Quite a view, isn’t it?
In my life, I’ve travelled to around 70 countries, but still, my favourite city is Edinburgh.
This week I was up there from London for an overnight business visit with a friend and collaborator and stayed the night before the meeting with him and his lovely family. They took me along with them when they were invited to view the wondrous Edinburgh Festival Fireworks that evening from the vantage point of a penthouse apartment.
As we stood there, my friend and I shared a moment of silence where we simply reflected on the beauty of the moment. I am reasonably well travelled, but he has quite literally travelled around the world multiple times and, by his count, visited over 130 countries. He too, in that moment, recognised how special the view was, the city of Edinburgh is. Nothing needed to be spoken. It was one of those moments of presence and wonder.
It was one of those moments that the Japanese call Ichi-Go Ichi-E
That evening watching the fireworks brought me back to my very first post on this site, “Life is Wild and Precious, Be Present“, I wrote there first about the Mary Oliver poem that finishes with the line: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”, then went on to talk about that Japanese phrase, saying:
“Ichigo Ichie is the “appreciation of the ephemeral character of any encounters with people, things or events in life”, or, as my friend Morgan DaCosta puts it “no ordinary moments !”.”
So, as we watched the fireworks, I allowed myself to stop thinking about our work meeting the next day. In fact I stopped thinking entirely. I simply was present. It was a moment, an evening of magic and wonder.
I often say “Management is about DOing, Leadership is about BEing”. Leadership itself starts with self-leadership, so that night was a powerful reminder to me of the power of presence, of simply BEING.