Make Meetings Matter

Showing up doesn’t mean you are present

Crayon Melting circa 2024. “Where did all the crayons go?” asks the child.

Welcome.

Find a comfortable seat.

Feel your feet on the ground.

Allow a breath in.

Sigh it out.

I have been in arts and education for two decades. I have had thousands of students, and I have discovered something you cannot teach, but you can invite into the space. It is amorphous and indescribable, but it is palpable when it it arrives. It is the connection that allows an audience to gasp with an onstage discovery; it is the vibration that strikes a chord with the listener in the song. It is free, it is available to everyone, but we undervalue it moment, by moment, by moment that passes us by.

It is presence.

One of the universities where I taught held a monthly “convocation.” It was a gathering of the entire school — faculty, staff, students — in a several-hundred seat theatre. The hour-long event was often kicked off with a short lecture, then followed with a talk about school events followed by a flurry of announcements for various upcoming shows rattled off breathlessly by department-heads and student directors. Convocation inevitably ran late. There was simply so much to do, to share, to highlight, to discuss.

Once, when our Dean was away, he asked me to run the gathering. I started by standing in front of everyone and taking them in. I strive to be the thermostat, not the thermometer. I stood there, felt my feet on the ground, and allowed breath in, then sighed it out.

When I was a younger teacher, I would end a full day of a teaching completely exhausted. My mentor asked me: “Are you allowing your students meet you halfway?”

I wasn’t.

I was blustering in with all of my vim and vigor, and as a result, I was expending more energy than I had — and more energy than I needed to. I wasn’t actually allowing anyone to bring their own energy into the room. I lacked the confidence that time brings, and I mistakenly thought that as the sole educator in the room, I was solely responsible for the class. But a group event — whether it be a meeting or a class or a convocation — requires a group of people to show up and be present. It is a communion. It is a shared experience.

After taking everyone in that day at convocation, I then asked the school community to put down all of their stuff (phones, computers, notebooks, etc.), and continued: find a comfortable seat, feel your feet on the floor, lengthen through your spine. Allow your diaphragm to drop to allow a breath in, and allow the diaphragm to fly up with a sigh of relief.

I spoke with them about the etymology of the term “convocation,” “to call/to come together” and noted its references throughout history, in literature, in the bible. I asked them how many times they had mindlessly gathered somewhere when the event’s contents could have been sent in a well-worded email. I asked them why do we gather?

What happens when we start with body and breath awareness and then examine the root of our convening? We become present in time and space — and what’s more, we understand our purpose for being present in time and space together.

Once I turned the convocation over to the audience, the gathering was markedly different from 15 minutes before — more calm yet simultaneously more alive. Everyone shared articulately, unhurriedly, and more authentically. Everyone who wanted to speak spoke. Every person who wanted to share shared.

Once the convocation reached its natural conclusion, I invited everyone to be present with themselves for a few moments and concluded as I always do, a nod to a clowning professor I once had, inviting us all to clap our hands and slap the floor and intone, “So it is.”

We did.

We ended 15 minutes early.

I read in a science fiction book once about a beautiful view of jet lag. The book said that jet lag was a temporary dissociation between the body and soul. (I think it was William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.) The idea was that a plane moves much too quickly for a human being — and so while the plane takes the body to a new location, the soul lags behind, unable to meet the speed. The disconnection between the two is the feeling of jet lag.

But I see jet lag in the world outside of air travel. We are jet lagged in our lives. We move so fast, our souls cannot keep up. We need time. Whether we think we can multitask a million things (we cannot — we only ever do one thing at a time) or as we strive to entertain a million choices (we cannot — choice overload will shut down your brain), the term is human beings. We are neglecting half of our nomenclature, which is being. To be.

Gatherings are sacred spaces where we have the opportunity to create, commune and transform, and yet so often we bluster into them haphazardly worrying about the future while they pass us by. We are constantly dragging our baggage in the door while bulleting a laundry list of future to-dos. As a result, we are lagging in the past or projecting into the future. As a result, we are never actually anywhere.

People think that being Mindful or doing body or breath work takes time, but it actually makes time.

I do not expect everyone to be an expert in body or breath work to start an event. Not everyone is going to dive down that rabbit hole. But what we are all experts on is being human. Because we all are. So let’s invite more humanity into our gatherings. It can be a simple as feeling your body in space, noticing your breath, recalling the reason for gathering.

Don’t make your soul rush behind you like a harried assistant. Give it time to arrive. Give yourself time to arrive.

Be.

Then maybe everyone else will show up as well.

This piece was originally published in EduCreate.

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