Time To Talk Day – my “little episode”

~ Phil Bartlett ~ 4 Comments

I’d been feeling a bit lost for a few weeks. Maybe a few months even, I’m not too sure. A while, anyway. Not completely without purpose, but lacking a little… something. “Not feeling it” as they say. It’d been a time of introspection, not all of it particularly useful, coupled with a fair bit of time wishing I weren’t so introspective. It can all get quite meta when I’m thinking about how I feel. And how I feel about how I feel. You get the idea.

I get like that sometimes. It’s kind of exhausting, to be honest. I get into my own head and get stuck there for a bit. Outwardly I’m fine – perhaps a little skittish or distracted – but inside I’m spinning.

When I’ve been like this in the past, there’s always the internal monologue that just says I need to snap out of it. To follow the good old masculine trope and for fuck’s sake just MAN UP.

But of course, I know that bit of me doesn’t solve anything. Rejecting how I’m feeling, pretending it’s not real, or (even worse) beating myself up for even having these silly, selfish, weak things called emotions is a road I’ve been down before, and it’s always ended up at a dead end. [If you’re interested in one of those roads – perhaps the first dead end I found, actually – then you can find my story about my anxiety here.]

Unfortunately knowing all this in your more calm and more rational moments doesn’t necessarily help when you’re in the middle of it, because when you’re in the middle of the forest you can’t see the wood for the trees. And I was right in the middle of the forest.

Allow me to explain…

A long time ago I decided that if I was going to be leading people, in any way, big or small, I’d do that in a way that felt genuine and authentic to me. I’ve always known that the best way to bring people together was to try to connect with them – and to connect them to each other – with shared passion and values and purpose and all that good stuff. I don’t need to tell you that you only build trust through vulnerability, and that’s what I’ve done, for years.

This philosophy requires me to be emotionally open, genuinely caring, and empathetic not just to the individuals but to the group that individual is a part of too. If I’m not all of those things, all the time, then the connection doesn’t work in the same way. I’ve doubled down on vulnerability, time and again, because that’s what I believe in. There’s no question that it’s made my working life richer than I could have hoped for, but I can’t pretend there aren’t times when I’ve wished I could shut off the emotional side because it does take a hell of a lot of energy. You can’t reverse back out once you’ve started with an open, honest, vulnerable relationship because if you were to do so, the trust you’d built up would break into a thousand pieces, never to be put together in quite the same way again. Once you’re in, you’re in. And I’ve always been all in.

The result of that can be neatly summed up by this little gem from the visual artist Adam JK (you can learn more about him here if you like), who put it thus:

And that, mes amis, is the life of an ‘all-in’ leader, especially in the strange razor-edge world of running an advertising agency, where every success means people are working too hard and burning out and freaking out and you can see that they’re struggling and you wish you could do something… and every little failure means you might have to send someone home without a job. Someone you know, and care about. Someone you really, really like. Whose family you’ve met.

It’s always been personal for me. And the last couple of years only heightened that.

Authentic, vulnerable leadership is hard at the best of times, but leading through two years of global pandemic, where people’s expectations of their employer changed overnight and never changed back, has taken its toll on leaders the world over. I’m no exception to that. Overnight I felt responsible not just for the agency I run or the jobs of the people who work in that agency, but for the people themselves, too. We were the de facto community that people were missing. Work was, for many, the only human contact people had.

And so through two years of sustained growth in lockdown, I knew people were allowing their commute time to be subsumed by work, and working longer hours than ever. To help with that we were trying to hire people so quickly that there was no way we could be doing a decent job of embedding them into the group and setting them up for success. I could feel that we were cashing in all the “emotional currency” we’d been banking through the previous years.

Emotional currency is an idea I’ve talked about for a good few years now, and it’s simple enough – when things are going well and work feels good and morale is good and the mood is good then all that good stuff gets banked in people’s minds but more importantly in their hearts. The more the good continues, the more you bank. And then when things aren’t so good for a while for whatever reason, you have some good in the collective emotional bank which means you get some leeway – some time to get things good again. But here’s the rub – it’s not fair. You might have two years of good in the bank, but once you start withdrawing it’ll be gone in six months.

I could feel that the bank was getting empty. Not in the red, but not snow angels in the banknotes either.

And then as the shared experience of lockdown and Covid became smaller in the rearview mirror, everything happened. All at once.

Work got messy. The razor edge was sharp and painful. We were under pressure and I was out on a limb, fighting for what I thought was the right thing to do time and time again, holding on so tight that I couldn’t release, and in my own head so much that I started to question my instincts on things. And I’ve always trusted my instincts. Always.

Life got messy. An old friend took his own life, which rocked me in ways I still don’t really understand. Family members were in and out of hospital for operations which of course were always going to be fine but of course there’s always that bit of your mind which likes fucking with you in the middle of the night because WHAT IF..?

My head got messy. Losing sleep. Losing perspective. Losing myself.

It all came to a head on an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday morning at the end of June. My wife told me that she was going away with my sons for a few days in the summer holidays and I’d be at home for about 10 days on my own. My reaction wasn’t “sounds great, I’ll sit around eating pizza in my pants and get the lads round to play poker”. It was “I’ll go fucking crazy here on my own”.

The way I’ve described it since is by using the analogy of holding a mental tray. You’ve always got a decent amount of stuff on your personal tray, and most of it you put on there yourself so it’s all balanced in a way that you can handle. But if you keep on putting more and more things on it, then eventually you’re going to struggle. And then if other people stick some stuff on it as well, and aren’t as careful balancing…

I just about managed to put the tray down before I dropped it. Just.

I spoke to my team at work and agreed that I’d take some time off in the summer.

Which I did. A month away. Time to get some more stuff in my toolbox. Started some coaching and some yoga and meditation. Started going to the gym, too.

I can’t say the return to work was gentle, though. If anything it was worse than before the break: intense and toxic and kind of disgusting really. If you ever want a case study on how not to handle the return to work of a leader who’s been suffering with their mental health, give me a shout.

When, like me, you’ve spent your entire adult life ‘showing up’ as self-confident and full of energy, it’s actually pretty easy to fake it. To turn it on and turn up and get through and get out. So I tried to be what I thought people needed me to be. No one needs a leader who can’t trust his instincts. Who can’t trust himself at all, really. I was so wrapped up in my own stuff that I couldn’t really be the support that people needed, but I couldn’t tell them either because that would be putting more on them and they were already covering for me. I thought I was doing okay because the time off had given me a chance to get my nose just above the flood waters so I could breathe, but I was still only one slip from going under again.

I had a panic attack one morning before going into the office. I called my wife and she talked me down and I went into M&S and got some fruit and went into our offices and up in the lift and sat down and didn’t say a word about it to anyone.

I couldn’t take more time away because people needed me. Or at least that’s what I thought. But looking back, I wasn’t completely there anyway. By the time I started getting cluster headaches [read about the delight of those here if you fancy it. TLDR – they are horrible] towards the end of the year I was just limping towards the alluring finish line where 2022 would finally be consigned to history as the shittiest year of my life. Beating the year my mum died takes some doing.

BUT…

Lovely word, right? “But” makes everything that comes before it irrelevant. It turns the story.

But that was last year.

Yeah, I know that nothing magical actually happens at the end of December 31st, and that the whole idea of a “New Year” is just yet another construct that we’ve created – a story we’ve all decided to believe. But I needed to go with the romance of a new beginning. The turning of a page.

And as I sit here today, I do feel like I’ve turned the page.

