The Year of Letting Go, Part 1

I was standing by the door, getting ready for a long day of meetings in Toronto, when my host, Tanya, replied “I can hardly remember my second son’s birth.” That stopped me cold. I had asked her if she was troubled at how our memory fades as our children grow older, and the lightening fast pace that often overtakes us as parents.

“I remember my first child,” she said, cradling Ethan – her second, the one whose birth she is forgetting – close to her as she too prepared for a busy day. “I remember the stitches.” Apparently there were many.

“Does it trouble you,” I asked, “to have that memory fade?”

“No,” she said, smiling widely, burying her face into her son’s neck as he squirmed, “because I am living every one of these moments to its fullest.”

Even still, it troubles me. Maybe it’s because I’m not living every moment to its fullest, so caught up I become in the struggle, to be a good parent, to be productive, to provide, to, as Leo Rosten once said, “have it make some difference that I lived at all.”

I think what troubles me the most is how quickly memory fades. In time the ripples that extend from the centre of the pond where the stone was thrown disappear entirely, and all recollection of the stone itself is gone.

Creating and guiding
Having without owning
Letting go of expectations
Leading without controlling
This is the way of the Tao

Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu, verse 10

When Rio was born this is the quote we inscribed on his birth notice. He has from the start been our little Taoist master. (No more so than now, after he found my hair clippers and proceeded to shave his head…all he needs are some robes.)

Sometimes at night I’ll turn on the light in the hall outside the room where my family sleeps all side-by-side on a ten foot wide bed. The light slants in and the faces of my two boys – pale in the darkness – can be seen sleeping peacefully. I love that image, those boys limp in slumber, their arms splayed, Silas sucking in his dreams, Rio deep in sleep. I’ll stand in the door, or sit at the foot of the bed, and watch as they almost perceivably grow older, and out of our lives a day at a time.

And I tell myself that I have to let go.

Let go of everything.

In September I stood on the beach at Hollyhock, on Cortez Island, BC, and said to anything that cared to listen – the gulls wheeling overhead, the mud sharks in Desolation Sound – that I would now have to learn to let go of things. Of everything.

Attachment is part of why we suffer so badly in this world. We cling to ideas, people, places, plans, to the image that we have of ourselves, to a story that we tell others and ourselves about our lives. Most often these things have nothing to do with our reality what-so-ever.

My children are teaching me to let go. Sometimes – as when I watch them through the darkness and see them change just a tiny bit each day – the letting go is gentle. Other times – as when Rio, 4, pushes me away when I try to give him a kiss – the letting go is so much more abrupt.

We can let go, or we can have wrestled from our grasp. It’s our choice. But one way or another all of our illusions – that our children were ever really ours; that our lives could be anything but meaningful – will be shattered. Better to let go first, and save our fingers to brush delicately against all that we hold dear.

The Tao of Toronto

One of the most difficult things about being a consultant is the never ending search for the next job. Even now, when I’m up to my eye-balls in work, I’m always on the look out for the next interesting contract.

So now I’m here in Toronto, serving one client, and searching for the next.

The work that brings me to the city is fascinating. I’m serving a small child and youth advocacy organization called Voices for Children. We’re working together to develop a comprehensive communication’s strategy that will accurately translate their mission – to turn knowledge into action for the well being of Ontario’s young citizens – into a set of tangible, measurable, and most importantly, effective communications goals, objectives, key messages and delivery strategies. I like the organization a lot, and I like the fact that my work is helping to make the lives of children – of which I have two – better.

And while I’m in the city I’m schlepping my wares, not unlike a dude in a baggy coat that, as you pass his haunt at the mouth of a shadowy ally holds it open and asks “wanna buy a strategic plan?”

Maybe it’s the weather – grey (when is it not in Toronto?) and a little brisk (I’ve become such a cream-puff since moving to Victoria) - but I’m not quite as aggressive about my hustling as I have been in the past. I’m down to just three or four meetings a day, instead of six or seven. I’ve accepted that I just won’t be able to see everybody that I want. I can even accept that in some cases, I really don’t have to foist myself and ideas on others – it’s ok to just relax a little. Lao Tzu says:


Know when you have enough to accomplish your goals
and you will succeed
Know when to stop
and you will always move forward
Seek nothing
and you will find everything you need

(Tao, 44)

So maybe it’s ok to hang out in Tinto, on Roncesvalles, and write a blog and do some work on another client’s Strategic Plan.

