CNF: The system moves toward what it studies

by Lina Herman

 

At our project launch, I try to convince my clients that they should focus their attention on what’s working. The system moves toward what it studies, I say in all earnestness.

I apply this approach indiscriminately.  At least it wasn’t tylenol, I said after my middle daughter swallowed two bottles of antidepressants.

I hand out over-sized multi-colored post-its to the whole team. We will use these to create a preferred future, I assure them.

*

She’s been living to go to that show, says my oldest daughter. I’d driven four hours through traffic to take her sister to West Hollywood. A 17-year-old whose who seems to wear the same false eyelashes as my daughter has crossed over from tiktok to headlining at The Echo. She’s just about my age, my middle daughter kept saying, winding her way toward the stage.

She told me she’d decided to make it ‘til the concert then kill herself after you got home, says my oldest daughter.

 But now she’s gonna hold off.

 Why are you upset? my oldest daughter asks.  This is a good thing.

 *

The century agave in my front yard has flowered. Clusters of vibrant red blooms tower ten, maybe fifteen feet overhead. It probably has root rot, my oldest daughter who’s studying botany tells me. They flower when they get distressed, then they die.

 *

I apply my consulting methods to my parenting too.

What conditions would best enable your intended outcomes? I ask my daughter. How can you make space for what possibilities might emerge?

 I’m not your fucking client, says my daughter.

*

When middle-managers write complaints on their post-its, I use a purple marker to rewrite the statements with a positive bent. We each understand our own roles and responsibilities, and how we impact our teammates, I offer.

*

My daughter spits on my face when I try to shake her awake to take her meds and finish her homework and get to first period. I  gather her computer and her car keys and her cell phone and leave the room in a fit.  I stand alone in the kitchen breathing heavy and clutching the items she needs to do what I’m asking.

She’s acts like a fucking cunt my husband says later that night. I wait some minutes before I relocate to the living room. Not so few that I’m taking off in a huff. But not so many that he’ll think my departure is unrelated.

*

I keep buying new productivity workbooks. I keep them piled on my nightstand. Getting Things Done. The Morning Sidekick. Atomic Habits. Essentialism. Deep Work. I like to read the introductory chapters before I go to sleep.  Apply order to chaos they promise me. Be creative, strategic, and simply present.

What I’d like as an outcome of this process, the COO tells me as I roll post-it covered newsprint into giant cylinders and wrap colored rubber bands around them, is for my team to want what

I want them to want.

 

 

Lina Herman lives in California where she writes poetry and short prose. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Salt Hill Journal, and BOOTH, among others.

 

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