Movement...Whiteflash Visits Pinkflash

My friend Eugene told me how hard it was for him to forget Natalia.  He finally gave up.  He could not force forgetting her.  So he told me he prayed...for an answer to what he should do to forget her, of if he should...if he could...

He just asked for an answer, a signal of some kind...

The next day Eugene was in a professional meeting with a mixed group of men and women contacts from another company thousands of miles from his home, the Netherlands or even Natalia's home Brazil.  It was literally on the other side of the planet...that far away...he got his answer...he realized...and here is how he explained it to me...

Natalia had, he said, an incredible quality of movement, a very feminine, natural, slow, deliberate movement...he said it was something like the beauty of a swan in water, or a panther walking so gracefully through the forest.  That sounded pretty cool to me!  That he noticed something that specific and subtle.  He said he had never seen that quality before and it haunted him.  As did every memory of her...every detail...

But what happened to him that day on the other side of the planet was amazing to hear...Eugene met a woman about the same age as Natalia, different in every ethnic, and cultural,  and physical way, except that she had that movement...the graceful, natural movement...that same thing that Natalia had....
Eugene felt that he had been given an answer...a message from his Creator that he had asked for...remember, he said something like...."any signal"...

Accident?  Or, signal?  I asked Eugene what he felt the answer was...the message...?  This is the interesting part....he could not say...it was not totally clear to him...he was still "sorting it out" he said...but he felt some kind of peace he told me, his friend.  That he received a signal was all that he needed....he felt he had been heard...his prayer in the darkness was somehow answered...

I speculate that maybe there are movments that we recognize in people and some of these things are so unique to our senses, we may not have the words to explain, but we have the "radar" to pick them up....can people resemble others closely in this world?  They say we all have a double or twin out there, somewhere...

Eugene still taks about Natalia.  We have no idea if she still thinks of him...maybe Eugene will one day ask for that signal as well...

No accidents, they say...

Do You Have a Special, Secret Place in Nature....Greenflash Serenity

A friend of many years asked me today if I have one of these....a special, even known only to me...spot or place in nature in the area?  A rock, a pathway, a bench, a beach where I can go and soak in the power of the environment....and a place where I can go to send off my most maybe precarious and deepest wishes, hopes, dreams...like a private launch pad for what I want to send to the universe or to someone special out there....

My answer was "No, friend, I do not have one..."

This evening I realized, I need one. I even know where it is...it is a rock on the coast here...I need to go there...

But I also know why it took me this long.

I have been running.  You see, I am a cancer survivor.  Not a serious cancer thing...it was a long time ago, and I am healthy and feel so young, and yet, I know it gave me a low dose of post traumatic stress that I live with...a low level of anxiety, that I mostly deny...I cannot afford to look at it...there are too many who depend on me...and I depend on me to not give in to that fear....

So, I ran hard, never looking back or never looking back too long to get scared...

Besides, I preach being tough...if you know me, I am like the NFL..."we play injured"...we don't have the luxury of rest or slowing down for a minute...

I know this is all wrong...but running not walking or standing still is my credo...it is what I have beieved all these years to survive...my heroes never quit...they valiantly show by example...they stand out in front and take the first hit...they defend their own and even the weak who are not their own...

But I know I can still run and be the 'Father Lion" defender, the guardian, and still have my rock!

I may even show my friend where it is...after all he showed me I need that rock...

As hard as I run,I can never stop too long, but I will stop at my rock and launch my deepest wishes and hopes and dreams into the cool night air...

...that somewhere across that wide ocean they will land safely and these moments will not be lost...

...they will never be lost, because they are mine, and I know my dreams...but unless I launch them, they will never have anyone more than just me...

...dreams are meant to be launched... into the cool air of evening, where across that broad ocean they have a chance that they may be heard in the fresh morning air...

Pinkflash Tiger...Who Is She?

Many have asked and wondered...the tiger...who is she?

The "tiger" is not a real tiger animal, though they are so rare and needing our care and protection.  She is not a golfer!
She is... a lost love.

This is a sad story, and it is a true story.  It may someday have an outcome that is not so sad.

Eugene is a Dutch chemist. Married, quite happily after fifteen years.  At a conference for chemists in Tokyo, he met Natalia from Brazil.  He is 55, she is 27.  They were accidentally next to each other at the conference when a small earthquake rattled the hotel and conference center during a professional presentation.  Natalia in fear touched Eugene's arm and they talked, during, and again after the meeting.  Their relationship grew in the following weeks and months.  A few letters and a trail of emails flowed and after many months, both had opened their hearts to each other.  They shared their professional lives and facts, then family, then deeper personal challenges each faced in pursuit of dreams...

They met again after nine months.  Natalia flew to Holland and spent two days there to see Eugene on her way to a conference in Norway.  They shared lunch, afternoon tea, walking the streets and canals of Amsterdam.  Natalia shared her true feelings with Eugene that in spite of their ages, one was married, one was not, she was beginning to be deeply moved and Eugene shared the same in words and looks.  They exchanged gifts, she a box of personal souvenirs for him from Brazil...he gave her his recent book and a pen with her name engraved...there was a hug at the airport, nothing more physical than that...Eugene has his photos of that day...she has her memory...

