Tags
brave new business leader, desiderata, desired, Elaine Stirling, metaphor, prose poem, The Corporate Storyteller
image of pearl buttons from http://www.percyandbloom.com
Be to the world as an arm to a sleeve, well-fitted yet loose, independent of and grateful to the warmth, colour and texture of a temporary pairing.
Extend beyond the limits of a cuff, offer shape to shoulders, flexibility midway. An arm can pull out of a sleeve at any time—there will be other jackets, but the sleeve without a wearer is collapsed and hollow. There is nothing in that emptiness worth emulating.
Be present. Stay with the joy of another for at least the count of three before diving back into your own agonies like a soldier to his trench. Acknowledging the pain of others is compassion, but this too limit to the count of three before seeing them as well and whole. Anything longer, you’ll be tempted to start a club.
Sleeves make poor democracies.
As to the business of happiness, it’s best to mind your own. Untended joy bolts, and the cycle from seed gone wild to domesticated flax you can beat into linen takes way too long. You won’t recognize the sleeve as your own, and there’ll be those little itchy bits you’ll blame on the weaver.
If there’s one set of pearl buttons you can take from this fabricated world, it is this:
Style knows its own.
Style is you.
You are eternal.
~~~
© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Oceantics 