Under The Radar

I was at one of the after school clubs I run yesterday, and before we started our cricketing activity I took the register – and then asked the group a couple of ‘off the wall’ questions.

I never pass up the opportunity to slip some kernels of ideas under the radar – because there’s the world "out there"; then there’s the world we think we see, the world we think others see, the world we are all manipulated to see by society, institutions, advertisers, magicians etc. Let's face it - to be fair, there is an almost infinite number of worlds when we are dealing with perceptions.

Reception and Perception

So you walk into a building and immediately you are confronted with that inner question,
“Where do I go?”
Once you’ve got over the wide-eyed wonder of the all the variances of the place, then you’ll be most likely to make for Reception. Of course, if you’ve been here before and you know where you are going, then you just make for the corridor, lift or the stairs. Once at reception you’ll ask the Receptionist for help and directions and ... off you go!

When you enter the building of life – we’ll call it the Worlds Building – then a rather similar process takes place. It starts with wide-eyed wonder, then you make for Perception and you talk to a Perceptionist. When we are growing up, we meet our first Perceptionists at home and with our immediate family, and after that we meet a wide variety of other Perceptionists as well. And this is how the whole conditioning process starts and evolves. Are they proper perceptionists though? We just don’t know! Maybe they only know about one small part of the Worlds Building – maybe they, too, have no idea what this is all about!

So, to get back to the original comparisons - if you are familiar with where you are going in the Worlds Building, then you’ll enter and miss out Perception and make straight for the stairs or lift and head off to where you are going.

The thing is – the Worlds Building is an infinite and gigantic edifice, and you are just heading for one small part of it. What about the remainder?

Change

Perhaps you need to find another place because the one you know and have been going to for some time, is no longer doing anything for you; perhaps you want more out of life; there could be a whole variety of reasons for your desire for change.

Now if you don’t have any idea that the Worlds Building is full of many different rooms, because your thinking leads you believe that the rooms are all alike, then you’ll feel stuck – and maybe you’ll take life into your own hands; seek other, maybe drastic, solutions.

However, if you do have enough of an idea about the Worlds Building, then you can either wander around on a quest, a ‘voyage of discovery’ – or you can go and talk to a Perceptionist and get a clearer idea of where you might go next.

A Perceptionist can be like a travel agent, giving you a variety of destinations where you’ll get a range of views of the world. The choice of destinations is yours – they have merely revealed the world of possibilities.
Some travel agents might guide you (maybe manipulate you) towards holidays that they themselves like, or ones that pay them the highest commission. Some may only be able to show you a limited number of options. Here again, you won’t necessarily know this. When you’re going for change – the only thing you can really trust is yourself, your intuition.
“I like the look of this one. That one sounds good. This feels like the right one for me.”

Deciding which choice

The Perceptionist guides you towards the Understanding that in the Worlds Building every room has a view; that pretty much all of the views are different; that the windows are all of varying sizes; that YOU are viewer.
The travel agent, on the other hand, will illustrate for you how your rooms are furnished and appointed; will tell you about meals, food and sustenance, and any particular local rules, requirements and protocols; may even tell you what clothing to take, what shoes to wear.

These are all things to help your decision ... and at the end of the day, it is always your decision. And remember this:
Even no decision is still a decision, and no choice is still a choice.
Comedian Eddie Izzard illustrated this with one of his mono-dialogues concerning the Spanish Inquisition. The choice was to be either Cake or Death. Everyone was lined up and asked,
“You – do you choose Cake or Death?”
Understandably, the answers were always cake, until the Inquisitor said they’d run out of cake.
“So my choice is Or Death?” asked the next person.
And at this point his narrative takes a huge sideways leap of comedic artifice. It’s an amusing routine, filled with linguistic tricks, reframes and quantum perceptive leaps. Conversational comedians like Eddie Izzard are masters of “under the radar” perceptionism – and, for me, the Spanish Inquisition, Cake and Death will never again be quite the same way they were!

