Standing at the sink, washing the dishes, an old coaching client comes to mind. I don’t know why. We used to sit talking in his office or in the front room of his home, and as I remember the contours of that experience I’m quickly off into other worlds, memories, and then ideas about what needs doing now.

How strange and unruly thought is.

Later, putting away some items in a kitchen cupboard, I am inexplicably thinking of characters from a TV series that I love (which does not, as far as I can remember, ever feature a kitchen).

And writing this I find myself thinking of my grandfather.

When I was small he used to send me to the shop next door with a few pennies and instructions to buy myself whatever I wanted. I’m touched by gratitude and sadness, and find myself thinking about my relationships with my own children.

And each time thoughts arise, new actions that need taking occur to me. The course of my day – what I actually attend to – shifting in subtle and unpredictable ways.

How little we know ourselves, the quiet hiddenness from which our actions arise, what’s going to happen next. And given how little we can know of ourselves, how little we really know of others.

And how inevitably incomplete our efforts, in the affairs of our organisations, to understand what’s causing what, or be fully in control.

Photo Credit: Michael_Underwood via Compfight cc