Over the last six months since what I’ve euphemistically been referring to as my “little episode”, I’ve put a lot of time and energy into getting more things in my self-care toolbox that I can pick out as and when I need them. I’ve been going to the gym with a couple of friends who also could do with reshaping the dad bod [which considering I’ve been “Gym Free Since ’93” is quite a shift for me]. I’ve been doing a 1-2-1 yoga class every week since July. I’ve had some professional coaching which has helped me to get a better sense of my own values and what I need to be fulfilled. I’ve had a sprinkling of therapy along the way. Then just before the break in December, I learnt to meditate and now I’m doing that once or twice every day,. Last year I changed my meds and then this year got some advice and changed the dose which has helped. Hell, I even spent last weekend at a yoga retreat where as well as doing more yoga than I’ve ever done I also opened up to a load of complete strangers and chanted around a fire with a couple of shamen women for crying out loud [don’t worry I’m not converting – I just love a fire]. And perhaps above all, I’ve got my wife, and my two boys, and my dog, and the huge oak tree in the woods over the road.

I’m coming into this year feeling more centred and more solid than I have in a long time. Maybe ever.

At the same time, I’m also very conscious that all this is part of a journey and I can’t let myself be either complacent that somehow I’m magically “fixed” or concerned that “it’s only a matter of time before I crash again”. I just have to be whatever I am right now and be okay with that. I’m okay today. Tomorrow is tomorrow.

So why the hell am I telling you all this?

Well, there are a few reasons, actually.

The first one is then when I’m writing this, you’re not here. So I’m kind of talking to myself really – starting with the man in the mirror and asking him to change his ways [yes that is a Michael Jackson lyric – I couldn’t help myself and it’s lightened the mood a bit hasn’t it?]. It helps me to organise my thoughts, and as a result it’s kind of cathartic.

I’m also telling you because there’s a massive stigma around talking about mental health, especially in men, and if I can talk about it then at least I’m doing something to break down that stigma in some way. For me it’s just health -I’m not ashamed of my mental health problems any more than I’m ashamed of the fact that I need glasses or got diagnosed with gout at the age of 30 [a family disease for the Bartletts]. I take my pills for my brain at the same time as I take the ones for my liver. I take vitamins too. Sometimes I take something for allergies. It’s all the same. Talking breaks down barriers and stigmas and I have a lot of privileges in life so if I can’t talk openly about all this shit, who can?

If you’re a regular visitor to these pages, you may also have gathered that I’m a talker anyway, so this isn’t new news for a whole load of people. My immediate family know, and some of my extended family do too. A decent amount of the friends I’ve spoken to in the last 6 months know, because it would feel horribly inauthentic if they were to say “how have you been” and I were to say “yeah, fine thanks”, so I’ve tended to ditch the small talk and go for the big talk. And at work, I started off telling my immediate team, then thought it felt right to tell the whole agency about it because it’s real and I want them to know that it’s okay to not be okay. And then somehow I found myself in a really open and honest conversation with the new big boss in New York and I took a punt that he would get it and told him and he did get it and that felt good. So now a lot of people know I guess. Everyone, without exception, was kind and considerate and caring.

And now you know.

Which leads me to the last reason, which is actually all about you, dear reader

You see, the reason I overthink things and then write about it here is so that you can learn from my mistakes and avoid them (whilst, of course, making a whole set of completely different ones). Call it a friendly nudge, or wake-up call, or even a kind of non-specific remote intervention, but if you’re carrying your own tray and you’re wobbling, then please trust me, it’s not just going to magically fix itself. Yes, there may be light at the end of the tunnel but it’s no fun living in a tunnel on your own either and maybe, just maybe, a nudge around TIME TO TALK DAY might be the right time to maybe talk to someone about what you’re going through. It will help, I promise, and they will care, just like you would if the tables were turned. The truth is, they probably know already.

And on this day of all days, if you’re actually doing pretty well, actually, then you can make the world a better place by making a point of being emotionally available for the people around you who seem like they’re probably fine but actually might not be…

The colleague who always seems like they’re a step or two behind where they think they should be.

The family member who’s gone a bit quiet recently.

The friend who hasn’t made it the last few times you all got together.

Maybe they are fine, and you just have a nice chat and a catch-up and perhaps arrange a time to spend a bit of time together because it’s been too long, hasn’t it? But maybe they’re not, and you’re exactly the person they needed to talk to but just didn’t realise it. Either way, you get to talk to someone you care about.

Hey, don’t let me keep you. I’ve got a call to make anyway.

How to be a rock star

~ Phil Bartlett ~ Leave a comment

Rock star. Ooh just the sound of it. It evokes leather trousers, bright lights, screaming guitars and screaming fans. A life of excess – stimulation and perspiration, passion and parties, and never a dull day.

Rock stars bring in the crowds and send them home woozy with exhilaration and energy. They are the people in the bright lights, right at the front, performing and strutting and drinking in the applause and adulation.  They are the people who have that certain something that you can’t make and can’t fake.

In my industry of advertising, it’s both a truism and a cliché [funny how those often come together] to say that talent is everything. And just like in any industry where talent is key you can hear people using “rock stars” to talk about that talent. I once had a boss who always talked about who the “rock stars” were in the agency and across the industry, and that was the highest accolade anyone could get.  If you were someone they considered a “rock star”, you were someone to watch. You were cool, and exciting, and (most crucially) you were “in”. You were going places, goddammit!

So what does real rock ‘n’ roll look like? Allow me to help you take a little peak behind the safety curtain…

I once got VIP backstage passes for the last night of a European tour for a band you’ve probably heard of, which I got because I happen know one of them [in the least rock ‘n’ roll way you can imagine – my goddaughter was best friends with the daughter of one of the band members at nursery]. They were closing at my favourite venue on the planet, Brixton Academy in South London, and the gig was, as ever, absolutely epic.

South London’s finest

As the lights came on and the general public filed blinking out into the foyer, I flashed my Access All Areas wristband at the security guards with the giddy excitement of a kid at Christmas who thinks he might be getting the console he asked for because his dad gave a knowing look to his mum when there was an ad for it on the telly. I knew I was hitting the big time. I could only imagine what it was going to be like.

The closing party of a European tour! At South London’s premier venue. This is it folks:

THIS IS ROCK AND ROLL!!

ROCK

But of course it wasn’t at all. It was a load of very tired people having a quiet bottle of beer (or perhaps two) and sharing crisps from a big bowl.  No one drove a Rolls Royce into a pool. No one bit the head off a bat. No one smashed a guitar. The only drug in evidence was the paracetamol that the wife of one of the band asked for because she had a bit of a headache after all the loud music.

The guy I know from the band thanked me for coming (!) and asked if I’d enjoyed the show. And then he made a ‘ting ting ting’ noise on the side of his beer bottle and thanked all the people from the venue who had made the gig a success, and all the assistants and crew and management for their hard work over the previous weeks of the tour, and said that none of it would have been possible without every single one of them. They all clapped and then the band’s assistant got a bunch of flowers and cried a bit and said she loved her job.

So here we are, trying to bring some rock ‘n’ roll glamour to our weird creative industry, and it turns out the real rock stars aren’t like rock stars.  They’re humble and kind and thoughtful, and most importantly, they know that they’re nothing without the people around them.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that top, top talent isn’t crucially important. There’s no question that you need someone to come up with a melody that people sing on the way home. You need someone to be at the front to make the right noises at the right times.

What I am saying is perhaps the idea of the “rock star” creative or “rock star” account person or “rock star” strategist is… well… a bit narrow? It’s based on something that doesn’t really exist and it assumes that right up front in lights is where everyone should aspire to be. Which isn’t even the case in real bloody rock bands!

Yes, by all means celebrate the ones with their names in lights. Again, they’re crucial and you’re not going to make much memorable music without a few of them scattered across your organisation like the cushions which get scattered across your bed every single day only to be moved off at bedtime and then wait to get scattered again in the morning… [sorry, is that just me?]

