Shells

Recent­ly with­in the Lead­er­ship Think Tank dis­cus­sion group of LinkedIn, a rather long thread has evolved and tak­en on a life of its own regard­ing whether it is pos­si­ble for peo­ple to change. It seems many of us have some­thing to say about it! I have writ­ten else­where about this sub­ject, and also added my com­ment to the thread.

There are many won­der­ful ideas on the thread, but in some ways it is a hap­less ques­tion. If you say that peo­ple can change, you are going to have to face all the good argu­ments against that belief, and if you don’t believe peo­ple can change, you are going to have to encounter all the good rea­sons to believe they can. 

I only want to add the thought there are times when, like a her­mit crab, I believe we have to aban­don a once com­fort­able shell that we have out­grown. If we want to be big­ger — if we need to be — we have to leave one shell behind and take our chances in the open until we find anoth­er. Some­times this is a dif­fi­cult process and takes a long time; some­times things almost mag­i­cal­ly come together. 

I would say this pret­ty much explains the last twen­ty years or so of my life. It also has impli­ca­tions for mak­ing deci­sions about who we can best help and how.

I’m sure you can see what side of the argu­ment I am on. 

DecayingEquipment1

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By Dan Oestreich

I am a consultant, coach, facilitator and trainer supporting the growth and development of leaders and teams. For further information about my work and services, please access my Oestreich Associates website.

8 comments

  1. I love the imagery of the her­mit crab — very apro­pos … and a rather poet­ic ren­der­ing of the punc­tu­at­ed equi­lib­ri­um of change!

  2. Ah, Joe…so good to hear your voice. Back from New Mex­i­co, I’ve heard.

    “The punc­tu­at­ing equi­lib­ri­um of change?” and you call me out for being poetic? 

    Some­time I’ll tell you the deep­er sto­ry of why shells are so impor­tant to me.…or per­haps I have already, on one of those nights when you’ve brought out your flights of rare and won­der­ful wines!

  4. I look for­ward to learn­ing more about that deep­er sto­ry, and we will cer­tain­ly match it with some wine of appro­pri­ate depth.

    Mean­while, as serendip­i­ty would have it, last night I ran­dom­ly opened up my copy of David Whyte’s most recent col­lec­tion of poet­ry, Riv­er Flow, to a page with his poem “The Shell”. Giv­en your inter­est in shells, I’m sure you’ve encoun­tered it before. For the poten­tial ben­e­fit of your read­ers (includ­ing myself), I’ll just paste the first stan­za here:

    An open sandy shell
    on the beach
    emp­ty but beautiful
    like a memory
    of a pro­tect­ed pre­vi­ous self.
    The most dif­fi­cult griefs
    ones in which
    we slow­ly open
    to a larg­er sea, a grander
    sweep that washes
    all our ele­ments apart. 

  5. Therese, read the LinkedIn thread when you get a chance. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­play of assump­tions about the nature of people…

  6. There are many kinds of shells.

    All of them sym­bol­ize the full cycle of growth, begin­nings and endings.…Shells are lives piled up on the beach; the many lives we have lived in a sin­gle life­time. Sherl Crow said in one of her songs, “We can live life­times in a sin­gle day.” How true. Shells and more shells: peri­ods, phas­es, stages; rela­tion­ships, voca­tions, beliefs; past, present, future. All with their own cycle of being. We all live along that shore on the edge of.…(well, what’s your name for it?)

    Pho­to Credit

  7. Dan

    How about on the edge of belief and faith? Belief in the capac­i­ty and faith in the encounter to help us see how won­der­ful our dif­fer­ences are. Byron

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