So, what of my group of receptive young cricketing minds –

Looking at the practicalities

As they were all sat down, I narrowed my eyes and looked up and down the line.
“What am I thinking at the moment?” I asked them.
Many of them attributed their own personal interpretation of my stare, and one in particular said I was “...thinking how naughty we all are, not being quiet or paying attention.”
Very interesting, I considered. Clearly this answer was framed by classroom experiences of teachers with very much that thought in mind.
“That was the furthest thing from my mind,” I said. “I could have bad eyesight and this is my best way of being able to see you all. I could have forgotten what I was going to say and was trying to concentrate and remember what it was. It could’ve been any number of things – but it certainly wasn’t how naughty you all are. Judging,” I said, ”is a bit like deciding – you have to start with an open mind.”

I then threw into the pond the well-known story of five seagulls sitting on a dock.
“I was on Ilfracombe Pier on Sunday and saw five seagulls stood on the edge. One of them decided to fly away. So – how many were left?”
There was a chorus of “four”, which was predictable, and then one voice chirped, “Five.” 
Everybody looked his way and so he elaborated, “one had only decided to fly away, you didn’t say he had actually flown away.”

I pointed out to them that deciding to do something is very different from actually doing that same thing. The birds in the picture are all "safe," pecking around on the parapet. There's plenty of food; they have no need to go elsewhere. However, they ARE birds ... and flying is in their nature.

“In whatever games we play this afternoon,” I said to the young cricketers, “don’t just decide to do something – actually do it! Do it with conviction, like you mean it. Then you’ll find that you’ll be more successful, AND the less thinking time you have between deciding and doing – the better you will be.”

We then got on with the real business of just having some sporting fun; and the extra fun for me was seeing – on the radar of course - what extraordinary feats of performance emerged as the games unfolded.

Give Them a Piece of Your Mind

So you’re angry – there’s a bit of a rant.
You’re clearly affected so who caused it?

What did they do?
Jump ahead of you in the bar queue? Cut you up on the motorway? Call you a wuss on the pitch? Stared at you on the train?

Was it worse than that?
Maybe they got your order wrong? Perhaps they showed a complete lack of interest in serving you? Maybe they were a complete jobsworth? Maybe they’re qualified cheats?

These are all people you don’t even know and you’re already well on the way to giving them a piece of your mind – or, if you prefer the physical solution, a taste of knuckle!

Or perhaps they are just perhaps a bit thick, stupid, mindless ...

So what’s our natural reaction with these types of folk? They’re annoying, frustrating, aggravating, and need to be taken down a peg or two – shown the error of their ways – taught a lesson.

How we allow ourselves to wander – or is it blunder - into these flashpoints, these areas of personal conflict, ire and rage, is a pattern we slip into seemingly not out of choice, but more out of necessity. We have a necessity to assert our identity because there is something about this annoying person that has, cumulatively, impacted upon us in a very personal way – they have struck at the heart of our identity, who we think and feel we are.

I am

On the face of it, one of the generosities of my encountering someone who is really mindless would be to actually “give” them a piece of my mind; to share with them some of my own faculties in order to facilitate some things for them. It is a human kindness. Whether they’ve dropped something, are asking directions, or are just preoccupied with something else – it’s all the same. I’ve helped their mind by giving them a piece of mine for a short while.

However, in the common usage sense and meaning of that phrase, when I ‘give them a piece of my mind’, what am I really doing? I’m telling them what I think of them. I’m applying my view of the world, my set of rules about how the world should run on the basis of “My rules right – their rules wrong”. That’s the piece of my mind I’m giving them, AND probably insisting that they accept it as well!

The presupposition here of course is that my view is right.
Which is as far as it goes if I “call the shots” and if I take the attitude “that’s it – like it or lump it!”

However – things are different if I align my view with my identity; for if I do that, then everyone and everything that doesn’t conform to my view impugns, calls into question, my identity. My person, my very being, is challenged. I will stand up for myself – I will defend myself – I will prevail – I must prevail or I will lose my sense of self-worth. And if don’t prevail, or if I see myself as not prevailing, then I will look to reassert myself at the very next opportunity. This whole state, this mind set, can be seen residing under the banner “Do you, or don’t you, know who I am” and it lives together with a complete lack of humility.

Dipping lights, emotions and hierarchies

We’re driving at night and dip our lights when another car approaches. This is normal.
If the approaching car doesn’t dip its headlights – what then? We flash our lights and they dip theirs. They were distracted and have now conformed. This is normal.
If they don’t dip theirs – what then? We are more than temporarily dazzled. We can respond by doing nothing and just endeavour to concentrate so we can maintain our orientation on the road until they have passed. This is normal.
We can also respond by putting our lights on full beam in order to counter theirs. Reactive as this may be – it is still an option.