But remember that there’s not a single band in the world who can do a damn thing without the lighting guy from the venue. Or the person who books the travel. Or the backing singers, or the brass section. Or the stage crew guy in black who runs on in a crouch mid-song and fiddles with a wire and runs off in a crouch as though he thinks that by crouching he makes himself invisible. Those are the people who make the night happen at all, let alone one to remember.

“Because I wear black no one can see me”

So take a moment, today if you can, to celebrate those people around you who don’t enjoy the limelight – who in fact would scuttle off stage into the velvety darkness of the curtains like a startled theatre mouse if the limelight came anywhere near them – and give them the appreciation that there’s no show without them.

Wait, before you do that.. maybe bear in mind that they might not enjoy being singled out publicly, so perhaps just a private message or word would do.

Or even just keep it to yourself in a moment of private gratitude, with the hope that the energy of the world will give them a warm feeling about something they can’t quite put their finger on.

Whatever you choose to do, the important thing is to do it. And know that when you do, you’ll be more like a rock star than you ever realised.

What have I done?

~ Phil Bartlett ~ Leave a comment

Though it was still early in the morning, it was already becoming hot in the Jornado de Muerto desert, about 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico. On this day, the sixteenth day of July, 1945, the world was about to change forever.

At 05:29, the United States Army detonated the first ever nuclear weapon. As huge sunlight flash subsided and the mushroom cloud rose into the air, amongst the 425 people in attendance was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory where the bomb had been designed, Dr J Robert Oppenheimer. He later said that the sight of the explosion brought to mind words from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita:

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

June 16th, 1945.

Developing the technology behind such a device had been his life’s work, and within days of that morning in the desert the dropping of bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August the 6th and 9th respectively, effectively ended the Second World War. The only nuclear bombs to have been used in combat, they killed between 90,000 and 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000 and 80,000 people in Nagasaki, with roughly half of those dying on the first day. 95% of those who died were civilians.

There’s no knowing how long the war might have continued without those bombs of course, or at what cost in terms of lives. History changed course at that point, leaving those stark figures as the epitaph to the largest war the world has ever known.

Oppenheimer’s moral conscience about his place in this history as “the Father of the Atom Bomb” was complex and nuanced. Two years after the bombs had extinguished both life and war at the same time, he would tell his peers that they had “dramatised so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war”, and connected science to the idea of sin like never before.

Yet when asked to reflect later in his life, he claimed to carry “no weight on my conscience”, seeing the scientist’s role as distinct and detached from the governments who decided to use their work. Scientists do science. Governments do war.

I’m not sure I could disconnect myself from the responsibility for my actions quite like that. But then I’ve never been indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in a flash. Perhaps that would be the only way to live with it.

And here we are, a month under 67 years later, and the mere threat of those same bombs that Dr Oppenheimer came up with allows a country to invade another and no one can do anything to stop them, just in case.

Oppenheimer never could have imagined. At the very first, it was all about the science. As Jeff Goldblum’s character memorably says in the first Jurassic Park movie:

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

It makes me wonder about all the other people who started out with good or decent intentions, and ended up making the world worse.

The people behind Twitter is an obvious one. Created as a way to connect people all over the world, it’s ended up being a place where the positive connections and sharing and love is vastly outnumbered by the division and demarcation and disunion. Where people can anonymously shout and threaten without consequence, and conflicting interested parties can choose to create and curate hatred and vitriol.

Google was set up to “democratise information’. Now they sell our personal data to whomever wants it so they can convince us to buy shit we don’t need, with money we don’t have. They could, and didn’t stop to think if they should.

Facebook was set up by pretty grim people for pretty grim original reasons, and then morphed into something that was nice for a bit but now is as bad if not worse as Twitter. For every local community group, there are ten more sowing dangerous lies, giving legitimacy to lies which in times gone by would have died on the edges of society. Connect enough crackpots and they’ll convince each other they’re all right.

[There’s no question this extreme online discourse has leaked into society as a whole. If you haven’t seen David Baddiel’s excellent documentary on the BBC then check it out in iPlayer here.]

There’s an old cliché that “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions”, but it’s a cliché because it’s true, of course. And on much smaller levels we all have it in our own lives.

As I say, I’ve never invented an atomic bomb, but I have been so desparate to avoid having to make people redundant that I ended up making things worse in the long run. I have allowed loyalty and hope to cloud my judgment. I have had times when the utopian working environment I was aiming for looked more like a sweatshop. I have tried to make someone laugh with a joke that actually made them cry. I have tried to hold everyhing together for everyone else and ended up forgetting myself. It”s no bomb, but I can learn from my “what have I done?” moments anyway.

You’re not Dr Oppenheimer either. But imagine for a second that you could undo the thing you did that’s put you in the situation you never planned for and don’t want to be in right now. Compare that to inventing the atomic bomb. One thing can’t be undone, but I wonder if the thing you’re thinking of can?

If it can, fix it. It doesn’t matter how, although I can give you some tips on a good sorry I wrote earlier here.

If you can’t, then don’t push it away and deny it, like the good doctor. But don’t carry it with you either like a stone in your shoe. We all make mistakes, even when the intentions are good. Instead just acknowledge, learn, and move forward.

It’s not about what you’ve done. Because there isn’t a damn thing you can do about that. It’s about what you’re going to do next which makes things better.

So go. Do that.

The interconnectedness of all things (via a pint of water).

~ Phil Bartlett ~ Leave a comment

Okay, you’re going to need to stick with me on this one. It’s been one of those ideas that has rattled around in the back of my brain for as long as I can remember, and over the years I keep coming back to it and trying to explain it to people a bit and then getting a bit self-conscious about it and letting it tail off. 

Thankfully, in the last couple of years I’ve found a couple of willing (by which I mean captive) listeners who have kind of got into it… or at least pretended to because a) I’m driving and they’re in the passenger seat and can’t escape, and b) they know that by humouring me they may get to stay up a bit later than usual. [Clever boys!] Of course I’m very aware that you’re not one of my children, so if at any point you want to hit the figurative ‘eject button’ then feel free. But I do think there’s something in all this, somewhere.

With all that said, I’ll give you the overall theme and see how we go from there. It is, quite simply:

WATER.

Still with me? Great. You’re already doing better than some people.

Some water

On a macro level, we really have no concept of water – or only a very, very basic understanding which really isn’t all that connected to anything we actually get.

For a moment let’s set aside the metric vs imperial measurements – whether we’re talking about a teaspoon or a half a pint or half a litre is less relevant than an idea. And because I was born in the 70s in the UK, I dance happily between the two without really noticing, like a bumblebee flitting from lily flower to lilac flower without ever really getting the difference. Or something like that.

So here’s the thing. I know what a pint* of water looks like, and I know what it feels like to drink one. It’s not an unusual thing. Yet what never fails to be shocking is just how very wet you can be when what looks like a relatively small amount of water is knocked into your lap by one of the aforementioned passengers. You’re totally soaked. Like, ‘ruined meal’ soaked. Trust me on that. If I had a pound etc etc…

A pint* of water

So let’s take it up a notch from there. How many pints in a sink full of water? Depends on the sink, obviously, but you could probably have a guess, right? Maybe 20, or 30? But it’s already pretty vague. Now imagine a nice, steaming hot bath. How many in that? 100? 150? One hundred and fifty times the thing that gets you totally soaked and ruins the meal? Maybe double that??

