In a coaching conversation with a client recently, I was talking about being the “right size”. In the context of leadership, we were exploring the question of style and the legitimate reach of our sense of responsibility for those we lead. He was feeling “lighter”, having let go of some aspects of responsibility for others, which he had realised were not his to hold. It was a relief to him. As he described his experience, I also felt a sense of relief. It was as though I was seeing him return to his rightful size, a size that more accurately represented his true place in the order of things. Does that make any sense to you?
It seems to me that we are currently learning an important lesson about what it means to be human. There has been a downsizing of us humans in recent weeks. We have suddenly been shown to be powerless and small in the face of this invisible virus. Despite our alleged technological know-how, our political might, intellectual genius, business acumen and all-round human brilliance, we have been shown to be small, fragile and easily wiped out. We have had to resort to simply staying indoors and confronting our limitations from there.
There is pathos in this for me, like in the great stories in which the powerful fall, their hubris leading them downwards until they find themselves stripped of everything, without the trappings of authority and might, shrinking back to their rightful size (Covid-19 is man made, after all). Ultimately, we are not in control. We do not ‘rule’. We cannot really determine anything. We are simply visitors to this wonder of life. We are simply children of God — whomever we believe Him or Her to be; children of the great Mystery of The Universe. I feel our smallness and our fragility now and somehow we have become so much more beautiful seen and felt that way.
We should be grateful for this reminder. The law of systems suggests we can only really lead from our “right’ place in the order of things: neither too big, nor too small. May we remember this now.