Sunday dinner. A weekly ritual connecting our family in three locations. The conversation moves to privilege of birth, statesmanship and expected behaviours of those in high position. I’m at once engaged and soon detached, hearing myself fall into arguing with my grandson, Cameron.
My detachment sparks a realisation: Liminal states are common. Whenever we let go of a state of being that no longer serves us and evolve to a new state of being, we move through a liminality in time, space and mind.
Any idea of finding solutions for systemic issues is misleading. Systemic issues lose traceability between causes and effects – so, approaching them with a solution mindset is itself a problem.
What’s needed is an intervention mindset and approach. Dame Maggie Smith once put it, “there’s no beginning and no end, only points where you enter and leave the story.” [1]
Intensive care specialist, Peter Roberts, told me “bad health policy is more dangerous to my patients than the flesh-eating bug.”
That notion struck accord for every organisation I’ve worked with.
Peter realised his qualifications were not enough to assure a culture of safety, that enables working to do no harm. So, he studied the systemic issues in health care exploring the inadequacies of dominant paradigms. [1]
We all live two lives. The second one begins when we realise we have only one life.