Get to a garden pond, let alone a swimming pool, and unless you happen to know then you’re just guessing. How many pints in an Olympic swimming pool? A million? A billion??*

The point where this always gets me is when I go to the seaside. I’m lucky enough to live only 40 minutes’ drive or so from the beach, and we’re often drawn there of a weekend. And looking out at that huge expanse, as far as the eye can see, creating the very horizon, I can’t help thinking the following:

It doesn’t just go unimaginably far… it also goes down.

A lot of water

As far as the eye can see. And down further than the highest mountain. And I can’t work out how much there is in a pond. It’s a level of incomprehensibility that frankly I find hard to comprehend.

We have a strong connection with water which we also don’t really understand. Countless studies have shown that being close to water increases the levels of hormones that make us feel motivated (dopamine) or calm and safe (oxytocin) whilst reducing our stress hormone (cortisol) [If you’re interested in this bit then check out the book Blue Mind available here and at all non-globally monopolistic bookshops.]

Who knew that “Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside” was actually a tune about hormonal balance and psychological welfare?

We humans are about 60% water. Our brains are more like 80%. Perhaps there’s something in that? That we feel connected to water because… well… we actually are connected. At a molecular level?

[Right, this is where I’m going to go for it. Strap in compadre]

From the macro of the depth of the sea, the micro of our molecular structure then drags me inexorably into my own mind.

Our planet, the place we call Earth, is effectively a closed system. Stuff just moves around within it. So every molecule of water that has ever existed, and will ever exist, is on Earth right now as you read this.

More water, this time really really small and close up

Some of it is in you. Some of it is in me. Some of it is in the tree just outside. A decent chunk of it is in the seas and oceans of course. If you look up, you can see some of it in the sky, tiny drops condensed into clouds, which will continue to grow until they can’t float any more and fall out of the sky as rain.

You know when you go outside in the winter and you can see your breath? What you’re seeing there is water. The water coming out of your body as a vapour which cools and forms little droplets of water. You are making a personal cloud of your very own.

Your own little cloud.

So come with me on this little journey…

Imagine you go outside on a crisp winter’s morning, and your breath pours out as this little cloud. As you watch it drifts up and dissipates and you think no more of it. In time one of those little water molecules in the air drifts up and become part of a bigger cloud, high up in the sky, buffeted by the wind. This molecule travels in the wind for hundreds of miles, over land and sea and eventually over to Spain, where it falls on a lemon grove. Taken up by the lemon tree, it travels through the roots and the trunk and the branch to end up in a lemon.

Don’t ask me how, but by incredible coincidence, 6 months down the line I’m sitting with my wife after a long day considering the universe, and we decide that we deserve a little gin with a little tonic. A couple of pieces of ice and we’re ready to chink glasses and go. But no! We are not heathens after all, and we know that a drop or two of lemon will turn good into great. So I reach for the lemon we bought at the weekend, cut out a couple of chunks and with a squeeze there we have it.

You and me

Yes, my wife and I are living the dream. But also yes – a molecule that was once part of you is now part of me.

We are connected in a way that neither of us can ever really comprehend, but trust me: this is as real as the hand at the end of your arm. It’s not an idea, or an ideal. This is science, and the great thing about science is that it’ll be as true in a thousand years as it is today.

If you’re still with me all this way down into my psyche [and bless you for your perseverance if you are] then you’ll be glad that we’ve arrived at the point.

On a molecular level we are, subjectively and scientifically speaking, all one.

You, me, them. Us. Every person on Earth, every animal, every plant and flower. The people you love and the people you don’t even like. The fish in the ocean, the birds in the sky. Insects in the garden and every blade of grass. Like it or not, you could have a bit of Piers Morgan in you right now and not know anything about it apart from a vague sense of nausea.

Once you get into that, suddenly the interconnectedness of all living things isn’t just some kind of spiritual, sitting on a mountain top, crystals and horoscopes level of bullshit: it’s biochemistry.

And once it’s true, and real, and scientifically accurate that we are all connected like this, then surely the idea of selfishness or conflict or division just disappears, just like your breath on that cold day?

I know, I know: I have just massively overcomplicated the concept of a body of water, and then followed that up by just massively oversimplifying the solution for world peace. Not bad for a couple of pages eh?

But there we have it. All the stuff that goes on in my brain to do with water. My brain which is, lest we forget, basically a load of water held together by the odd bit of something else.

Now we’ve come all this way together, through macro and micro, I think that rather than leave you hanging, I should probably leave you with a couple of suggestions…

First, get yourself down by some water in the next few days. Doesn’t need to be the coast – a lake or pond or even the “dirty old river” Thames will do. And stop for a moment, to consider how you feel when you’re doing it. Perhaps you might get a little boost of the ‘feel good’ hormones and a bit less of the stress one if you’re lucky.

And second… just take a moment to look around at the people and things around you – the water going into your morning cuppa; the tree you always go past on your commute; that bloke on the train – and consider how that maybe one day a little piece of that might be a little piece of you. It might just give you that little feeling of connectedness, or the idea of it, if only for a second.

And lastly, just forget about that thing I mentioned about Piers Morgan – I’m not sure any of us need to think too much about that.

[Incidentally, Buddhist teaching came up with the interconnectedness of all things thousands of years before anyone had heard of a molecule – if you want to learn more about that then I’ll share the book I read a while back which, alongside a modern understanding of psychology, discusses Why Buddhism Is True with a good dose of common sense and wit along the way]

*In doing the “research” [pushing it a bit there] for this, I found out that a pint is different in the US than in the UK***. For our purposes here, I am specifically thinking of an “imperial” pint of 568ml, not the freakish and frankly unnecessary US version which comes in at a paltry 473ml.

**In case you won’t be able to sleep for wondering, an Olympic swimming pool contains almost 4.5 million (UK) pints of water. 2.5 million litres to be precise.

***I also found out that the US have more than one kind of pint for liquids and dry stuff. From the website Britannica: “a U.S. dry pint is 33.6 cubic inches (550.6 cubic cm), while a U.S. liquid pint is 28.9 cubic inches (473.2 cubic cm)”. I know, right? No wonder they can’t make their mind up about gun laws.

Death of a brother

~ Phil Bartlett ~ 3 Comments

I’m not sure about writing this. It feels a bit… I don’t know… self-indulgent somehow? But then I can’t help thinking that the fact that we don’t talk enough about this could even be one of the reasons why it happens so much. Plus, there are things I want to say. So, here we go.

We buried one of my oldest friends yesterday. He had taken his own life.

First, I’m really not sure if that’s the best phrase for it. “He killed himself” feels too blunt and visceral. The idea of “committed” suicide brings with it the idea that it was a crime for much of history. I don’t know what to call it, but you get the idea.

He was someone I’d known since I was 8 years old. We were close friends right through high school. Played rugby together for years, and then even ended up (coincidentally) at the same university. One of my close gang from then right into our 40s.

“Never dull” is how I’ll remember him. In some ways he was always a bloody handful to be honest. The one who would get lippy in a bar or club and get us into a scrap or two. Not a hard nut – just cocky and never backed down.

But God, he was good company. A force of nature. Irrepressible, high energy and energising to be with, and full of love. Part of my life for as long as I can remember.

In the same way as you don’t choose your family, you don’t really choose your school mates either. They just happen to go to the same school as you at the same time and you end up with them. So over the years the ones who stick around end up more like family than friends. So he was kind of like a pain in the arse brother who was kind of exhausting sometimes… but a brother nonetheless. And did I mention bloody good company?

Looking back, I think he was always quite erratic, and always very intense too. But he was most intense about his friendships and about his love for them. He was someone I knew that if I called, in the middle of the night, and said I needed help, he would drop everything and come anywhere in the world. That’s quite special, isn’t it?

