There was a salmon in the river Slane in County Meath. Whoever caught this salmon and ate it would become the greatest and most gifted poet in Ireland and would also receive the gift of second sight. There was a man called Fionn the Seer who had spent seven years pursuing this salmon. Young Fionn Mac Cumhaill came to him to learn the craft of poetry. One day Fionn the Seer came back, having caught the salmon of knowledge. He started a fire and put the salmon on a spit. The salmon had to be turned very carefully and could not be burned or the gift would be ruined. After a while the fire went low, and the salmon could no longer be cooked properly. Fionn the Seer had no one to gather more wood for the fire. Just then his protégé, Fionn, came out of the wood, and he left him to turn the salmon slowly on the spit. Young Fionn Mac Cumhaill began to turn the salmon, but he was a dreamer and he allowed his mind to wander. When he looked, a blister had appeared on the side of the salmon. He grew very anxious, knowing that Fionn the Seer would be furious with him for having ruined the salmon. With his thumb he tried to press the blister back in. As soon as he did, he burned his thumb, then put it in his mouth to relieve the pain. There was some of the oil of the salmon on his thumb, and as soon as he tasted the salmon oil, he received the wisdom, the gift of second sight, and the vocation of poet. Old Fionn came back with the wood. As soon as he looked at young Fionn’s eyes, he knew what had happened. He sat there disappointed that the destiny he had pursued so deliberately had at the last moment turned away from him to be received by an innocent young man who had never even dreamed of such a gift.
This is a good story to illustrate how the linear mind, despite its sincerity and commitment, can totally miss the gift. The imagination in its loyalty to possibility often takes the curved path rather than the linear way. Such risk and openness inherit the harvest of creativity, beauty, and spirit.
Sometimes a person has difficulty with work, not because the work is unsuited to him, or he to it, but because his image of the work is blurred and defective. Frequently, such a person lacks a focus and has allowed the tender presence of his experience to become divided and split. His sense of his work as expression and imagination has been replaced by an image of work as endurance and entrapment.
THE FALSE IMAGE CAN PARALYZE
Perception is crucial to understanding. How you see, and what you see, determine how you will be. Your perception, or your view of reality, is the lens through which you see things. Your perception determines the way things will behave for you and toward you. We tend to perceive difficulty as disturbance. Ironically, difficulty can be a great friend of creativity. I love the lines from Paul Valery: “Une difficulté est une lumière / Une difficulté insurmontable est un soleil”—that is, “A difficulty is a light; an insurmountable difficulty is a sun.” This is a completely different way of considering the awkward, the uneven, and the difficult. Deep within us, there is a terrible impulse and drive toward perfection. We want everything flattened into the one shape. We do not like unexpected shapes. One of the essential aspects of beginning to re-imagine the workplace is to awaken the ability to welcome that which is difficult and awkward. Frequently, the actual work itself is fine, rather it is our image of it that makes it appear difficult and awkward.
During a phase of my study in Germany, I became acutely aware of the impossibility of my task. I was working on the Phenomenology of Spirit. Anyone who knows Hegel will readily admit that this long text is magical but difficult to penetrate. My sense of the difficulty of the project began to mirror itself in my attitude toward the work. Later I began to paralyze myself, and soon I was not able to work at all. As the Germans so beautifully say of such a blockage, “Ich stehe mir im Weg”—that is, “I am standing in my own way.” I would go to my desk with great commitment, believing that I was going to break through this barrier, but I could not concentrate. The image that kept haunting my mind was the impossibility of my task. Each day I would try anew, but I was totally blocked.
One day I went for a long walk in the forest near Tübingen. In the forest, it suddenly occurred to me that Hegel was not the problem; rather, it was my image of the task that obstructed me. I came back home immediately, sat down, and quickly jotted on a page the image of my work that I had constructed. I recognized the power that the image had. When this became clear to me, I was able to distance the image from the actual work itself. After a couple of days, the image had faded, and I was back into the rhythm of the work.
Some people have a lot of difficulty at work, even though the work is a genuine expression of their nature, giftedness, and potential. The difficulty is not with the work but rather with their image of the work. The image is not merely a surface; it also becomes a lens through which we behold a thing. We are partly responsible for the construction of our own images and completely responsible for how we use them. To recognize that the image is not the person or the thing is liberating.
THE KING AND THE BEGGAR’S GIFT
A difficult or unwanted thing can turn out to be a great gift. Frequently we receive unknown gifts in disguise. There is a wonderful old story told of a young king who took over a kingdom. He was loved before he became a king, and his subjects were delighted when he was finally crowned. They brought him many different gifts. After the coronation, the new king was at supper in the palace. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. The servants went out to discover an old man shabbily dressed, looking like a beggar. He wanted to see the king. The servants did their best to dissuade him, but to no avail. The king came out to meet him. The old man praised the king, saying how wonderful he was and how delighted everyone in the kingdom was to have him as king. He had brought the king the gift of a melon. The king hated melons. But being kind to the old man, he took the melon, thanked him, and the old man went away happy. The king went indoors and gave the melon to his servants to throw out in the back garden.
The next week at the same time, there was another knock at the door. The king was summoned again and the old man praised the king and offered him another melon. The king took the melon and said good-bye to the old man. Once again, he threw the melon out the back door. This continued for several weeks. The king was too kind to confront the old man or belittle the generosity of the gift that he brought.
Then, one evening, just as the old man was about to hand the melon to the king, a monkey jumped down from a portico in the palace and knocked the melon from the old man’s hand. The melon shattered in pieces all over the front of the palace. When the king looked, he saw a shower of diamonds flying from the heart of the melon. Eagerly, he checked the garden at the back of the palace. There, all the melons had melted around a little hillock of jewels. The moral of this story is that sometimes awkward situations, problems, or difficulties are really disguised opportunities for growth. Very often at the heart of the difficulty, there is the light of a great jewel. It is wise to learn to embrace with hospitality that which is awkward and difficult.