These are all robotic responses – they are a set of “If > Then > Or” choices and outcomes.
However, we are humans not robots – and we have emotions and hierarchies of values.

If dipping headlights, for us, is a set of actions judged and placed purely at the behavioural level then we’ll respond in the aforementioned robotic way. We’ll treat the non-dipper as behaving in an inappropriate way and no emotion will enter the arena of activity.
If we take the non-dipper’s action out of the behavioural level into a higher level, our emotional involvement will start to get charged up. We get tense and taut, we’ll start to verbalise our thoughts – and suddenly we aren’t the driver we were just before we encountered the non-dipper.
Our response at the next level up (skills and capabilities) is to judge the non-dipper as being incompetent, incapable of driving properly at night. “How difficult is it for you to do something as simple as dip your lights, moron?” we shout as they approach and then go past in just a matter of seconds.
Our response at the next level (beliefs and values) is more along the lines, “You shouldn’t be on the road, you’re a menace, it’s dangerous what you’re doing, society needs to correct you, I need to correct you...” and so on.
Our response at the next level (identity) is highly personal. This driver is not dipping his lights for ME. More to the point, these are my eyes he’s dazzling, my driving he’s disrupting, my car he’s putting under threat etc. This is me he’s directing his action at – doesn’t he know who I am?

As you can see, with all these responses there is a cumulative pathway. The ‘emotional backpack’ is filling up with meaning every step of every level.
If we carry the worldview that ‘morons and incapables’ threaten or impugn our identity, or that questioning our beliefs about who should be allowed to drive on the road threatens or impugns our identity, then that backpack gets overfilled very, very quickly. The filling gets amplified from every level below.

“Mr Loud”

There are some of us who do carry things thus - here’s part of a conversation I overheard in a restaurant recently. (I’d add here that I only clearly overheard one voice from this conversation, since it was quite loud! And therein is another clue.) A group of four at the adjacent table were talking sport. “Mr Loud” (let’s call him) held sway, and eventually the topic became the Paralympics. Mr Loud’s brazen pronouncement was, “Oh I didn’t watch any. I just couldn’t bring myself to do that – watching those people. That’s not sport. It’s just not right is it?”
While no one else in his coterie challenged his myopic worldview, I resisted a huge temptation – biting my lip and sitting on my hands – not to give him a piece of my mind.

Clearly, for Mr Loud, disability in others strikes deep. His belief is that disability sporting activities – right up to and including the Paralympics - are not sport. He feels what they do is not right – and presumably must be stopped. He labels them as ‘those people’, and just talking about the subject makes him uncomfortable. Yet he’s more than happy to share this worldview, so it’s part of his identity. Nothing will ever shake him from this view, this stance, except perhaps some very extreme personal circumstances.

Prejudice, in whatever form, always goes deep to the level of identity. At some point, proud Mr Loud, sitting atop his world, has views that are almost certain to be involved in a collision with those of someone equally forthright at the other end of the spectrum of compromise.

Keeping the pieces of our Mind

Keeping our mind intact should be one of the things we strive to do every day. Every time we ‘lose it’ by giving away a piece of our mind, then for that day – or that stream of consciousness – we can’t get it back.

I am often reminded of the client I saw who said she had ‘depression’ – except that she was acting out depression to mask her anger. She was happy for the world to see her ‘depression’ but not her anger. She had no peace of mind since every waking moment she was letting pieces of her mind fall into the abyss between her anger and her depression.

Why do we find it easy to get so irate behind the wheel of a car?
We’re in our own little box, thinking we are hidden from the world, and in this box we can express ourselves and be true to our identity and our beliefs. We can behave in whatever way we choose.  The world can still see and hear us of course – but the biggest danger to us is that for every ill-considered comment, every rant, we are giving away a piece of our mind.

If we can keep all the pieces of our mind together, then we will have peace of mind. Our judgements, our appreciations, our actions, our productivity, our thinking and our health and wellbeing, are all best served from a mind that is fully intact. We are able to make the best sense of everything if we are grounded, centred, complete.
We might feel distracted and unable to give our full attentiveness to something because we “are not all there”, or “my mind wasn’t with it”, or “my mind was in another place”, or “I couldn’t get it together”, or “my brain wasn’t in gear”, and so on. However we may describe it metaphorically, it all boils down to something being missing – and the missing piece is a piece of our mind.