Over the years, we’d not seen each other as much, particularly since I’d been married and had kids. He was still free and easy (or seemed so to those who didn’t know him) and our lives were very different. He was buying a new Porsche when I was buying a new buggy. But he was always “there”. Whatever that means.

Shit happens, right? Sometimes you can control things, and sometimes you end up in the middle of things you never wanted to be in the middle of, and didn’t want to get dragged into. I won’t go into the details, because to be honest I don’t really think I know the real details, but suffice to say I’d been sort of “estranged” from him for the last 4 years or so. Shit happened. Complicated and painful for everyone involved. We’d had a couple of touchpoints along the way, but always strained and difficult. I cut myself off in self-protection in a way. I couldn’t be what he wanted from me.

I know that hurt him. I know that he really wanted everything to just be okay. Like it used to be. And maybe one day it might have been, after the dust settled. But the dust hadn’t had time to settle.

In a weird kind of self-flagellation, last week I looked back at the last messages I got from him, from a couple of years ago. I said he needed help, and that I couldn’t be the person to give that to him. I told him to take care. He said the same.

As I sit here, I’m feeling guilty as hell. Guilty that I cut myself off, and guilty that I could have done more. Before you think “oh you mustn’t”, I’ve learnt in the last few weeks that actually it’s okay to feel whatever I feel. Guilty, sad, angry. Fucking angry actually. But mostly sad.

That’s the point of writing this I think. Not to just unload, but to acknowledge the feelings.

As men, we’re conditioned not to feel things. We’re taught resilience from the moment we fall and skin a knee and are told to be brave. Boys don’t cry, remember? As a result we don’t talk about our feelings or address them. The only feeling men are “allowed” to have is anger, and that’s how so many things come out.

It’s a commonly quoted statistic that suicide is the leading cause of death for men under 40. As someone who studied statistics that annoys me a bit, because for all the shock factor of it, I can’t help wondering “what else would be??”. Too young for heart disease or cancer really. Maybe road traffic accidents? It’s information without context or insight.

But when I’ve put the pedant in me away, it’s still real.

In the last couple of weeks, there are so many men I’ve spoken to who have told me about a friend of theirs who killed themselves too. Most times we’d never spoken about it before. Everyone had an element of guilt for what they didn’t do. That feeling again.

I’ve mentioned Grayson Perry’s amazing, life-changing book, “The Descent of Man” previously in these pages. I encourage you to read it. It’s about all of the expectations of masculinity and all the issues they create for individuals, societies and ultimately the world. But one bit sticks out for me:

Grayson Perry – The Descent Of Man (read it)

I am all these things. The last one is the most difficult of course.

I told my 2 sons that a friend of mine had died, and that I was going to a funeral. After a silence, my eldest son (11) asked how he died.

What to say? Do I tell them or do I hide it? I really wasn’t sure, and I looked over a my wife who was sitting with us. Without breaking gaze with me, she said that he’d taken his own life.

We then had a conversation about how people get to a point where they think that is the best thing for everyone. How talking about how we’re feeling is so, so crucial. How being all the things above takes guts, actually. A massive part of setting them up for success in life is in giving them the rights of man – that they see them in me, and see that it makes our relationships stronger.

By all accounts, the last couple of years have been extremely tough for my friend and those around him. Those who didn’t let go, or refused to be pushed away. And honestly, talking about feelings was never a problem for him. But fuck, if he’d seen the sadness in the faces of the people who came together at his funeral, he would have known that it wasn’t better. For him, or us, or anyone.

So there we are. It would be arrogant for me to think that me being connected would have made the difference, so I won’t put that on myself, or on you as you may think of the person you have lost touch with, for whatever reason.

What I will say is that, as men, the more we talk and share the better we will be.

And however bad things may seem, you have ‘family’ who love you. Even if they aren’t there to tell you.

Time waits for no man – part two

~ Phil Bartlett ~ Leave a comment

A good while back* I talked in these pages about my first trip into London since before all this happened. How the familiar felt so alien, and how whilst so much had changed, so much other stuff was just as it always had been.

And the thing that I really can’t stop thinking about, which keeps on popping back into my mind, is the thing that felt like it hadn’t changed at all. And that’s the homeless guy I mentioned, sitting in the place he always sits, just along from London Bridge station, next to the back entrance to Guy’s Hospital.

His stop is by the building on the right, and he’s only there until mid-morning.

Every day for as long as I’d made the trip to our office near the Tate Modern, this guy had been there. Always sitting on the floor, surrounded by old copies of the Big Issue in plastic covers, talking to himself a bit and occasionally saying hello to the regular people who walked by. Sometimes people would stop and squat next to him to talk, but more often than not he was there on his own. Every day.

And there he was when I went into London for the first time… and there he’s been on every day I’ve been since. sitting as he always has, like nothing has changed, still asking passers-by for if they can spare some change for him.

He’d been there every day for years, so why was it so surprising to me that he was there again on the day that I decided to come back into London for the first time in 14 months? Just because I hadn’t been there, why wouldn’t he? Yet it did surprise me, because whilst the whole experience was so very different for me his presence was so very familiar, like the gap from then to now simply didn’t happen. Like Covid was some kind of dystopian daydream I’d had on the train.

And now, it’s become less surprising and is becoming more and more an expected part of my journey to our office. I think I’d be more surprised if he weren’t there. But I’ll never forget the surprise of that first time for as long as I live.

I’ve talked in these pages before about the way that your time and mine aren’t necessarily the same – that perhaps we experience time differently to each other, and even our own experience of time changes depending on what we’re doing. You think this cricket match is fascinating, I think it’s taking longer than the whole of history. This day doing something I love has flown by… this day doing something I find dull will seemingly never end.

On a micro level, that’s self-evident to me – objectively something we all experience.

But this was different. Time was playing with me here, surely. How could time fly and stand still at the same time? Make it feel like yesterday, but with the knowledge that the last time I stood here I was two birthdays younger.

And how did the last year feel to him? Did time drag or did it fly? Did it feel any different to any of the other years he’s had?

Time flies. Yet some people have time to spare, but never any spare change.

We have time and we spend time. We waste time, and we save time. It’s the same language that we use for money – hell, “time is money” remember? Precious time. We recognise its importance.

And you can tell from the phrases we use that unconsciously we understand our one-sided relationship with time too – our reliance on it but lack of control over it. Time flies. Time waits for no man. We’re on borrowed time, and ultimately only time will tell.

It would be conceited and condescending for me to begin to suppose anything about this man’s life, or about his experience of the last 20 months. Like so many of us I’ve worked out my recent history based on lockdowns – how far I could go from my house; what places I could visit or shop in; whom I could see or hug, how many could be where at any time – and all of those denote privileges and freedoms that this man does not have. For all my insignificant worries, I know where I am sleeping tonight. I know who will hug me in the morning.

What I do know about this man is that it’s doubtful that the few quid he might get from the throngs who pass by will change anything other than the few hours ahead.

Even more than that, I know he doesn’t need my pity, or the thousands of embarrassed half shrugs which mean “sorry I don’t have any change” he gets every day. I know that every time I catch his eye I give him a nod and a smile, and he does the same back, and every time I feel like I should do something more fucking useful, but besides giving him money every day I have no idea what that might be. Maybe the smile is that thing?

Lastly, I know that if there’s a better demonstration of how you might consider someone else’s experience of the world and measure it against your own to see an impossible myriad of differences then I haven’t come across it before, and I’m not sure I ever will.

Perhaps to give myself a purpose from this whole thing – to give it context, beyond just contemplation – I’ll commit to consider other people’s experience of the world even more than I have. Because there’s no question that however they experience the world, it’s unlikely to be anything like the world of which I’m in the middle.