Upon her return from Brazil, she received an email from him that he now had developed deep feelings for her...

Natalia sent Eugene a goodbye.  She feared she would hurt him, his wife, her family, and very much she feared being hurt herself...she had never felt this way before...she could see no future for them.

Both were in pain for months and both feared breaking the silence with the other because both feared being abandoned from something they felt that had overtaken each and them together....both felt frozen.  Neither one could share the story because no one would seem to understand.

Eugene wrote letters he just put away.  Natalia tried to forget Eugene.  Neither could forget the other.  Life for each went on....and on...and on...

And so the story ends here.  Eugene wrote about Natalia.  One day he saw a tiger at the Berlin zoo.  The tiger looked at him, then darted behind the rocks.  Eugene tried to find the tiger, but could not.  He tried but could not find the tiger anywhere again...

Eugene is a friend of mine.  I understand.  He told me of the tiger at the zoo.  He wanted to tell me what I already knew.  The tiger was her....Natalia...

I knew...I have seen this tiger...I have also seen this tiger hide and run into the night...
....this tiger is our lost love....we cannot forget her...

Eugene....me....you....
we are not alone....

I Missed a Tiger

I missed a tiger...in the night...
She vanished fast in full flight...
She showed such might...
And in her eyes such fright...

To this day, she haunts me so...
I do not know quite where to go
To find her in the night
Where we both met... in fright...

Now I and she are alone...
Whiteflash...my only hope...
We may meet with no home...
And this memory, we must cope......

I missed that tiger... she left so fast,
Knowing she is out there...
The present is full of the past...
Her eyes in me are sure to last...

To see her was not my ask...
To forget her is the impossible task...
She opened her eyes in the night
And thrilled my heart...forever in her grasp...

Tiger, tiger...out there in the night...
Appear, again, stay...do not take to flight...
For you and for me...
.... I hold you tight...

Tiger...

I Met a Tiger

I met a tiger in the night
At first, I was full of fright
Held on, resisted flight
Then I saw the flash of White...

She was gone, before I knew
What it meant and what was true...
Long awaited, long in view...
She was gone, before I knew...

Now I stand with her sight in me
Can't let go, can't be free...
Someday, I say, its her I will see...
For today, she lives on ... her sight in me.

Tiger, tiger, come back to me...

Can You Imagine....the Four Great Flashes at One Place and at OneTime!!!

Just try this on....

You are with someone you love...deeply...

They are doing their life-purpose, or you are doing yours...

You are together....

You are in nature, when something happens that is extraordinary...

And you feel it is no accident! 

Pink, Blue, Green White-flash all at the same time, same place...in you...

You had asked for this moment...so deep, so hard...

And it was given to you...


Have you ever been there?

For me, that is my very most private place and dream...

Is it just a dream?  A mirage?

What I just described exists....now in your mind...in mine...

It awaits you...somewhere out there....

I know...you know, too....

Career Flatline...or Career Silo? The Shape of Life Before Blueflash!

Consider this:  your career has shape...actual dimensionality....I mean like depth, bredth, linearity, curvature, peaks and valleys, flatlines....all maybe, if you are one of the lucky ones and you seek it....leading to that moment in your life when you experience the Blueflash...in one short moment the flash of the very idea that will be the central project of your life...

What is a flatline career?  Maybe it is a narrow path, with little promise of any peaks or upside..get into a company and you can't get out...you feel trapped...you cannot leave because maybe your whole family depends on you.  You feel occupationally brain-dead. 

What is a career "silo"?  Maybe someone gets so deeply devoted to one passionate thing, they go so deep...the musician who masters the instrument, but who cannot ever get employed to play it...

Then there is the professional culture trap....where you get so deeply committed within one culture, your chances of being global get less and less...you cannot leave your culture because your skills and passions cannot bridge to another place...this is OK if you want to be wedded to that culture, but what if you see yourself as a person who wants to live and work in more than your home culture...you become dependent on your company to treat you as a local or as a cosmopolitan...

Sociologist Wilensky separates out the two categories as profoundly different, and many corporate people eventually track one way or the other....locals are those who never leave where they started from....cosmos are folks who have a need for and are lucky enough to find travel and multiple locations in their careers...

Who determines what?

I have found in watching so many hundreds of students I have known well that people get tracked so often not by their choice but by their company....

It seems to say, "Look before you leap" into a company,let alone a career track.  Make sure it feels right.
Check out your exits in case you need to leave. You are never truly "married" to a company, a career pattern, or a culture, without your consent, whether you are conscious of this or not....

Some careers, like medicine, demand complete adherance to a specific series of steps, without exception, without a "time-out", a breather, or the consequences become "fatal"...step out and you are finished...

If you choose that, be aware of it.....you may live in a "free country" but you are not at all a free agent!

Blueflash is neutral.  Many medical doctors are extremely happy and have found their life purpose.

The differences in occupational patterns and what they demand of us become huge control factors in our lives....

Blueflash is neutral, remember, it is there for everyone to find, somewhere,sometime, and,  more often than not, it finds you!