A life of intent

The whiteboard I sit facing while I enjoy my lunch and write this blog changes when it suits my fancy. I don't have a schedule to update it, as I seem to have for everything else. It can have one item, or a dozen. I use it to keep me focused, open my mind, give me thoughts to chew on. It is not the same today as it was two weeks ago.

My eyes make an invisible triangle in my office, from this iPad, to the board, then too my lunch. I see the container that held the left over spinach and chicken flauntas. I can still taste the cheese that held them together, under the sweet crisp carrots I am eating as quickly as I can get them out of the dwindling ziplock bag. A giant graham goldfish is my desert, but the overly happy food is overlooked for ideas of the board.

Perhaps I'm stuck here because of some quick failures this morning. Loosing the conference room I had for my team meeting. Failing to talk about communication, in an ironic twist, when I did get the room. The meeting dissolving in an uncontrolled way, when we lost the second room, which we held only by virtue of our presence. I felt like a leader not leading, a transparent fraud.

I'm mostly over that, but I still find myself looking to the board for inspiration. There are three circles on this board. One is a set of arrows around the word relationship. They connect the words Coach, Goals and Accountability. The model I've tried to build my sharpening relationships on. Below that is a circular version of the project triangle. Time, Cost, Quality. I'm toying with the Idea of introducing Quantity to it, but that is largely encapsulated by time, in terms of how it relates to a project. The third circle is actually a spiral, which is actually precisely laid out on a grid; it is a graphical representation of the Fibonacci sequence. Interesting but nothing grabs me from the circles.

The bottom bit of the board has some short term notes. There are the six pieces of audits, Sample, Findings, procedures, correction, root cause and controls. Under that some scratch I can not read all of on Internal Medicine practitioners, which are being modified in an interface. Nothing.

The meat I am looking for is in the last section of the board. Here, there are four lines. One of the lines relates to the spiral on the grid; 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89. This sequence is made by starting with zero and one, with each following number being the addition of the two that preceded it. Unremarkable until you realize that it makes the spiral of snail shells, perfect acoustics, appears in the fruit of a pineapple and the leaves of an artichoke. It is like a peak at one of God's blueprints.

The next line that gets my attention is "be unexpected, in the best possible way." This comes from the idea that anyone can make a magic moment, it has two parts. First it needs to be a moment of surprise, not a firecracker under the seat, but just not what is expected. Second, it need to be good. Not spectacular, just pure. As a parent, kids are easy to give these moments to. As a husband, too. I don't do this enough. This line needs to stay a while longer.

The next line is a question, "Do your actions measure up to your ideals?". I love this one. It is that check which keeps us mindful.

The last line is the one I think I've been looking for. A life of meaning starts with intent. When I wrote this up here it was a statement on the importance of being mindful. My day could be spent rerunning the tape about dropping the meeting and feeling like I am not leading, if I want my life to be one of regretting my mistakes. I don't. I want to learn and grow and laugh at my mistakes. I want to hand them to God and look up with open arms saying I don't know what to do with this. So, with that desire in my heart, I will grab the responsibility God has given me.

It is time to take a brief walk and prayer time.