*With noting that yeah it’s been a long while since my last post. If you’re a regular reader then I hope you haven’t missed out too much. If you’re new to the show, then I feel like there might be lots to come in the coming weeks so stay tuned!

Three lessons from a Zen Taxi Driver.

~ Phil Bartlett ~ 2 Comments

Driving in London isn’t fun. Sometimes it’s bearable, but most of the time it’s crap. Too many cars, too many vans, too many bikes, too many humans. Unending lines of traffic, all trying to get from A to B, perhaps via C and D; all in their own heads and all wishing all the other people would just disappear and leave the roads to them and them alone.

In one of the opening scenes of Danny Boyle’s 2002 zombie classic 28 Days Later, the main character walks across a deserted Westminster Bridge and around a London without a single vehicle. It’s meant to seem like some unreal and eerie waking dystopian nightmare, but for anyone who’s driven or worked around London much it’s an exquisite daydream.

Looks bloody perfect

I drove the streets of London myself for a while in the late 1990s, working as a medical sales rep. Every day I would hammer around the North West of the city trying to speak to doctors about some drug or other. They gave me five minutes of their time; I’d give them some branded tissues, or a car-care kit, or a pen.

I hated it, to be honest. I wasn’t very good at it for a start, because the whole thing – for me at least – seemed so fake. I pretended to be cheerful and chirpy [I know, not really my vibe] to the receptionists who pretended (sometimes) not to hate everything I stood for, hoping eventually that I might be allowed a few moments with doctors who were only after the branded foldable halogen desk lamp. Sometimes they pretended that they would try the drug I was talking about if they got the chance, and I’d pretend to believe them. I was talking to people all day, but not one conversation was authentic. I don’t think I’ve ever been so lonely in my life, and it ended up being quite depressing really – ironic as I had a load of sample anti-depressants in the boot of the Vauxhall Vectra 1.8 16v LS [that’s correct, I had the wheels to match the vibe]

Oh yeah, and the traffic.

On top of everything else, I had to pick my way around Kilburn and Camden, Neasden and North Farm, Holloway and Hampstead, Edgeware and Islington. Traffic everywhere. Every main road blocked, every back road full of people like me, desparately trying to balance a map on their knee as they checked the road signs. For this was a time before Sat Nav or GPS – I had a paper copy of the London A to Z, thumbed to death, covered in the fluff from Wotsits mixed with my own hot, despairing tears.

Okay the late 1990s wasn’t that long ago but this was the same tech

And I guess for a long time I carried that frustration with me whenever I drove around London, the tension I held in my shoulders and chest making my neck ache and my head pound. And I assumed everyone else did too.

And then, one evening, I met a man who changed all that. I met the Zen Taxi Driver.

It was a few years back now, not long after I’d joined CDM. After a long day of authentic and open leadership, I got a taxi back from the office – a car company taxi rather than a black cab – and struck up a conversation with the driver that has stuck with me ever since.

It started when he stopped for a young couple at a zebra crossing, and they moved like aged tortoises actually getting across the road, without acknowledging or even seeming to notice the fact that he had stopped to wait for them. I remarked that this kind of thing must be frustrating for someone driving all day, and rather than giving me the (probably expected) low energy agreement, he disagreed, for three very clear reasons. You may even consider them lessons, if you like…

This is a zebra crossing

The first lesson the driver talked of was about empathy, and honestly I felt a bit embarrassed that he had to point out the very obvious to me: that I had no idea what was going on in the lives of that couple, or the driver who was desperately trying to overtake in those one way, two lane roads through Hammersmith, the lady dithering about whether to turn right, or anyone else you could mention.

Maybe the couple had just had bad news about someone in their family.
Maybe the guy in a hurry was trying to get to his wife who’d gone into labour.
Maybe the lady was trying to remember the road where she had lived during the war.

Or maybe none of those big things. Maybe they just weren’t having the best few minutes, or hour, or day.

Whatever it was, none of them even realised that for that fleeting moment your lives intersected, and you were never relevant to any of them, any more than they should really be relevant to you. You have no right to judge them, nor should you feel the need to do so.

Which led on to the next lesson. My guide had hundreds, perhaps thousands of these micro-meetings every day… ephemeral encounters between people who may well never, ever cross paths again. And his philosophy on this was simple – that none of these people should willingly be given the power to influence your mood or feelings. You have it in yourself to decide what you will allow to affect you and what you will not. So have some respect for yourself, and don’t be so keen to give every passing person access to your emotions and the ability to affect your day. They have no right to affect you, any more than you have any right to judge them.

The third lesson that our teacher talked to me about was the individual experience of time. The way he put it was simplicity itself: “everyone walks to a different beat”. Some people’s internal metronome runs really fast – you’ve seen them doing a walk-jog-walk-jog thing down the pavement just to be half an hour early to work; you’ve seen them frustrated when things are ‘derailed’ or not going fast enough for them. And other people move at a much slower pace. Strolling rather than marching; always time for a ‘by the way’. Everyone has their own pace, one no better or worse than the other: just… different. Except for you, of course: just perfect in the middle, right? Hmm. Perhaps the truth is that to some people you seem incredibly impatient, and to others you’re glacially slow?

Empathy, and acceptance. People walk to a different beat. It’s not for you to judge.

By the time I got back home, I’d had one of the most in depth, introspective and interesting conversations I’d ever had. There was nothing I didn’t already know, as such, but damn if it didn’t make me consider how I was moving through the world.

I won’t say it was an epiphany, because there were so many other things happening in my life at that time which had such a profound effect on me too – new job, new baby, newly without a mum, to name but three [those and many others are in some of the blogs here too, somewhere, if you care to have a look around].

But here I am, probably seven years on, and I’ve decided to sit and write about that man, and the zen-like wisdom that he patiently and clearly articulated like it was all so very simple.

Lessons of self-control, self-respect. Of acceptance, of humility, of empathy. Crucial lessons for a life lived well, and I don’t know about you but I’ll take those with sincere gratitude from wherever I can get them.

In that spirit, I’ll leave you with a couple of thoughts which I’ve carried with me from that moment and likely will continue to carry with me for as long as I wander (and wonder) around this planet of ours.

First, I still have to catch myself sometimes, so I let myself off about that. We are all in our own minds, our own worlds, and so it’s human nature (literally and figuratively) to be wrapped up in what we’re doing and where we are going. We are all the lead actors in our own biopic, and those people whose paths we cross are the extras [and given special effects techonology nowadays they could actually all be CGI and you probably wouldn’t notice]. But still, I make the effort to catch myself; to remind myself that they are in their own world too, that their fleeting actions shouldn’t influence my emotions, and that my beat (at that moment) is different to theirs.

And it’s a simple, kind of daft thing… but since that day, I’ve never said that “I’m in traffic”. Because I’m not in traffic, I am traffic. Okay, it’s not life-changing. But I promise you, it does change one’s attitude to all the other cars around. They’re not deliberately in your way, making you late, any more than you are deliberately in theirs. You’re together, at this moment, just trying to get somewhere.

And here’s the [probably quite obvious to you, dear reader] next bit… none of this is really just about traffic. I don’t think I got that at first, so I make no apologies for holding your hand through it.

Because the truth is that we are all traffic, of course. Human traffic, thrown together into lives that we often don’t really understand and certainly aren’t evolved to be able to manage. But together, fellow travellers, all just trying to get somewhere. Along the way you try to surround yourself with the people and situations that help you along and give you energy, and avoid those which drain you or bring you down. And thus you make your own way, making it up as you go sometimes, but hopefully with some broad idea of where you’re heading, and you criss-cross with other people doing the same. We are all traffic.

