Pip Coburn

Dry Humor:

“…deliberate display of emotional neutrality or no emotion, commonly as a form of comedic delivery to contrast with the ridiculousness or absurdity of the subject matter. The delivery is meant to be blunt, ironic, laconic, or apparently unintentional…”… WIkipedia

In a moment I will focus on dry humor specifically. But this note is really about hurting humor.

A few thoughts came to mind, including that perhaps I might make way such that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day sits next to Thanksgiving as my favorite holiday. Currently, I have no rituals or traditions on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day to celebrate. Maybe this writing is a start.

The word keeps flashing: Dignity.

I sense it is an incredibly important idea but the word itself is thrown around a bit too much.

I sense it is often used as a weapon as opposed to a bridge.

I’m digging into it…

A couple groups of people (approximately 35 in all) in the Community for Change we have all been nurturing, gathered to explore what “Gratitude-meets-Process” looks like. These were some of the thoughts that I pulled from the discussions.

I shared this note below this morning with a dear dear friend and then with Irwin. Amazing thinking I received back from Irwin…. Not a surprise. I hope it makes a difference. It is a bit longer than normal Writer’s Circle notes.

“For the sake of others you renounce your privacy…” - Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche 

I reread this idea above recently. It stopped me in my tracks.

“Why in the world, again, would I renounce my privacy? To help others? Huh?”

When I think of privacy, I don’t think about medical records or my “data.” I think of my mind and all that runs through it.

Way back when, I was terrified of sharing many of my thoughts.

All the doubts and fears and reactions and anxieties and sadness and hurt and processes and insecurities and mistakes...oh.  

My failures. When I was wrong. When I was responsible for hurting someone. When I was mean…or envious… 

Or when I knew it was right to say, “I’m sorry” and deeply mean it but…I couldn’t.

I think I was trained to hide all of this stuff because, surely, it would make me far less attractive to other humans…

I wanted the “privacy” to all THAT stuff in my mind.

If people thought I was…perfect…and didn’t see my shortcomings…all would be great, right?

I don’t know Keith Ferrazi.  

Many of my “thank yous” go to people I have never met! 

His book, “Never Eat Alone,” is the best “community creation – meets – business” books I know.  I suspect we are both equally horrified by the manner in which Machiavellian “networking” is the cultural norm in business.  Keith provides a spiritual road map for humanity in business. I read the book approximately 17 years ago.

“They won’t remember what you said or what you did but they will remember how they felt in your presence.”

…Maya Angelou

In 2003, I was walking south down Park Avenue side-by-side with my friend Mike Hawley.

He was on my right. 

Always buoyant. Always buoyant.

He was super super fun to be around. 

It was a sunny day. Probably about 4pm.

I am going to give a tad more background before my “Thank You.”  You will see why. Mike was no ordinary man. And yet his game-changing advice for me was so so basic.  

 Early this morning at about 6:20am, I stopped at a rest area on Interstate 87 while heading down from Saratoga to Pleasantville.  I realized two anti-pet-peeves about the now ubiquitous face masks being worn!

Anti-Pet Peeve #1                 Putting on my face mask as I headed into the truly gorgeous rest area…

Anti-Pet Peeves #2               Removing my face mask after I left the building as was back near my car…

As I thought of these anti-pet-peeves, I thought, “geez, that’s funny! One joy comes from putting it on and one joy comes from taking it off! Funny??!!”

A few years ago, in Park City, Utah, near the completion of a two-day gathering we call Road Makers, Rob Rose said that it was so nice and valuable to have a space he could show up not as a superhero—which is often required at business gatherings—but, instead, as his alter ego Clark Kent. 

Way back in the 1990s, a family friend switched jobs. 

One morning last week in the Black Cow, I had the thought that every single relationship I have in my life that I consider super important (which there are a LOT) started out as “stranger”.   

Every single one started out there and somehow progressed.  

Thankfully. 

Yet… we systematically teach “stranger danger”.

This seems to be a super duper societal challenge if we wish for wide-scale empathy (which I do) as well as intimate friendships (which I do).  If we want to create “bridges” in the world (which I do) we would be helped if we could eliminate “stranger” as opposed to “reinforcing” it.    

“Stranger” seems to be the available on-ramp to all relationships.

I have two goals this next twelve months for the Community for Change.

I want to share them because I sense if I share them, the odds of them happening may go way up.

But before that…I spoke with my high school basketball coach, Joe Mayer, yesterday.

Why would anyone still stay connected to their high school basketball coach decades after high school ended?

Kelly helped me figure it out a bit this morning.

Every time I think of my dear friend and mentor, Hale, I feel warm.

He passed away about 8 years ago. We met in Maine. At the Wayfarer. He took me in.

When I learned of his passing I stopped.

I cried. I was so thankful beyond words that I have. 

I knew there would be a lot to “process.”  Maybe “process” first and foremost means “feel” as opposed to “think through.” 

I don’t know.
 

