Caetextia...

...or how our right brains guided us to Sheffield

"Caetextia: context blindness caused by an inability to keep track of multiple interconnecting variables and to reprioritise any change in those variables by referring to a wider field that contains the history of them. This causes people with caetextia to resort to one of two mental modus operandi: logical, straight-line thinking or thinking by random associations."
—Joe Griffin & Ivan Tyrrell, Human Givens Institute

Twickenham Green looks so beautiful in this photograph. It evokes some sadness, as autumn will be our last season spent in this vicinity. At the end of November we'll be relocating to Sheffield, which for those of you not familiar with the geography of England is a city 170 miles north of London, once famous for its steel production. Why Sheffield? is the question on most lips when we mention our move. And honestly, it is difficult to find a good reason.

Moving to Sheffield came about through a series of "coincidences", or perhaps a single moment of clarity. It actually started during a Storytelling workshop I was in the midst of on 1st September. An ex-student, Dan, had written to me about his latest adventures in Greece, working with refugees. At lunchtime I read his post on this adventure, and then went on to read an earlier post, Small Things. This post was written in the form of a story, and coincidentally one that beautifully illustrated the dramatic moment idea I had just been talking about. I read the story to the group.

I remembered that Dan lives in Sheffield, and when we first met we discovered we have a mutual friend there, my ex-English teacher from secondary school, Rony Robinson, who is now a radio show host. Now this wasn't any old teacher, he was my life blood at the dry, dull school, the most creative, adventurous, experimental teacher I've ever had. Rony taught me many things, but most of all he taught me the joy of learning. So, I thought, I know two people in Sheffield—two good people.

Rayna and I had been looking to move out of London, almost since we arrived. We knew that on my income we couldn't afford to stay here. We wanted to move, but we didn't know where to. Various midlands, west country and east anglia towns were explored via RightMove and Zoopla. Some places (not all) were affordable but we lacked purpose. What draws us, we asked, and came up with very little. I texted Rayna, "Sheffield?" She replied, "that's what my hairdresser suggested". Later that day I had a LinkedIn message from someone in the Agile community that I've enjoyed talking with in the past but haven't heard from for a few years. I clicked to look at his profile, and saw that he lived...in Sheffield. Not only that but he runs the Agile meetups there.

Of course, after that references to Sheffield seemed to appear everywhere, and then Dan was in London a few days later to visit his parents, who live in my neighbourhood, where he grew up, and it turns out his parents have connections to my sister and her family, through Woodcraft Folk. We met for coffee. On my first trip to Sheffield to view a house, just six days after our workshop, I met two women walking their children in the graveyard. I asked them about the neighbourhood and they invited me to join their local facebook group. We have since started forming a friendship, and their influence, the influence of other not-yet-met people on the group, and our own research helped us narrow our search to a very specific area of Sheffield.

And this is where caetextia comes in. Very simply, the difference between left-brain and right-brain caetextia is this: left-brain caetextics cannot make connections between events, and right-brained caetextics make connections where none exist. Rayna and I were both veering over to the right, making random associations, finding—or making— patterns. After all, coincidences are just that. They have no real meaning. Or perhaps they do. Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity to describe events which have no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. This touches on the more modern concept of the inter-relatedness of everything, currently explored by the more enlightened physicists, and inspiringly described in terms of the "relaton field" by Griffin and Tyrrell in their opus, Godhead—the brain's big bang. There are forces at work that we know nothing about. It would be easy to write all our coincidences off as meaningless, but Rayna and I prefer to keep the possibility of meaning open, and, for now, go with the flow. If feelings matter, this feels good, and exciting.

October News

This newsletter is a week late, again. Or perhaps it is right on time according to its own emergent rhythm. Who says I'm in charge? Not much more news for October as the pending move has dominated our time. I did spend a few days in Dublin at the international Scrum gathering, which was a lot of fun, and I got to spend time with my friend Alan, Asrai's godfather, who also stayed a couple of nights with us before the event. I organised another day of ScrumMaster Clinic's in London—a series of events that is proving immensely popular. Socially, I've found time to engage in inspiring conversation with my friends/colleagues Laurie, Arif and of course Jem. Rayna and Asrai have fully recovered from their long illnesses with the help of local Chinese herbalist, Dr Wu, and Rayna and I continue to give time to ourselves once a week, just to be grown ups, partners and friends. Later this week I'll be joining another Human Givens workshop, this one on effective brief psychotherapy. I find the work fascinating, and it's good to be on the participant side of a workshop.

Today is a beautiful, sunny, cold day. The trees are almost naked, and the humans wrapped in wool and furs. Nature's alternation. Enjoy the changing weather, and I'll write again when the newsletter asks me to :)

Tobias

October Writing ... and Video

6th November 2017, 11.11 am