Sometimes I find that I cannot move forwards to follow the path that I want to take. The gears whirr noisily inside my head, and The Controller shouts “STOP. What If?”, “STOP, What If?”, again and again, at the top of his voice.
Racked by doubt and paralysed by fear, I find that I have lost my will to continue, and so I grind to a halt – frustrated, cross, until stillness descends, and I remember that however wide or deep the chasm, I can build a bridge that even only spanning imagination, offers a moment when a step can be taken. Then, slowly, I can make progress once more, to come closer to where I want to go. And I and am able to scream at the top of my voice: “So What? To hell with it.”
(c) Tim O’Hare, December 2023
WHAT IF? SO WHAT?: This poem came quickly. I was writing in my morning journal about how I had not found any time for poetry writing for several months, and starting to wonder whether perhaps this might be an indication that my well of inspiration had run dry. At the same time, I was thinking about the value of just putting my poems ‘out there’ without any expectation that they might ‘land’. Suddenly, I found that I was writing again, and this poem emerged. I wasn’t sure what to give it as a title but settled on What If? So What? based on a phrase that I vaguely remember hearing the singer Tom Jones use in an interview years ago – something along the lines that “we must always try to turn ‘what ifs?’ into ‘so whats?’”. Don’t miss the hidden message in the second verse…!
In the early months of this year I read and heard several references to a soon-to-be published book: Wild Courage by Jenny Wood. My interest was piqued further after I viewed a Livestream of an episode of the podcast ‘A Productive Conversation‘, in which the host, Mike Vardy, chatted with the author about her book (A Productive Conversation: Episode 611 – Jenny Wood talks about wild courage and fearless self-advocacy). I duly ordered the book and began reading it soon after it arrived on my doorstep, optimistic that it was going to be an interesting and enjoyable read.
Wood’s basic idea is that in order to progress we need to have courage – to push through fear of the unknown, fear of discontent, fear of failure and fear of judgement by others. She argues that successful people feel, but put aside, all of this fear, becoming their own strongest advocate, and having the courage to take whatever steps are necessary to advance towards their goal(s).
The distinctive feature, or twist, in Woods espousal of this feel the fear and do it anyway approach to life is that she identifies nine traits that generally hold negative connotations, and then recasts each of them as a type of courage that the reader is encouraged to develop and deploy. The nine traits, and their associate courage, are as follows:
WEIRD – the courage to stand out
SELFISH – the courage to stand up for what you want
SHAMELESS – the courage to stand being your efforts and abilities
OBSESSED – the courage to set your own standard
NOSY – the courage to dig deeper
MANIPULATIVE – the courage to influence others
BRUTAL – the courage to protect your time and energy
RECKLESS – the courage to take calculated risks
BOSSY – the courage to listen and lead
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this approach, in fact I think it provides an interesting route into thinking about this territory…
(can you tell that there’s a but coming?)
…but what I wasn’t expecting from the book, and what disappointed and annoyed me as I read it, was the way that at every turn Wood focused on deploying all of this courage in one area only – career advancement and promotion – so much so that I was left feeling rather battered by the notion that this is the only thing that really matters in life.
At various points in the book I found my anger rising as Wood gave precisely the kind of advice that I detest. For example, in Brutal she instructs readers to ‘let the tree fall‘, i.e. to skip ‘unimportant’ tasks quietly. She suggests that ‘if they’re actually necessary, they’ll come around again, and you’ll have been busy doing unambiguously important work in the meantime.‘. To this I say ‘no, no, no‘. There is nothing more annoying than colleagues who fail to respond to simple requests for information citing the ‘if it’s important I’ll be asked again’ line of reasoning… It’s selfish, inefficient, and plain and simply rude; it says to the person who has sent the request that their time is not important and that it is yours to waste. No, just respond to the request promptly and don’t force people to keep track of your lack of response and to ask twice, or however many more times it takes to rouse you out of your own little world… [rant over]
I also found Wild Courage to be guilty of over-using the ‘personal story’ approach to illustrating the points that were being made. Perhaps some readers like this kind of thing. The odd personal story is fine, I think, but please sprinkle in a few from different scenarios, different worlds, other people etc., so that not every example is drawn from the world of working for Google.
In the end, I found myself frustrated by my reading of Wild Courage. It’s not that the approach and the ideas contained in the book aren’t valid. In the end, the courage that might stem from embracing each of the ‘negative’ traits can be expressed in a nice, succinct and positive manner that has much wider application that career advancement simply by putting the word courage to one side in each phrase. Then, the lessons that flow from those nine traits become a simple set of instructions:
stand out
stand up for what you want
stand behind you efforts and abilities
set your own standard
dig deeper
influence others
protect your time and energy
take calculated risks
listen and lead
which to my mind is a whole lot easier to absorb and a lot more useful than getting caught up having to justify the adoption of those negatively associated words, spinning the idea of courage out of them and suggesting that there is something a little wild about doing so. And what’s more, it’s a set of instructions that is clearly applicable to almost every aspect of life and not just the narrow, corporate-career-focus that Wood chooses to target.
It is time to banish thoughts of giving up, to be replaced by the comfort of giving in – acceptance rather than flight, to fold back the shutters, emerging from the dark of night – allowing in some light.
It is time to cease the role of the bully, forcing the fearful child within to be the man he thought he should. Instead, enfolding in a loving hug to draw out all he could have been. If only he had understood.
It is time to give the boy a chance, to give him space to play his part, to let him fall and graze his elbow – blood and gravel – even though tears may flow. He may be strong enough. How else will we know?
It is time to take those steps that cross the threshold of the door, to find that it was open all along – never locked – and behind it? The voice of the song oft heard, though always sounding slightly wrong.
It is time to push on through the fog, that cloak of damp that so confuses senses, seeking clearer skies, different colours, other forms to try on for size. Who knows how those choices may surprise?
It is time to give in, not to temptation, hopelessness or terror, but to follow the path to those imagined lands, shaping their form with my own hands. Finally, he understands.
(c) Tim O’Hare, August 2023
IT IS TIME: This poem came completely out of the blue, coalescing onto the page in less than an hour. It reflects a big decision made on the previous day – to signal that I must let go of a big role at work, to stop fighting with the thought that to do so was some kind of failure, and to just accept that I no longer have it within me to push and cajole or fight with myself anymore.
Tim O'Hare 