Good morning from the Bay Area of San Francisco. I am with my lovely cousin, Carla, using her home as a base for the next couple of weeks. This is one of my favorite areas, and I feel like there’s so much going on in the world here. There’s this very interesting juxtaposition between sort of the 70 and sunny type of beautiful California weather, and this multicultural tech hub that it is.
Anyway, I’m going to attend a conference called Wisdom and AI. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Wisdom 2. 0. They do very interesting conferences about conscious leadership, and I’m going to a conference called Wisdom in AI, they’re bringing together experts in AI and leaders in social change and wisdom. I mean, the lineup is incredible. It’s Van Jones from CNN, Ivy Ross from Google, who wrote this book that everybody’s reading called your brain on art, the COO of OpenAI, Jon Kabat Zinn, Reid Hoffman from LinkedIn, Tristan Harris, , the Zen Roshi Joan Halifax., I expect there to be very compelling presentations, and conversations and I want to be in the room. Anyway, that’s what I’m up to.
One of the dilemmas I’ve been having is how much to share because what I’m doing right now is not about show and tell. It’s not about being on this big adventure. Of course, I feel this adventure in my heart, though not always. And I have to say, I really do consider this a sort of spiritual journey. I am opening myself up to possibility. I’m sitting with discomfort. I’m asking questions, listening for guidance, and stumbling my way forward so it’s not really something that I want to always be sharing about. And I certainly don’t want to put it on social media. Now, many people would tell me I’m crazy because we know from research that people love to see the behind the scenes. But honestly, that’s not what this is about.
Onto what I want to talk about today. I think it’s well summarized in this meme I received from my friend, Eric. The tagline was when people think I’m ghosting them, but I’m just getting older and all my moves have to make sense or make money. That actually kind of speaks to where I am. I’m in my own soup. Not everything I’m doing is sexy and exciting. It’s very much an inward journey.
Anyway, what stuck out for me is that word ghosting, because recently I have had my feelings hurt by two people that I love dearly and I feel very close with. I started second guessing the relationship because I felt like they had sort of dropped me or ghosted me. So yeah I’ve been a little grumpy about it, and while I really think it’s important to err on the side of giving people a break and kindness and wondering what’s going on versus getting all bent out of shape and getting your feelings hurt, I was teetering there a little bit.
Over the course of just 24 hours I had contact with both of them and found out that both are really struggling right now. Both of their circumstances kind of took my breath away and was absolutely cause for pause. Now, it can sound a little bit cliche to say you never know what people are going through. But it’s true. We don’t know what people are going through. It’s so easy to get our feelings hurt, like I did, and to get bent out of shape or to speak out of turn or negatively about them. I’ve been upset and hurt and I feel like I’ve been a good friend. Then 1- 2- 3 I realized it had nothing to do with me whatsoever.
We use that word ghosting a lot and it has an element of malintent or of we’ve been done wrong. My conversation with these two very dear friends of mine really drove home the point that it’s always better to err on the side of kindness and caution when you feel like you’re being ghosted because we often don’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives. And it’s certainly not always about us.
So there you have it. That’s what’s on my mind today.. Until next time, from my heart to yours.