Conclusion

So where is your mind today?
Is it all there?
Did you give someone a piece of your mind – however casually – on the way to work?

Check out how much of quality of behaviour do you currently ascribe to other levels such as capabilities, beliefs and values, identity or things spiritual?

Whatever the answer, it’s worth remembering that whatever you have placed in the domain of your identity – that is not really you. It is just what you think or what your views are. You weren’t born with your views. You’ve acquired and learnt them along the way. You can choose to keep them because they are serving you well or change them for others that will serve you better.
The real you lies behind all that.

So - as I sat on my hands in the restaurant, I became comfortable in the knowledge that I still had all the pieces of my mind and that behind the facade of prejudice and discomfort, there exists the real Mr Loud.

Primed and ready for action?

This week welcomed in my first after school cricket club of the new academic year. It was great to see the familiar and the new faces as they got stuck into a couple of different indoor games to start off our term's activities.
 
One repeated episode rather caught my eye and it was this. One of the lads, a very good fielder, was involved a number of times in picking up the ball and endeavouring to run out one of the batsmen. Every time he did so, the muscles around his jaw tightened - almost as if facially he was trying to augment the speed and power of his throw. He usually has a very soft and open expression, so the change was really noticeable - focussed, as it was, particularly around the mouth.
 
It's a very common trait for any of us when throwing a ball far or fast, for instance, to set ourselves up physically by holding our breath and tensing certain areas of the body.
Its the same sort of posturing we engender when endeavouring to "try harder" or "really try this time" or "focus and concentrate even more."
It also happens when we're really annoyed with something or someone, so we might tense up, clench a fist, narrow our eyes, and interrupt our breathing - endeavouring to (a) focus exactly where we might hit them or, more to the point, (b) send them, and ourselves, a message to "watch out because we are primed ready for action."

So - are we really primed ready for action?
 
There's a well known quote by Bruce Lee,
"The less tension and effort, the faster and more powerful you will be."
This doesn't apply only in the martial arts, but pretty much right across the entire sporting spectrum, and also out into our everyday lives.

I pointed this out to the lad who had struck this particularly tense and effortful pose as he prepared to throw. In releasing tension, suppleness and elasticity would return to his muscles and joints; his breathing cycle would return to normal; the quality of the visual focus of his aim would improve and other mental faculties would not suffer as a result of the depletion of oxygen to the brain when the breath was being held.
To be fair, for him to throw 'to the max' the only area he would really need to hold as grounded and stable would be a wide, firm base from pelvis through to his feet. Throwing off balance does not achieve the same results as when we are grounded.

So the lesson for throwing - and life - is rather akin to the one I wrote about on this blog back in March of this year. In that article called "Brace or Embrace", I talked about how we can either brace ourselves, steel ourselves for something that's about to happen - or embrace it, allow ourselves to get familiar with the conditions, become more capable through adaptability.
Bracing requires effort, a tensing - whereas when we embrace something, or someone, we draw it or them to us and allow ourselves to be moulded so becoming more at one with that subject.

So it is, as always, your choice.
If you want to throw well and accurately in life, always hitting the mark - then let go of the tension, especially around your mouth! Breathe and relax - and be supple, elastic and well grounded. Do all this, let go of all of that posturing and then you'll send out just one clear message - "I am primed and ready for action."

Unless of course the only thing you really want to throw is a tantrum.

The Hug Verger

Some years ago my good friend Sophia Husbands started a LinkedIn Group called “What’s Stopping You?” When I joined the Group in September 2012 a number of trains of thought arrived in "my station" ... and, like many of our new places, involving new people with new ideas and new perspectives – this got me thinking!


Folding the T Shirt

A few years ago I was a County U14s Cricket Manager, and I would do an interactive presentation with every new intake at our first session in January.
One of the exercises involved folding a T-shirt very neatly so that it appeared in ‘new’ and ‘shop shelf’ condition. It demonstrated 2 main things –
a) To the players – that this is a quickly learnt skill to execute the task in under 15 seconds, and is a timely reminder that we can all learn new skills easily in the right environment.
b) About the players – their open-mindedness, confidence and beliefs; which most times throws plenty of light on their world-view.

