John.

“In hell,” John tells us, “everyone sits at a giant table, covered with the most delicious food you can imagine. You sit there, starving hungry, desperate to eat. But you can’t. Because your arms are locked in straight irons, rendering your elbows incapable of bending to bring the food to your mouth. All this delicious grub and you can’t eat a bite. Ever. That’s hell.”

“What about heaven?” I venture.

“Oh,” says John, jauntily. “In heaven it’s exactly the same. Except no one is hungry. Because they’re lifting the food sideways and feeding each other.”

It turns out hell is not other people. Hell is our inability, failure or refusal to work together. Or looked at another way, co-operation is heaven.

We co-operate all the time. In organisations, we co-operate with other people to progress towards a common purpose. We do the same in sports teams. And in choirs, acting companies and orchestras. And even in families (sometimes).

And we do it in myriad ways. We commune to make decisions (meeting people). We unite and inspire to a vision (leading people). We diagnose before we prescribe (understanding people). We create conditions for the best work (managing people). And we champion achievements and milestones (celebrating people).

So what if we frame co-operating with other people not as an obstacle to be navigated on our journey to happiness but as the route itself?

Because actually, hell might be the exact opposite of other people: the lack of them. After all, loneliness can kill. And in the longest running study on human happiness, one of the consistent characteristics of the oldest happiest humans is the quality of their relationships with other people.

Maybe the vicar and John had it right all along then: partnership is paradise. Or to paraphrase their colleague Clarence, the guardian angel from It’s A Wonderful Life:

“No one is a failure who has friends.”

We fill our lives with other people because, like it or not, we need them. And they need us.

So we focus on our capacity to co-operate with them. To get along. To embrace collaboration as craft. Relatability as a skill to cultivate. Friendship as an art to perfect.

Because our very life may depend on it.

This one, or the next.

Inwards, onwards and upwards,

George

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