Who knows, we might need to ask one another for directions one day. In the meantime, safe travels. Make sure you text me when you get there, okay?

Time waits for no man – part one

~ Phil Bartlett ~ 2 Comments

So there I am. Poised, ready. Coiled like a leopard ready to leap out onto an unsuspecting prey, every muscle tightened in anticipation. I know I’ve planned everything just perfectly, nothing left to chance after weeks – months even – of analysis and adjustment. And as the moment approaches, I can see the people around me shifting uncomfortably, the realisation dawning on them as slowly yet inexorably as the sun rises, that I am the one whose preparation has paid off; who will, today at least, be triumphant. And almost like it was written in the stars, inch by inch the world seems to shift around us all until the inevitable happens.

For in that moment, I am the man who is standing on the exact spot directly where the train door opens. I need not take a single step to my left nor to my right, but simply step forward and in and find the double seat (the golden ticket!!) that my diligence and meticulousness have earned.

Just a few more metres…

And if you’re thinking that is any train door then bless you, dear reader, but you are naïvely mistaken. For that is the train door which, on the other side of the train, will also be the train door nearest to the escalator when I arrive at my destination station.

Prized seconds have been saved ladies and gentlemen! Perhaps even as many as 30 seconds! That’s half a minute!

Until the world stopped last year, this was only one tiny part of my daily military operation.

Every single second accounted for.

If I leave the house at this time and take this route, I can make the station car park in around 16 minutes (depending on traffic, with 14 minutes as my personal best), then park here rather than there because whilst it’s a little further away from the entrance there’s more space to park quickly so it’s actually quicker. Then, if I have 90 seconds or more before the train is scheduled to arrive, that’s just enough grab a coffee from the coffee shop because the guy recognises me and starts making my “flat white, two sweeteners” as I walk towards him and then I tap and go and still make ‘my spot’ on the platform, this time walking up as the train slows to a halt and almost nonchalantly hit my mark so it looks like it’s coincidence (ha!) but you know, dear reader, that this is anything but.

From the train station to the office I pick the route with the least potential for human traffic, and my pass is in the pocket of my rucksack that I can reach without breaking stride and I’m through the revolving door, quick hello to the security guard and through the gate thing and before I press the button for the lift I see if I can check to see if one of the lifts has my floor illuminated so I can just jump in at the last minute.

Another 40 seconds saved! Hallelujah and praise be to the master of time!

All this in order to get to our office space about 45 minutes before the start of the official working day. Nice to be one of the first in, to say hi to the early morning crew and get myself settled in before the rush of the day to come.

And on the way home, I do it all in reverse.

I know that from the time I come out through the doors I can be on a train (not at the station, actually on the train) if I have 13 minutes. Any less than that and I’m into a weird walk-jog-walk-jog thing which I’m not fond of but will resort to if needed because the next train isn’t for twenty minutes or something monstrous like that and time waits for no man and time flies and yes of course time is money people time is money.

(Yeah, but is it?)

The week before last, I went into our offices in Central London for the first time since the 9th of March last year. Exactly 1.2 years since I’d done the trip which used to be my daily grind. Something that felt so familiar and so alien at the same time.

To be honest I’d forgotten some of the timings, and I didn’t know how long it would take to get a ticket at the station (season ticket having run out last year of course) so this time I left myself a bit longer.

I drove the same route, but without one eye on the clock.

I parked closer to the entrance because the car park was pretty empty. No need to do my weird walk-jog-walk-jog thing anyway, because I had a bit more time.

It was the same guy at the coffee shop as it had been 14 months and 12 days previously, but as I had more than 90 seconds we had time to chat about how long it had been and laugh about how he’d forgotten everyone’s “regular” because no one came in regularly any more.

I didn’t bother walking to “my spot” on the platform.

My home station on May 18th, 1961 – exactly 60 years and 2 days before my most recent trip on May 20th this year. Honestly hasn’t changed that much really.

The train ride itself was somewhat dystopian but then it was always going to be wasn’t it? The weirdest bit was coming into London and seeing all the landmarks which in times past would have told me precisely where I was and when I needed to get up to get to the doors at the right time, but not really being sure of the order of them. And it didn’t really matter anyway, because the train was empty of course.

Then from the station to the office, it was like nothing had changed.

That massive building still not finished – not that anyone is going to want Central London office space anyway nowadays…
That human traffic zigzagging across the road and pavement, magically avoiding each other like it was a film and we’d all rehearsed our marks and movements to avoid being within the magical (coincidental or conditioned?) 2 metres of each other…
That homeless guy re-selling copies of the Big Issue. In the same place as he ever was. Wait, has he been there every one of those 438 days…?

[Can that be right? That the world stopped for so many, but for so many others it just… didn’t? I think I’ll come back to that one another time…]

My experience of 10 days back brought something sharply to mind, which I’ve been thinking about a lot since. It’s probably obvious to you, of course

What the hell was I thinking, putting so much self-inflicted time-related stress into my life? So much unnecessary tension thinking so intently about the seconds here and there? So much pressure to get it all so tight that the smallest distraction, diversion or delay would scupper the whole thing?

The car driving too slow on my route, the kids taking my spot on the platform by fluke not by hard graft and painstaking preparation; the tourist with the rolling suitcase going across the flow of human traffic. All purposefully messing with my time.

Turning me into the walking tension headache that needed 45 minutes in the office before work started just to unwind, right?

I’m embarrassed at my own stupidity. I know that anxiety can take hold of me sometimes, yet I created this perfect recipe for stress and gobbled it down willingly every day. I guess it took 1.2 years of not doing it to make me realise that I’d been doing it, in some way or another, for the previous 20 years.

Joni Mitchell once sang that

Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?

Joni Mitchell – Big Yellow Taxi

Too true Joni, too true. And once in a while you notice that the thing that’s gone shouldn’t have been something you were holding onto so tightly in the first place.

So from here I’m going to take the pressure out of my own relationship with time. Less saving and making up, and more ensuring I have a some to spare, so if I lose a little here and there I’ll still have enough.

They say that time waits for no man, but it’s waited 20 years to work that out I probably have as much as I need, and more than I gave myself. I’d love it if you could learn from my mistakes a little quicker than that.

Post-COVID uncertainty and the Rumsfeld Paradox

~ Phil Bartlett ~ 2 Comments

Okay, before I go on, I’m not going to be able to solve all the uncertainty that we all have about the world that will emerge from COVID, like a young polar bear emerging for the first time from the only home it has known, born through a winter of hibernation and squinting at the sunlight reflecting from the pure, blinding nothingness of the frozen tundra tumbling off as far as the eye can see… and further than the mind can imagine.

If anything, I’m going to add in another level of uncertainty. Sorry.

Anyone who tells you they know how these things are going to play out is a charlatan or a confidence trickster. Or possibly a ‘futurist” [I wonder how many of them predicted this eh?]. We’ve never been in anything like this (obviously) and there has been too much change (obviously) and so even if you’re in the “we’ll probably go back to pretty much how things were with maybe a little more working from home” then sorry, but you’re making it up too.

Right now, I probably have about three or four conversations a week with someone about what we think might happen. I don’t mind having them because each one helps me a little to work out what I think I would like to happen, and perhaps give me another couple of questions which I need to ask or answer which would add to the information I’ve got.

But I’m also okay with the fact that I will never have enough information. I can read every article out there and listen to every bit of gossip about what so-and-so agency are doing (most of which turn out to be nothing more than gossip) and do another loads of employee surveys and fill in a thousand templates for the network [true story] and I’d have all the information and it still won’t be enough. Because it won’t be relevant to me, and my team, because we’re not anyone else. As the Smiths once said:

“This one is different because it’s us.”

