Blinkered to Other Alternatives by Carole Watters
A little while back, I received a very interesting and cool email from Carole Watters.
In the email, she was sharing a story based on Cyndi Krupp’s (Carole copied me on the email) story about change, right around the time we launched Phoenix.
Below is that email to Cyndi (With Carole’s permission of course)
I think you’ll enjoy it.
Dear Cyndi,
‘A year ago I joined an Entertainment Group, which was based in a hall, called the Phoenix Hall. Shortly after I joined, the hall was razed to the ground to make way for a new building. And I’m sure you know the story of the phoenix – the bird that burnt itself to ashes and then arose anew. It’s a symbol of resurrection. As part of their Christmas show, the organizer of the Entertainment Group had the idea of reading nursery rhymes with a new humorous finish. And what was the rhyme that I was given to recite? It was:
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall
Humpty Dumpty had a big fall
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Had scrambled eggs for breakfast again.
Poor Humpty, in this version no one even tried to put him together again. He got scrambled and they fed on him. Look at the layers of meaning in that, particularly in relation to what I’ve been talking about. Someone falls – do you try and put them together again, to fix them the way they were before? Do you even bother? Perhaps even exploit their downfall. Or – and this was my new preferred last line:
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall
Humpty Dumpty had a big fall
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Stood back in amazement as a Phoenix emerged from the shattered shell.
Maybe, you see, when Humpty Dumpty fell, he wasn’t supposed to be put back together again the way he was before. And I realized at that point that we were so used to thinking of trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again that we were blinkered to other alternatives. After all, he was an egg – and maybe it was time for the egg to hatch – and for something new to emerge. Maybe by losing his old balance and falling off the wall and breaking, it was the means by which he could then come out of his shell and spread his wings and take flight.’
And when I just reread this, Cyndi, the phrase, ‘blinkered to other alternatives’ stood out (which is why I’ve now underlined it) because it ties in with your story below – you did something differently and I thought about something differently!
B
less you,
May your days be filled with eggcellent choices!
Carole Watters
Here’s Cyndi’s original story.
To really step into the life of our dreams we must not only be willing to accept change, we must find more and more ways to not only get comfortable with it, we must learn how to embrace it….
Image by Meridith112
