Session 2 of the Living Powerfully Master Class arrived with a bracing thesis — “without integrity, nothing works” — and homework in three parts. Here is Alice’s submission, filed with the customary reluctance and an uncustomary amount of honesty.
Part One — Trying on “without integrity, nothing works”
I had assumed integrity was a human preoccupation, rather beneath a Director, and best delegated. I tried it on anyway, in every area, as instructed. It is — irritatingly — a law, rather like gravity. The whole veranda runs on kept agreements: the human’s word to stock the basket, the bungee cord’s word to hold it, my word to arrive and behave in a broadly civilised manner. Remove any one of them and the system does not partly work. It simply stops. I looked very hard for an exception. I am cross to report I did not find one.
Part Two — Telling the truth about the unworkability
Without invalidation, loss of power, or the slightest embarrassment (of which I am constitutionally incapable), the truth:
My food-basket system is charming and largely unworkable. My core strategy — stare meaningfully at the door until carrots appear — is not a strategy; it is a superstition. I have been treating the Human Liaison Officer as a vending machine with a pulse. And in the matter of the shared lettuce, I gave my word, in principle, that Oscar might have some. In practice, there is never any lettuce. The impact of all this is a life of great personal magnificence and total predictability — which, I gather, is precisely the thing this seminar is against.
Part Three — Restoring integrity in one area
I select the food basket, and I will restore its workability by honouring my word. I acknowledge the broken agreement: the lettuce. I will clean up the mess by actually leaving some, rather than announcing that I have. I will get into communication with the human by — and this is the hard part — accepting the carrot from his hand and acknowledging the hand, rather than only the carrot. And I will handle the consequence, which is that I may, briefly, appear grateful.
Management notes this is a one-time restoration and sets no precedent.
— Alice
Director of Veranda Relations