The Smiths, Hand In Glove

I don’t know about you, but I think a good segue from a 1980s indie band from Manchester would be to immediately cut to a former two-time US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld. Let’s do it!

I’m not going to comment here on the politics of old “Rummy” (as he was affectionately known by people who knew him affectionately) because I don’t know much about them and I’m too lazy to find out. I’m also not going to comment on the fact that between serving as the youngest ever Secretary of Defence under Gerald Ford he worked for various big US pharma companies (my particular niche area of advertising) before then becoming the second oldest Secretary of Defence under George Bush. Again, I know not enough, and care not to find out.

What I am going to pick out from such a busy boy is a comment he made to the US press about the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

[Bear with me we are getting somewhere I promise.]

Rummy said the following:

As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns: the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

Do me a favour and read that again. I grant you, it’s tough not to get dragged down by the context and by the fact that it’s another politician avoiding answering another question. But give it another read for me.

There’s actually an incredibly astute, and almost philosophical point. And it’s something I’ve been coming back to quite a lot in the conversations about the future world [you remember, the baby polar bear thing].

Because yes, there’s stuff we know.

We know we can work remotely, and do bloody good work. Arguably we’re more efficient, and if we could all have got rid of the real estate sitting dormant in every major city, we’d have been a shitload more profitable.
We know that we can build, nurture and maintain authentic relationships, with each other and with our clients, despite not being (sometimes never having been) in the same room.
We know that this has taken a toll on people’s mental health and wellbeing and boundaries and the flow from home to work (I don’t like “balance”, but that’s another blog).

And there’s some stuff we know that we don’t know

We know that we don’t know how we’ll feel on inevitably crowded public transport.
We know that we don’t know who’s going to want to work where, and how that’s going to affect how we work as teams together.
We know that we don’t know how we’re going to react to the polar bear situation

But hell, if there isn’t also a load of stuff we don’t know we don’t know.

There are problems that haven’t happened yet.
There are opportunities that we can’t imagine yet.
There might even be new kinds of feelings which come about precisely because of this meta-uncertainty.

We’re not good with uncertainty. It causes stress and as animals we’re not good at dealing with that because the society we’ve built up around us is bigger and more complex than, as animals, we have evolved to deal with.

But I think the existence of the “unknown unknowns” can actually be a source of calm. Forget about the things I don’t know about, there are things that I don’t even know I don’t know yet! Yes it demands that we “adjust the sails” and deal with ambiguity, but is there anything more ambiguous than the year we’ve just done?

Yes it was hard, and remains hard, but we did do it. We made it this far, battered and tired but still we made it. And that tells me that we’ll make it again.

It won’t be how we think it’ll be. But there’s a bit of me that’s interested in finding out what I don’t know.

Not drowning, but waving

~ Phil Bartlett ~ Leave a comment

There’s a wonderful poem by a British poet called Stevie Smith called “Not Waving, But Drowning”*, about a man swimming out of his depth and his friends on the shore thinking he was mucking around. The feelings of the man in question are too horrific to think about, but imagine for a moment the feelings those friends they must have gone through, waving to him as he panicked, laughing to each other about how daft their friend is, then realising one by one that they had it wrong. We can all imagine the blood running cold, the hole in the pit of the abdomen which seems to have some kind of gravitational pull for the rest of the body.

That feeling of realisation – specifically realisation of something negative – is something we’ve all experienced. Forgetting someone’s birthday gets you a little hit of it. Remembering you promised to do something or [in the olden days] actually physically be somewhere [remember that??], it’s all part of the same realisation. When the brain catches up, the body stays still and cold and heavy. On varying levels of seriousness, in my mind it’s the “oh…bollocks” [Please feel free to insert your own geographic or linguistic alternative here] moment.

Okay, let’s park that for a moment.

This time of year is always a weird one for me. My mum died nearly seven years ago, and it’s this time of year when the empty space she left in my world is felt most keenly. Actually, perhaps not ‘felt’ the most, but certainly brought to mind the most.

My work anniversary lands on March 8th, and I know it’s then because it was meant to be the 1st but I moved it back a week so I could go back home to go with Mum to a hospital appointment. Then her birthday is (was?) March 13th, and Mother’s Day [sorry to my arch pedant father for not calling it the “correct” title of ‘Mothering Sunday’ but I do not give enough of a shit x] is usually around the same time, then my birthday on March 20th [very nice thanks, my second in lockdown yet I had a lovely time and felt very spoilt], and then my wedding anniversary is April 5th and that’s the day she had her first round of chemo and then after that we’re on to May 4th and that’s the day she died, and the reason I remember that date so clearly is because it’s my wife’s birthday on May the 5th.

I can’t help connecting those dates, any more than you could. Take a moment and say your mum’s birthday out loud. We both know that if someone happened to say that date, your brain would automatically, without you asking it to do anything, pop up and go “that’s my mum’s birthday”.

[While we’re on that, isn’t it funny that you simply cannot help saying that very phrase out loud if someone else happens to mention that they have their birthday on that day? “Really?” you exclaim excitedly, “That’s my mum’s birthday!”. And they always say “really?!” and somehow from that moment on you’ve got a little connection with that person that you didn’t have before.]

So for around 8-10 weeks of every year, there’s a constant little reminder round the corner. Those are the dates and every day they will always be connected to a time in 2014 when my Mum went from a bit ill to very ill to very not here any more in the space of 3 or 4 months.

Okay, let me guide you back to the waves.

When my mum died, a friend of mine who runs another healthcare agency [hi Ed!] called me to “offer his condolences” [what an odd phrase we all use there. It’s the only time, just like the only time we talk about “legal tender” is when we end up with a Scottish tenner], and in our conversation he said that in his experience grief was like swimming in the surf. As you go out from the beach you jump or dive through each wave, but occasionally the waves are too close together and before you’ve got your feet or your breath you’re hit by another, and suddenly you’re under the surf and the bubbles are in your face and BANG you’re panicked and your heart rate shoots up and you just get your breath before the next one and so on.

But if you keep going, the further you go the smaller the surf becomes, until bit by bit you feel calmer and more able to ride the waves as they come. And sometimes a big one will hit you, but you have time to adjust after and so it’s not as overwhelming.

It was almost a “by the way” story, but I found it incredibly helpful in enabling me to believe that what I was in the middle of would get easier. No, wait, that’s not right. Not getting easier, but me getting more used to it and thus better at understanding it and riding the wave. It’s been so helpful that I’ve also shared it with friends who have lost someone [through death or also through break-up – the grief that comes from the end of a relationship is just as real and just as powerful as any other].

I’m talking about grief here, but honestly I think this is true for most things we’re going through. Churchill said:

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

And whilst that may seem a little glib, there’s damn good advice in there too. This too shall pass, and if you keep going out the waves will calm.

But here’s the hack for you.

Because I’ve learnt that at this time of year there are some chunky looking waves building on the horizon, I’ve also learnt to tell people I care about, and who care about me, that they’re coming. Not to excuse any behaviour, but because talking about the waves actually makes them a bit smaller when they arrive.

The people around you, who care about you, would want you to talk to them about your struggles, just as you would listen with love and care and consideration if they were to talk to you. It’s not always easy, but then nor is getting smashed by waves.

As for me, well I’m doing okay thanks. Surrounded by the right kind of people.

Definitely not drowning, but waving.

[*If you want to hear Stevie Smith talking about the poem and then reciting it (and I encourage you to do so), then you can find a recording here. It’s also in Loyle Carner’s recent album which shares its title with her poem, and if you like poetic, socially conscious hip hop then I also encourage you to check that out too, here on Spotify (and available on your music streaming choice too I’m sure) as I seem to be in the encouraging mood.]