In the End

In the end none of us
knows how the story turns
out. We walk on
from the middle of a chapter – something
undone, out of some room unfurnished
into a journey by an alien unmarked river
always dreamed about; but even it curves away
into some darkening trees.
It is enough,

on this fine day with its scent
of hay and wind
from as far away as the big lake,
to know what circles we were able
to invent in the froth of our sky,
how we drew maps
over the boundary-less earth
of our dream, the Mobius
of our own short time.

Something in us, even in sleep, wants paths.
We invent the fluid machinery to install them
and name our truths, even love,
for the convenience of pretending
we know where we are going.

That is fine.
This is no complaint. We do
what we must do, a least
the best of us, who really have no thirst
for bloodletting or the massacres in oil
and its horrendous cartography of grief,

who have learned the power in our
powerlessness
who wait for the night to be done
when our children turn back to us
even after we walk on,
to make the story ours
however it ends

and what we can do together
just by saying yes.

Reflections on Creating Actions

Reflect on your own experience: How have you felt when others have encouraged you to take action when you doubted your strength, or ability in a specific area?

I felt I had reinforcements. Reinforcements in mind and spirit and energy to apply and to go forward into potentially unexplored terrain. Their confidence in me or the strength of their encouragement was transferred to me and swelled my own well of “can do” energy.

What are your top 10 strengths?

1. Creativity
2. Honesty with self and in how I scrutinize my world
3. Empathy
4. Intuitive understanding and recognition of internalized structures and systems
5. Sense of Humor
6. Eye for Beauty in my world and in people
7. Reverence for the sacred and miraculous in every day
8. Innate respect for equality between beings
9. Good powers of critique
10. Good bullshit detector

How do these support you in your development of your coaching practice?

They are the structure from which I recognize and build the value of each day of my life. As coaching becomes an integrated part of my life, it will be a part of them, and they will be a part of it.

Think of one goal that you will have for the next month. This may be a self-contained goal, or it could be part of something much bigger – like setting up your business! What structures do you need to put in place to enable you to achieve your goal?

• create and protect time to work on steps to goal
• create formal and/or informal way to list steps to goal
• ask for assistance as necessary, devise system open networks to make this possible
• create inner encouragement system to recognize positive value of work toward goal

Make a list of five people that you most admire and describe why you like them. What are the attributes that you want to make your own?

1. Lao Tsu. In spite of being dismayed with the world, and in spite of his own misgivings about the utility of his spiritual gifts in such a world, before he went off on his last physical and spiritual journey he gave into those who admired him when they encouraged him to leave a record of his beliefs and spiritual understandings. In that way he left one of the greatest spiritual guidebooks ever written, the Tao Te Ching.

2. Mrs. Tracey. My first and second grade teacher. Without coddling me she transferred to me a love of reading, she recognized my gifts, and encouraged me to apply them and love them. It was one way I survived my childhood

3. Federico Garcia Lorca. In spite of his great and powerful ambivalence toward his own mortality, and in spite of the fact that he was not an inherently political being, this Spanish Poet/Playwright, did not compromise his standards in spite of the danger it put him in during the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Evidence, long surpressed, indicates that he was assassinated by forces led by Franco and buried in a mass grave outside of his home town, Granada.

4. Thomas Jefferson. A great if flawed and very human man dropped into an epoch that transformed the way human beings govern themselves. He grabbed the opportunity, and understood his own foibles and how they were the same, equal, in every human. He was key in devising a system of government that took human foibles into account and was visionary in the way it tried to codify a way to transcend those foibles and accent human strengths.

5. Martin Luther King. Spoke loud and long and was the clear inheritor of Jefferson’s unfulfilled legacy of true equality for all. Spoke out against the odds. Spoke eloquently and with an unerring connection to the Sacred.

Who is on your support team? Is it big enough? Are there others you need to engage with more to support you in achieving your goals?

My family, friends and those who I have had the great pleasure of working with in the wide range of my professional and personal life. The people who believe in me and put up with my BS and remind me of my strength and gifts when I have forgotten them... It’s a group that could be bigger, but couldn’t be finer.I could explore connection to groups outside my natural support group and maintain, reestablish connection with those who have recognized my gifts and might be natural and authentic promoters of my goals.


Bob Vance