Life can only be understood by looking backward

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once said that life can only be understood by looking backward, but it must be lived looking forward.

Looking backward: A cartoon by Tom Gauld: "The musings of Kierkegaard"
The musings of Kierkegaard, by @tomgauld, New Scientist November 19, 2022

I agree!

Understanding by looking backward

In my 7th decade, I think I better understand some of the mysteries of my youth.

Feelings

Paradoxically, one of the things I now understand better is the importance and influence of my feelings. Growing up, no one talked about feelings in my family. I got the message that feelings, especially uncomfortable ones, were taboo to discuss and best suppressed. So, I focused on understanding the world and my life by developing my rational understanding and knowledge of the world as a physicist. I had little understanding of how my feelings were influencing my life and decisions.

Over the years, I’ve realized that how I feel determines what I do far more than what I think. Though it’s still a struggle at times, I work to be more aware of how I’m feeling and how it is affecting my behavior. Doing this helps me to minimize being “stuck” in feelings that are associated with my recent or distant past. This leads to another understanding…

This too shall pass

These days, I find myself better able to deal with life’s ups and downs. I wouldn’t say my life feels easier overall. Increased financial security comes hand in hand with the infirmities of old(er) age. But over time I’ve internalized my understanding that “this too shall pass”.

Perhaps this is because I have more experience knowing that bad or good times don’t last forever. Perhaps I have become more resilient, or more accepting of the reality that some things are beyond my control. Or, maybe, it’s simply that my short-term memory is worse so it’s easier for me to live in the present!

Forgiveness

As I age, I’ve become more tolerant of imperfections in myself, others, and the world. I am better able to forgive myself and others, having learned that everyone makes mistakes and that it’s not fair to hold anyone to impossibly high standards. I’m more empathetic, tolerant, and understanding than I used to be.

Many of the certainties of my youth have given way to respect for diverse opinions and a greater acceptance of imperfections in the world around us.

One specific example of this is forgiving the flaws and limitations of my parents, of whom I was so intolerant in my youth. I now see them as imperfect people rather than the all-knowing, all-powerful figures they appeared to me as a child. As a parent and grandparent myself now, I recognize the sacrifices and efforts they made on my behalf. I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for their love and support, despite their imperfections.

Everything else

The older I get, the more I realize how little I know compared to what there is to know. Paradoxically, I’m increasingly surprised by what I do know when circumstances bring it to mind. Most of my knowledge is tacit. Though my slowly deteriorating memory bugs me at times, I’m fundamentally at peace with remembering and understanding stuff that I used to know. Coming (mostly) to terms with my frailties as I age is a blessing.

Living looking forward

Until I die, there’s always the future—which hasn’t happened yet! I think the trick of experiencing the future as fully as possible is to work on minimizing the effects of past experiences that get in the way of being in the present. I’ll never completely succeed in this, of course, but it’s a worthy goal. Living looking forward is tough because…

…looking backward evokes feelings

Looking backward helps us to understand our past in ways that were previously hidden from us. In addition, thinking about the past often reinvokes feelings associated with that time. Sometimes this is a positive or healing experience. But sometimes it leads us to wallow in the past, stuck in unresolved trauma. That’s why looking backward with therapeutic support is often useful. It’s something I’ve done numerous times over the years which has paid rich dividends.

Living in the present

Here’s a final thought about living in the present by a meditation teacher:

“Let thoughts about the past be known for what they are: thoughts about the past. Let thoughts about the future be known for what they are: thoughts about the future.”

Change first, explain later

change first, explain later: photograph of a yellow wall with "Be the change you want to see in the world" painted in blue. Photo attribution: Flickr user victiusSometimes an experience is worth a million words.

In 1982, Australian physicians Barry Marshall and Robin Warren proposed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori was the cause of most ulcers, challenging the established medical doctrine that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid. Their claim was ridiculed, so Barry drank a Petri dish containing cultured Heliobacter and promptly developed gastritis. His self-experiment eventually helped change medical thinking. In 2005, both men were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

So, how do we convince people?

Changing events

Often when I’m working with a client on implementing experiential and participant-driven events, he wants to understand how what I’m proposing will work.

It’s perfectly reasonable that he wants to understand. The trouble is, unless he’s had the experience of participating in an experiential and participant-driven event, he simply may not be able to understand how the format works.

If you think about it, this seems silly. Every day we experience unexpected things, and some of them change our world for the better in ways we’d never rationally expect. Right? So why are we skeptical that this can happen at our events?

Because most meetings and conferences are tightly scripted and controlled. So we’ve likely never experienced the intense conversations, learning, and facilitated connection around topics and issues that we, not a conference program committee, chose. We’ve never had the opportunity to discover the empowerment and joy when we get to meet, face-to-face, peers who share and have insights on our specific challenges. We’ve never seen a solid, long-lasting community of fellow participants being built before our eyes. And we’ve never encountered an event that galvanized participants into appropriate and effective action.

The need to understand

So when someone like me proposes a “different” way to design events, clients want to “understand” how it works before they’ll give me a go-ahead. When they don’t, I’ll get responses like this [verbatim extract from an email I received this week]:

“We presented our program to [our board] last week and got some push back on having two full days of the format/program devoted to the unconference. The primary concern is being able to effectively market the program such that potential attendees can show the published programming/topics and get manager support for the expense to attend/travel to the event. Without a descriptive agenda with topics – the fear is that managers won’t be able to justify that it is a relevant agenda for professional development.”

In fact, everyone who experiences a well-designed participant-driven event knows that on-site development of an agenda that is truly relevant to the attendees’ professional development is not a problem. Yet without that experience, most people cannot understand how such a format can work.

If I get sufficient access to the decision-makers, I can usually provide enough “understanding” to convince them to go ahead. But experiencing the design itself is far more effective. Here’s a post-event communication excerpt from a decision-making former skeptic:

Thank you for your efforts in making our very first [foundation] meeting a huge success. The meeting far exceeded my expectations and I have been reporting the success of the event to the leadership here at [foundation].

And here’s a participant’s feedback from the same event:

Thank you Adrian! I was skeptical at first of the conference format. But now I’m really glad that it was organized that way!

Experience to understand

Sometimes you need to experience to understand. Seth Godin puts it like this:

It turns out, humans don’t use explanations to make change happen. They change, and then try to explain it.
—Seth Godin, Clarity vs. impact

When I have the opportunity and authority to facilitate an experience that can lead to powerful, appropriate learning and change, I don’t spend much time explaining why it might do so. I just start. The hardest part is being given the authority to do it. Because that requires trust in my ability to deliver what I’m offering.

I don’t blame the skeptics out there. The world is full of people who promise miracles and don’t deliver. That’s why, besides attempting to explain why what I do works, I also encourage clients to talk to some of the tens of thousands of people who have participated in one of my experiential sessions or conferences. If they take the time to check, this usually does the trick.

Taking a leap

Yes, it’s hard to take a leap and trust something you haven’t experienced and don’t yet understand. Ask me to be the first person to ever jump from a plane with something called a “parachute” on my back? I’d turn you down. But you’re not the first person to jump! Talk to people you trust who have already made it safely and wonderfully to the ground. You may well realize that if they did it, you can do it too.

Then, go for the change. You can work on understanding it later.


This post is part of the series How do you facilitate change? In this occasional series, we explore various aspects of facilitating individual and group change.

Photo attribution: Flickr user victius