Day 63 Warn Notice 12:57

The last day of the warn notice, a day that I have been dreading for 63 days.  I woke up early, thinking about what all I needed to do.  Started by answering email at home, and deleting more personal files off my Boeing computer.  Headed into work later than I wanted. 

It was a beautiful day but i all seem a bit surreal.  Drove in listening to my IPOD—a dharma talk on Right Intention, part of the 8 fold path.  This wasn’t much different than any normal drive to work; I would often listen to podcasts during the work commute.  When I had this realization, that I was treating this just like any other low attention today.  Maybe this was the perfect Dharma talk for today, I decided to be a bit more intentional about what I was doing and pulled the plugs out of my ear and left the radio off so that I could focus on my thoughts and feelings.

My brain was moving at a million miles an hour, computing the amount of time before my exit interview, how much time I would have at my desk for cleaning, etc. etc.  I think this was a way to overcome the numbness I was still feeling that I had been feeling most of the week; or maybe, the numbness was a way to avoid the feelings I was feeling. 

I was anxious, it seemed like it took forever to get to this day.  Now it was here, it was decided, not consciously by me though I contributed every step of the way in where I am today.  I take full responsibility for were I am.  Others may have contributed but my actions are what made the difference. 

Now one chapter of my life was closing and another was opening.  This new chapter is totally up for me to author.  I have my quill ready, a blank sheet in front of me, and all kinds of ideas swirling in my head.  Now to make some coherent sense of of this swill.

I started cleaning out my desk looking for things that might be helpful in helping to fill those pages.  I didn’t get too far before I realized that by driving the Buick in to work I hadn’t brought the Honda keys.  I had forgotten that my desk, the one I have been to less and less in the last year, was locked and that the key was on the Honda Key ring.  Sh*t.   I didn’t think there was much of importance in the locked part, but I just wasn’t sure and my exit interview was at 10:30.  Well that wasn’t going to work.  Called my boss and asked if we could push that off a bit.

Back in the car, 35 minutes minutes home, 3 minutes at home, and 35 minutes back to work.  Actually, the time to think was refreshing. I was able to calm my mind pretty good.  The more I did this the more I noticed that it was a beautiful Spring day.  Flowers everywhere, fragrance of Spring in the Air, birds, people and life all around that I hadn’t noticed before.

My thinking moved from a kind of frantic craze to a more measured thought process.  Moving from needed to be done this morning and then on to what I needed to  happen as I moved from the exit stage left to enter stage right into “not Boeing”.

As I expressed in an earlier blog called big words (Day 55), these times represent an opportunity to make big changes with less effort when you lean into or add to change instead of just trying to hang on for dear life.  This idea has been occupying my mind over the past week, but the objects of my lean into were still out of focus.  So this time in the car was well needed to insure that I could start my journey as soon as possible.  (For those going through this same change, get these changes started as soon as possible.  Now is the perfect time to begin.  The sooner the better. )

I was much more relaxed when I got back to Boeing.  Took about 15 minutes to clean out my desk and then I was on to meet my boss.  Unfortunately, I hadn’t had the time to: answer my last emails; figure out about the transfer of my Boeing Blackberry number to my new phone; or to complete deleting the personal information off my blackberry.  I was getting rushed again. 

We went through most of the exit interview.  The interview went like this:

Do you have a Boeing Credit card?
Yes here it is.

Computer equipment?
Yes it is in the bags and boxes

Desk Phone?
Left it at my desk

Keys?
For my Desk, left it at my desk

And on for about five minutes.  The hardest thing was to give up my badge.  It was like giving up the key to the kingdom.  With out the badge there is no way in.  There was a wincing in my heart when I handed this over.

The next wave of feeling came as I was getting close to deleting all of my personal information off my computer and blackberry and I noticed every trace of myself was fading.  My existence was fading in this realm.  I had my 5 minutes in the staff meeting the day before, now with the removal of personal information it would only be a short while before I am no longer in the thoughts of the people that I have worked with.  Sure memories will come up every now and then, but my presence will be lost.  The place in the heart, now near the front and center will move deeper and deeper into the back rows with the passing of time.

