Sunday thoughts: of showing-up and being present

Sometimes topics keep snagging my awareness until I pause and engage with them. One such topics over the last months was: presence. It manifested strongly in both work and not-work related topics:

• mum saying my present brought joy and life,
• the not-teenager-anymore mistaking showing-up for being-present when working with dad,
• a woman in tech talking about the ‘mere-exposure effect’ which let’s us mistake people for experts based on their (social media) presence*,
• discussions around the need for presentism–mainly by either micro-managers or people who spend too much money on office buildings
• the way AI can be present for people who have no access to mental health support or meaningful relationships (or sometimes even despite of it)**
• how someone else’s presence effects other people, positively or negatively
• the presence of a centuries old heritage tree creating a connection between our lifetimes, and my granddad’s

So why am I so stuck on the topic of presence, being present, presentism, and all the ways we show up for ourselves, others, and different situations?

showing-up

The not-teenager-anymore showed-up to an unexpected Saturday’s work, and if all was as explained, the anger about this was oozing through every look, every breath, every movement of the body. 20 going on 7.

My family taught me to either show up fully or don’t bother at all. Thus, I wasn’t sure how to support the ensuing clash.

No one likes to suddenly have to work when the plan was to relax, play, have fun. At the–then still active–farm, play was interrupted because the sheep were bleating and needed water. A lazy day sitting in my favourite tree reading, shaken up by weather forecast, all hands on deck for making hay, there is thunderstorm forecast for tomorrow.

Showing-up was always linked to commitment and responsibility. This is not always a good thing though.

how we show-up

For instance years ago, I spend hours and hours writing a single email, got feedback from trusted colleagues about formulations, and fretted several days before sending it. The response to the most diplomatic email I have ever send: thank you for your candour … I tried so hard to show up at a similar level as the other person. Who has a–to me–very confusing communication style. And the one time I thought I was being extremely diplomatic apparently was still rather frank.

So is it actually worthwhile, trying to show up in a way that is inauthentic to ourselves, for the sake of filling in a space that doesn’t fit us? To prove commitment (and to whom do we prove this)? Would the situation have been less of a clusterf*** had I not tried to shown up so much?
One of my good friends said that I am problem- and process-oriented and I showed up fully to make that process work, but for the others the issue lay somewhere else. Showing up full steam for the process, steamrolled, mayhap, unknown and not-communicated aspects? I am still not sure about that one.

There is a German saying: Was ist das Gegenteil von Gut? Gut gemeint!
Google Gemini Translation: “What’s the opposite of good? Good intentions!”

being present

Maybe this is about reframing? Maybe showing-up has an unhelpful history for me, and in the English language can have the connotation of simply being physically somewhere without any further investment.

Maybe it is about being present. Being present has a different quality than showing-up. I can show-up to that function I really didn’t want to go to and remain quiet next to the sweets table all night. I can show-up up ready to ramble and be too tunnel visioned on problem solving. But being present has agency. Being present is more deliberate, careful, thought through. So far I have identified three levels of presence to contemplate:

Being present within myself: which the combination of cPTSD and ADHD makes rather challenging but I am working on it.
Being present within the situation: observe, pay attention, listen, instead of identifying problem, immediately jumping to fixing it. Most problems at work after all are not flat wheelbarrow tires. Being present than also might take the urgency out of the communication.
Being present with others to have a positive impact: That one I seemed to have hacked at least, I was nominated for People Make Research with the kindest words about having been present for a colleague.***

So going forward I am working on being present more deliberately. I can do this for people, so I should be able to translate the mechanism to myself and to situations. I keep you posted on progress and if you have strategies that work for you, please share!

• *an extremely simplified version of the mechanism, which also leaves out other aspects. This is for another time in this post I want to focus on aspects of presence.
• **confirmation bias, and ingratiating language were named as mechanisms that led to these relationship like interactions
• ***this is just one example of many but the most recent one, I don’t claim having hacked something based on a single data point