Outside the Square
Respectability is an odd creature. Especially because of the lengths we might go to capture it. We have a moth-like fascination with it, get caught in the headlights of its high beam and lose our bearings altogether. Strange that fascination isn’t it!
It’s suicidal behaviour at best and probably at worst as well and all at the same time to boot! How could that possibly be? Perhaps it goes to conformity Perhaps that’s really what’s at the heart of our compulsion to pursue it, to capture it, to covet it. But why for heavens sake?
In my old life I used to tell my team members to stay in the square (which is not to mean they ought to think that way specifically, not at all). Why? Well, to begin with, it was helpful as a spatial perception for them. Something in their physicality seemed to stretch itself out with the seed of the idea that they actually had the room to stretch out. Sort of like when you take your feet out of your shoes and your toes naturally spread themselves apart. Shows we’ve relaxed.
Secondly, I figured everyone else had taken to thinking outside the square and I figured there’d be enough room to swing a cat around (apologies to serious lovers of cats, it’s an expression, never meant to be read as literal, ever!) inside the square. So why go outside when you don’t have to?
Why not stay in the hot-house of ideas? Ever notice how much more difficult it is to start having ideas when you’ve been turfed out in the cold? Takes a while to warm you and them up wouldn’t you say. I would. There’s also a tendency to focus on the left brain vs right brain arguments when (personally) I would advocate a whole brain approach.
Thinking outside the square tends to be a right brain mannerism, yet respectability would slip quite comfortably (I think) between the egyptian cotton threads of a left brain bed of thought. So now, here’s a thought for the next time you wrestle with the question of attaining respectability. Who do you want it from most? And why? And what did you do to earn it?
Importantly, what did you compromise to get it? That last one is a real doozey! Stand in front of a mirror and ask the person you see there looking back at you what they compromised? Chances are they’ll look away before you do.