Finally, after about an hour I shook my bosses hand, left the 33-01 building.  It didn’t feel right to just jump in my car and leave, and it didn’t feel right to stay.  Even though I was still inside the gate, without the key to the kingdom, I couldn’t get into any of the buildings.  I couldn’t go and visit anyone, and I really wasn’t welcomed to do so.  In compromise, I drove through the site and as I drove by a building, I thought about some of the times that I had in it. 

One of my talents is to help teams and individuals find that next level of thinking that takes them beyond where they currently reside.  When this happens it can be a powerful moment.  A moment the Otto Scharmer calls a “presencing moment.”   After years of practice with these moments, I can viscerally feel them resonate through out my whole body and can help mark the occasion for the team or individual.  Most of the thoughts I had were about working with teams to bring this new thinking into awareness.  What I can’t do is know what is emerging before it happens, no one can, I can only help the team get there.  So being able to witness these events emerge is quite something.  I love it.

With these memories tears welled up.  A sadness from leaving something important behind, a sadness of about not being able to help these teams or these people anymore.  

And then at 12:57, with my cheeks still moist, I drove out of the main gate at the Bellevue Plant.  Assuming that I will never return to this place that has been my home away from home for the last 10 years and longer if the metaphor is extended to be my larger Boeing home.

After allowing myself to feel the sadness of leaving, the feeling of the ending, I instantly felt better.  I felt that a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.  My ego had been worried that it would collapse once I lost the identity it had know for 22 years.  It hadn’t collapsed or if it did it really didn’t make a difference.

I start my transition with intention.  I had to get to Costco and order my eyeglasses in order to max out the flex spending plan, but I didn’t want to jump on 405 and go home the same way I had for many years in an commute lowered consciousness.  I took a back road, and again was rewarded with Spring’s beauty.

A friend sent a reminder of some writing I had done years ago about transition.  How we entering into transition with thoughts about incremental change, because incremental change in somewhat knowable.  But these change that we are entering is called an adaptive change because within the change, learning takes place, and this learning changes the course of the change.  And she reference a particular Zen passage that I would like to share:

In talking with graduates of this program, almost universally, they talk how this program changed their life. Last night I was reading and came across this passage that I thought was particularly poignant as we start this journey.

We’re here to get our present model repainted a little bit. If the car of our life is deep gray, we want to turn it into lavender or pink. But transformation means that the car may disappear altogether. Maybe instead of a car it will be a turtle. We don’t even want to hear of such possibilities. We hope that the teacher will tell us something that will fix our present model. A lot of therapies merely provide techniques for improving the model. They tinker here and there, and we may even feel a lot better. Still, that is not transformation. Transformation arises from a willingness that develops very slowly over time to be what life asks of us.

Most of us (myself included at times) are like children: we want something or somebody to give us what a small child wants from its parents. We want to be given peace, attention, comfort, understanding. If our life doesn’t give us this, we think, “A few years of Zen practice will do this for me.” No, they won’t. That’s not what practice is about. Practice is about opening ourselves so that this little “I” that wants and wants and wants and wants and wants the whole world to be its parents, really—grows up.

Charlotte Joko Beck

Pg 8 Essential Zen by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Tensho David Schneider.

In talking with many people that have been through this type of change, they look back on it as very important part of their lives, and one in which they couldn’t of figured out what was going to happen.  They didn’t understand the possibility of coming out the other end as a turtle.

This post is already a bit long and I could go on, but I won’t.  Next time I will cover the things that I’m adding to my transition.  The second part of my day was filled with pieces of accelerating these changes.  And again for those that haven’t started, please do so soon.  For those that have no knowledge of what I am talking about, please go back and read day 55.

Best wishes for you, your family and friends. May you all enjoy good health, deep love and the joy of helping others.