Credit: Artly Snuff
Furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
"Breaking the silence
Of an ancient pond,
A frog jumped into water —
A deep resonance."
I saw this haiku and it struck me as such a contrast to the chaos spinning around us all right now.
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) composed it at a haiku gathering in 1686, and while many haiku poets at the time were focused on the sound of frogs croaking, depicted in poems, Basho chose to focus on the sound of water.
The thing is, this 16th century poet wasn't seeing a pond or the frog.He made the world of silence which was broken by a small creature in his mind.
There was something about this utter simplicity, free of the complications of today's world that struck me. It felt like the places our minds go is sometimes limited by pre-existing narratives. Invisible prisons we make in thought-form.
The habits of familiar neural pathways dictate to us what we should be thinking about and in what way we should think about the creations of our own mind.
What Many of Us Have Decided...
The way we choose to think about the world, ourselves and what's possible write the script for our future actions. What is possible always remains to be seen yet many of us have already decided what we can and can't do.
This is especially relevant in the art of innovation in workplace. Time are changing so rapidly now, the structure of society, commerce, socializing, economics, city planning and more is all being re-written on the fly.
Many business owners lament on their perceived hopeless future given the restrictions put in place to protect public safety - which the debate is still rampant on how this is being done.
The entrepreneurs, like myself, will glibly say, "Pivot, adapt, now is the time!" but I think we forget sometimes that not everyone thinks like an entrepreneur.
Many entrepreneurs don't think like an entrepreneur - they still have the ingrained corporate life dictating what they are capable of and where they see or don't see possibilities.
And to be fair, not every industry can adapt as easily. Dine in restaurants that don't just provide food, but the ambiance and the lived experience of being there.
You can't exactly translate this to curbside pick ups and e-commerce store fronts online. In the last blog I interviewed Josh Brown, owner of Genuine Joe Coffeehouse and we talked of his struggles to stay in business.
I suggested selling whole coffee beans in bulk online, and he talked about the strong community that keeps him afloat needs to be able to walk up and order at the shop.
That's part of what Genuine Joe provides and there is a lot more involved in pivoting to selling whole beans in 1 pound bags online, including the margins for the cost of shipping.
I think my suggestion made too many assumptions without thinking about this model of business more.
I also feel many of us in the startup world take mindset for granted. It's easy for a lot of us to say, "Just pivot, and adapt!" because of how we think and are trained to think.
It's not easy to rewrite the way a mind works or thinks about things, in order to see more opportunities, as it seems to some of us already well adapted to this lifestyle.
The Art of Headspace
Creating space inside our minds to grow and re-examine thought patterns and habits will not only help us grow in business but also develop our perception.
Each year, since I started actively working on cultivating and deepening the field of vision and perceptive powers of who I am, who others are, how they see the world, themselves, me and our interdependent relations it's like lifting a veil.
Each year more is seen. The eyes perceive more depth to each situation, more context is noticed for how and why things come to be the way they are.
This frees me to improve, move the needle on personal and professional goals. This past week alone, I launched 2 new businesses, after starting an e-commerce business 2 weeks ago.
Basho's Frog haiku was said to have been created when Basho’s Zen master, Boncho, visited him. According to legend, the master asked Basho a koan-like question (which is a riddle without an answer).
Basho, decided not to answer directly or even try to. He replied instead with “a frog jumps into, the sound of water.”
Life doesn't always make sense. There isn't always a linear pathway to solutions to customer dilemmas or to our own lives and their meandering pathways into the future.
How we choose to think about a problem has just as much power to solve it as the effort we make to create solutions. (Here's an interesting montage of Basho's journey)
This is true everywhere for everyone but it isn't the default go to method for problem solving.
Things get much easier when we can think about how we are thinking and shift perspectives. This is why it's good to bounce ideas off associates and friends and family.
It may not even be what they say, but how they say it, or the way they choose to look at something that triggers that "ah ha" moment for us.
How We Think About How We Think
The Frog Haiku is something that stopped my scrolling this morning and made me think about how I think and the value in changing perspectives to achieve enlightenment.
Enlightenment in the sense of realizing new things that our perception had missed before which can improve our business and enjoyment of life.
Just a few thoughts to marinate on Monday. Hope the rest of your week goes well. Any favorite poems or writings that changed your perspective recently?
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