A few years back, for a few days I was really struggling as I was thinking that my attempts to nurture community in the world were utterly fruitless. I called my son Eamon late one night as I was driving on 95N somewhat dejectedly crossing into New Hampshire on my way to Maine.

He responded that he knew community was extraordinarily important to me.

“We don’t wake up to save the world. Rather, we wake up to wonder a little more about how other people are doing… And how our actions affect their well-being.” - Ani Pema Chodron

In our family somewhere about 15 to 18 years ago, the word “fair” became known as the “f” word. I asked our bickering, complaining five-year-old kids what they really meant by “fair” in some heated moment and they couldn’t define it. 

“Life is what happens when we are busy making plans…”

This morning (December 22) I sketched out what I want to accomplish before 1 pm today when my son Eamon and I will drive from Georgetown to Pleasantville to join in on the Christmas joy back home.

I apportioned all my 6 and a half hours of time for the morning quite carefully. There is so much I want to accomplish. So I penciled out a very specific plan… and…

…It all fit!!!

About 10-12 years ago, my friend Om Malik said that “media” was the business of attracting attention.

I suspect there may be more human talent being applied to getting the attention of other humans than any other professional activity.

And these are real real real pros involved.  These folks are GREAT at “storytelling”!  (in quotes “storytelling”)

They are GREAT at reducing the complexity of an amazing world into an eye-catching, fully fully fully fully engaging “story”.

I sense that we have taken in an idea that humans are all so different… and maybe miss how very very much we are the same…

…to our collective detriment.

I read this passage last month about shared human experiences:

In 2006 during an investment meeting, when asked about a certain portfolio position Helen said she felt “comfortable” with the position size we held in stock XYZ.

This is typical investment world lingo:  “comfortable”.

On that day though for whatever reason, I heard something that seemed “off.”

So on the spot, I told the group we were outlawing feelings.

I remember it right after September 11th, 2001.

I remember it during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. 

I remember it here in New York after Hurricane Sandy amidst the widespread ongoing power outages.

What I remember is that people were… really nice and caring with one another.

I remember people in our town of Pleasantville actively lending their generators to others in town who were still without power.  Board games by candle light.  We sorta hoped the power would never return.

It felt like… we were in it together. 

I met up with someone last week who wanted to talk in the context of personal growth.

He described himself as an introvert.

After 75 minutes, I think he was reconsidering if that was so.

Have you ever been in an introduction circle? 

THIS INTENTIONALLY RUNS THROUGH the email below and the link is key to the video.

At times I have some non-typical thoughts. Yesterday a dear friend prefaced some words to me with “If you were a normal person I would have been surprised, but I know you aren’t normal.”

I am not.

I have some big ideas that are core to me that seem a tad out of place in most places.

Some people (even beyond Brinton)…    love…  ants and bees… 

I marvel at the collective consciousness.

Ants and bees – it seems -- do have major advantages:

They don’t seem to suffer the downside from “politics” or “corporate ladders” or “bonus pools” or “exit strategies” or “529s” or  “remote working” or “promotions” or “work/life balance” or “face time” or “timing of vacations” or “transference overlays with authority or bosses” or “how millennials are different” or “automation”...

A couple years ago I heard the following working definition of patience:

“Patience is the willingness to remain in discomfort”.

 When I heard this definition I immediately ceased asking others to be patient.  As Priscilla suggested in repeating my logic back to me, asking others to be “patient” might be equivalent to saying “suffer in silence”. ;)  

I might easily have been interpreted as callous or mean-hearted when about 15 years ago I said:

“I Don’t Want To Save The World”

The orientation of the conversation I was in was that solutions HAD TO “scale” to matter

I didn’t have great words for it other than “I don’t want to save the world” but maybe what I meant was that I think each and everything along the way matters…   each smile we share with a stranger or our kindness with a cashier who has had a long shift…  everything…  and that when we get that sorta something sorta Silicon-Valley-ish “scale” thinking and maybe even a smidge of self-importance in us it might discourage the possibility for the beauty and grace and patience and gratitude and joy of continual tender mercies and “small" successes among seven billion people.

About 22 months ago, I started playing with a “formula” to organize “making lasting change”.

One day I asked our brand new Fellow Amanda:

“What conditions are required to make lasting change?” and she set off for eight weeks thinking and writing and having fun with the topic.

I think I am finding that hearing “no” provides me an incredible moment to advance relationships.

This is a story with a happy ending…

I remember vividly in May of 2010 getting off the interstate on to a back road just about 20 minutes away from the tiny mountain oasis of Sundance, Utah where we were just about to host our second annual gathering of 30 dear friends to be offline for three days to work on our craft as investors.

I LOVE Sundance.

The time and space that my coach Jullien Gordon creates for me each week is such that most anything can happen.

And a couple weeks ago we explored Green Eggs and Ham the Dr. Suess classic ;) I wonder if Jullien years ago would have imagined a career built around such discussions.