This sweet little Irish lad cheered us up in this 3-minute YouTube clip: I’m A Busy Man. It’s a reminder of how small children can invest with complete commitment to imaginary lives, and also how much they are absorbing from the conversations happening around them – picking up a lot more from their families than the adults might realise.
Adults live imaginary lives too, though not always as gleefully as this boy. We were thinking about what this means for our meetings.
Often, by creating space for sharing dreams and hopes, we can create richer human connections. That seems more important as so many people are really stressed out after a year of pandemic disruption.
f you want more serendipitous creativity, it’s good to embrace whimsy, playfulness and connection, rather than rushing to highly caffeinated brainstorming. Focusing on being productive at the expense of relationships might seem efficient but will probably backfire. Carmine Pariante, a psychiatrist at King’s College London offers this advice in a recent New Scientist article (paywalled) written by Caroline Williams: “…any kind of stress, whether from work, home or the fear of a deadly virus, can be reduced by meaningful social interaction. Even in the absence of actual physical contact, there are plenty of ways to keep in touch emotionally and how you do it doesn’t matter.”
We also sense that sometimes people adopt what appear to be fierce positions that brook no argument. We might feel tempted to argue with them or label them as resistant. Sometimes, it might be smarter to simply acknowledge them, kindly allowing them to flesh out their stand – sensing that at some level they are trying a position on, like this lad here, and they may not be really that attached to it, as long as we don’t fight them.
Photo by Kyle Smith on Unsplash