While writing Carry Tiger to Mountain, this was one of the most difficult things for me to accept. I wrote a whole chapter on this idea, focusing on fundraising, organizational development, scarcity and abundance. I’ve not yet come to grips with an abundance mentality, but I’m trying. I’ve got a lot to let go of before I can say I’m seeking nothing, and finding everything.

Welcome friends.

In a few months Carry Tiger to Mountain – The Tao of Activism and Leadership will be released on the unsuspecting public. I’m getting a little nervous about it. The book has been just a concept for so long that now that it’s nearly complete, I’m having a few doubts. There are a lot of deeply personal experiences laid bare in Carry Tiger to Mountain. There are also a lot of ideas in this book that may, or may not, go over like a tonne of bricks. In thinking about the books launch, I’m trying to let go of any expectations – for better or for worse – and just accept that much of my work is now done. The book is one or two edits away from being printed, and my substantial writing is now complete.

It’s been an intense journey. In January of 2005 I sent out proposals for three separate book ideas to about fifteen publishers. Carry Tiger to Mountain was one of them, and was sent to five different publishing houses.

I’m no stranger to book proposals. My first book proposal was made in 1995 after I wrote my first, and likely last, article for the Globe and Mail (I screwed up pretty badly on the research for the story). It was a story about wolves in southern Alberta, and I thought a book on the subject would be a good idea. Nobody else did.

Since that time I’ve been sending out flurries of book proposals on no less than fifteen different book ideas. I’ve come close (I think) twice to getting a yes – once from Stoddart publishing for a collection of short stories. That proposal died when the editor I was dealing with moved to a different publishing house. No forwarding address was given. The second time was with Fulcrum when I thought I was getting close to them accepting a proposal to photograph and pen a book on the Green River in Canyon lands National Park, Utah. Likewise, that one never came to fruition. Aside from that, ten years have passed and I’ve gotten pretty good at accepting rejection with grace. As William Faulkner once said, I could paper my walls with rejection letters.

And then came the spring of 2005. That’s when Arsenal Pulp Press responded to my query on Carry Tiger to Mountain and said that they would like to chat about the book. Fate would have it that I was to be in Vancouver two weeks hence as my family and I made our long anticipated move from Alberta’s Rocky Mountains to Victoria, BC. A meeting was set, and when it was done, I had a contract in my grubby little hands.

The production end of writing a book takes some time, so the first draft of the book had to be complete by the end of October, 2005. I was wrapping up my work with Wildcanada.net when I signed the contract in May, settling into Victoria, and volunteering for NDP candidates David Cubberley and Gregor Robertson during the run up to the May 17 election, so I really didn’t start writing until June. In July I started my new business, and had two big contracts to work on immediately. I penned 75,000 words in three months, rising between 5 and 6am to get a jump on our early-bird son Rio, and the ever-jangling phone. When Silas (see photo of us collaborating on some sleep) was born in July I was half way through the book.

In late August I was able to print a first draft, and for nearly two weeks I went to Cadboro Bay every afternoon and sat on the beach for a few hours to edit (life is hard). Then I worked to incorporate the edits and printed again, this time handing a copy of the manuscript to my partner (herself an amazing writer) Kathleen, while I kept a copy to edit again. By early October I was able to take both of those drafts and work through the thousands upon thousands of changes. This was the hardest part of writing the book. Kat is very, very thorough. On some pages I could hardly see the words for all the red....

But in the last week of October I was able to plunk a copy of the manuscript down on Brian Lam’s desk at Arsenal. It was an extraordinary feeling. After more than eleven years of effort, and much longer of dreaming, I had finished by first book.

There have been more edits since. Over Christmas I expanded on some of the stories in the book, and did some additional copy editing. But now it is largely done. The design is being completed. A final once over for copy editing will be done. And then printed. And then…. Who knows what happens next?

There has never been a moment throughout this process where I have been confident that this material would be well received. I’ve sought to be humble in my approach to writing this book, as Loa Tzu would insist. I’m frankly just a little concerned that the book will raise more ire than hope; will result in a deafening silence not a roar of approval. But I think that I’ve managed to let go of my expectations. If nothing else, Carry Tiger to Mountain will be a 300 page post-it note to myself about how to live life well, and to remember what I need to do in my own world to be an effective activist and leader. And if like Henry David Thoreau I end up with a library of 2,500 volumes, all but one hundred of them mine, I’ll know I am in good company.