Now, if this task was required for every one of them to do, then all we (the management team) would get would be information on levels of expertise and speed of skills acquisition. However these lads didn’t ALL have to do the folding task – so straight away the reticent ones would take the road of “I’ll watch the others before I have a go”.
And this is where it connects with “What’s Stopping You?” and – “Why are the reticent, reticent?”

Reticence and Judgement

To a young teenage mind there are not very many grey areas, so although we might see degrees of expertise or making a good fist of attempting, they will invariably judge it as either I CAN do this or I CAN’T do this.

Another thing is that they will also judge themselves - IF they think they are being judged too.

If left to their own devices, with no critical eye looking on, then most of them will keep making attempts, go after go, until they are satisfied it conforms to the model they were shown what and how to copy.
However, if their beliefs are such that they are already on the road to being perfectionists, then – even when left to their own devices – they will sabotage their learning abilities by damning self talk, and give up trying.

Fortunately when we are really young and learning to walk or speak we start out with no comprehension about the ability to be reticent or judge ourselves. It’s all about the game called discovery and we play it very well. Our parents, siblings, other family members and people around us, give us (as a rule) plenty of encouragement in this game of learning by discovery.

Gremlins

In my book “Lamplighters” I talk about recognising and dealing with our gremlins, and how they get into our lives. Probably the first gremlin we encounter is the linguistic one DON’T. Don’t leads us very quickly to its brother gremlins WON’T, SHAN’T and CAN’T. The thing is, the older we get and the more we get familiar with – especially in terms of our own usage – these four linguistic gremlins, the more we allow them to twist our beliefs into shapes that were never there when we learned how to balance, walk and talk.

In terms of “What’s Stopping You?” therefore, the answers always tend to lie within ourselves.
“I can’t do this because ...”because there’s always a reason, an excuse.
“Yes, but what if ...” I mess it up, or make a real hash of it.
“I’ll look stupid ...”and they’ll laugh at me and see me for what I really am.
Or – “I’ll feel stupid ...” and then I’ll know that I’m really not that good at stuff.

Take a look at our Paralympians. As far as their capabilities were concerned, once they’d excluded or banished or never let in that quartet of linguistic limitations then a whole range of possibilities opened up. Their answer to “What’s Stopping You” was, pretty much, “... nothing, unless I make it so.”

Reframing excuses is a great way to start, because it challenges a particular world-view.
“I can’t go and talk to that good looking stranger at the bar.”
“Why not? What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“They wouldn’t want to talk to me. They might say something like 'Get Lost Creep!' And that would be awful.”
“How lucky would that be, though? Discovering that they aren't nice! Imagine having to spend time, let alone a life, with someone as awful as THAT? Wow – what a narrow escape from hell on wheels that was!”

Limiting beliefs, especially in the area of our capabilities, often start out quite innocently. Once the gremlins have sneaked in though, whether through the open door or under the threshold, then they can set to work. When we’re young the signs of their handiwork can soon be on show, while sometimes they can often lie dormant for years and then emerge. Quite often we’ll apply a youthful strategy to deal with a gremlin’s action only to discover as we get older that it has come back – with a vengeance.

The Hug Verger

I remember when I was quite young, I would sit with my mother and we would read a story together. She’d read part of a page to me and then I’d read the rest of the page to her. Now we’ve all been party to such an activity, and I used to really enjoy it – the story unfolding through her voice and then my voice. From her I got to learn what lots more words looked like and sounded like – and I got a really good handle on pronunciation and other aspects of speech for myself as well. It was another innocent and fun learning activity.

One particular day I remember reading out loud, “... and a Hug Verger came out from the shadows.” There was a suspension of time which was broken by my mother asking me to repeat what I’d just said. “A Hug Verger came out from the shadows.”

She smiled and chuckled, “That’s pronounced h-u-g-e   f-i-g-u-r-e. A huge figure came out from the shadows.” I repeated how she said it, and very soon got it right. English is not an easy language, and here was a two word phrase with a hard and a soft ‘g’ AND two different ‘u’ sounds. Think about it - not many words rhyme with ‘huge’ or look like ‘figure’ – and I certainly had no references for anything like these words!

