Hi All,
Hope you’ve had a great summer. I’ve returned from my break with a feeling that it’s not just the children who have gone back to school. It seems that our world leaders are exhibiting some playground behaviours too!
The biggest (but not the only) example is Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un (picture from fpif.org) who both seem unable to do anything other than behave like 5 year olds.
Their ‘mine’s bigger than yours/you push me I’ll push you back’ approach is not reassuring at all considering how high the stakes are if it goes wrong!
An idea I came across today is mandorla (the Italian word for almond), that’s shared in Robert A Johnson’s book “Working with Your Shadow”. It is the image of 2 circles overlapping and the central part, which they both make, is shaped like an almond.
I don’t know a lot about it yet, but the principle is that, if the circles represent differing points of view, then the almond shaped space where they overlap is where tension exists and new ideas are created.
That overlap is not a place of compromise, but where the third way is found.
Whilst Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un don’t seem prepared to compromise they do, for all our sakes, need to find a third way. And to do that they’ll need to come out of their short trousers and look for that almond shaped space between them.
If like me you too find yourself acting like you’re in the playground from time to time then perhaps we can all do with a bit of mandorla!
Thanks for reading this Choose You blog. Would love to have your comments,
Jenny