The thing was – I was young enough to make an attempt to say them without thinking, using my current knowledge and what words looked and sounded like. I paid no thought to making a mistake, because I often made mistakes when reading with my mother like that. And yes, I saw how funny it was in context, when she told me what a Verger actually was and did.

Trouble was however – The Hug Verger became a source of some amusement for other adults beyond the confines of our mother and son read-and-learn exercise. To the adults my parents shared this anecdote with, this was just a funny sounding linguistic joke - but to my young mind I was the joke. They were laughing at me – not at what I’d said.

I never revealed these feelings to my parents - or asked them to keep the story private. And, in this small boy's view of the world, the discomfort and embarrassment were agonising.

The almost instant end result was I became very cautious at reading words I didn’t immediately recognise by pausing and letting the silence hang there until my mother said the word. Then I could say it ‘the right way’ and this wouldn’t lead to any more Hug Vergers, or embarrassment and discomfort. Silence was my safety mechanism.

And this was the start of my shyness ...
When meeting people I’d have to speak – I might say ‘the wrong thing’ so I’d be as silent as possible. In contemplation of meeting people I’d go through the next stage of silence – avoidance. I’d avoid meeting people. When avoidance was not an option, and silence was not an option, then I’d just have to speak. And the consequence of this conflict between speaking and avoiding was the next stage – stammering. From the smallest beginnings this was growing and growing.

There’s an old nursery rhyme about a horseshoe nail -

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

And for me, this became true. I lost a large part of my personal kingdom for many years - all for the want of an explanatory and comforting “Hug”.

So when people talk to me about what’s stopping them, I’m happy to share my own cautionary tale – AND to invite them to reframe their experiences; experiences that have fashioned and crafted their limiting beliefs.

Hopefully this enables them to hug their vergers, embrace their fears, banish their gremlins and start enjoying the life they really want to lead.

The Powder of Now

When exploring metaphorical landscapes with clients, quite often they are the most amazingly connective and intuitive places and visions.
Part of the exploration of the film “Inception” was in this area and how that argument interfaced with the dreams of some of the characters. It is, indeed, a collection of other worlds – far more real and yet far more bizarre, than can ever be conjured up in our minds by science fiction.

This brings me to a recent session with a client, to whom I was explaining the thinking behind the “Quality of Pleasure”- a chapter from “Mind How You Go – Steps to enhance your life’s journey”.

The Quality of Pleasure - LINK HERE

The calibration of not just the type of pleasure we might get from a particular action or indulgence, but also the amount of pleasure it might deliver for us, is a way we can maximise things we might love doing (for all the right reasons of course).

Now this lady expressed a real interest in the nature of pleasure and how to really engage with it - so I mentioned to her, at this stage, the Japanese Tea Making Ceremony or Chado. I talked about the various meanings of the elements of the ritual, and the total in-the-moment absorption of the Maker with the tasks involved.

Curiously enough, it’s also a line of discussion I like to train clients onto, especially if they have difficulty in engaging and coupling with the present – the Now. These are folk like the ‘I want my life back as it was’ people, or the ‘I’ll be happy when’ people – and this lady certainly subscribed to those archetypes in both her language and perceptions.
It didn’t take her long to make the connection I was alluding to either – and I knew things had begun to resonate with her in a rather intriguing and, at the same time, amusing way.

“One of my favourite cooking tasks is making custard,” she said. “The milk goes in the pan and starts to heat as I mix together the custard powder, sugar and cold milk. The thing is – I know I can’t walk away from it or do anything else at the same time. You have to stay right with it from start to finish. It’s a completely ‘in the now’ task from which, with attentive application rather than expertise, comes a perfect custard.”
I’m sat there nodding as I listen to her, remembering all the times I’ve had milk boil over, or not blended the ingredients properly and got a lumpy result, or added the milk too soon and not had it thicken properly. Total absorption is the order of the day unless you want to be left with the messy aftermath in the pan or that awful smell of scalded milk!

And then our conversation crumbled into puns, humour and just a hint of wackiness.

“So in terms of The Now of making custard you might call yourself an expert,” I said.
“I am,” she replied, smiling. “You could say I am the custody sergeant!”
“Zen and the art of making custard,” I responded, “can bring the power of Now into the everyday kitchen.”
“Let’s call it The Powder of Now,” she concluded.