Business lessons from the AT part 10 Into the universe

“Wait, wait!” Davinci was yelling to us as he ran toward the center of the Abol bridge where we stood.? By his sense of urgency and tone I was sure we had forgotten something important.? As it turned out we had, but it was nothing we were carrying, instead it was something we were failing to notice. “Look behind you!” he said catching his breath, “that’s Katahdin, you climbed that, that’s where we were yesterday!” “Holy crap” I thought to myself, I didn’t even notice the majestic mountain beyond the river as we crossed the bridge, we almost missed it. Too worn out from the previous day’s hiking on the Appalachian Trail (the AT), and too preoccupied about our next 10 days which lie ahead of us in the sobering 100-mile wilderness, we didn’t notice our surroundings.

It was the second time in as many days we had met Davinci (his trail name on the AT). Yesterday we had seen him on the mountain and, earlier this morning, we saw him again as we hiked to the Abol bridge and the Abol store which signify the demarcation between Baxter State Park and the 100-mile wilderness, sharing a picnic table in front of the store with him.? We knew this outpost would be the last sign of civilization we’d see for a while. What we had heard from other hikers on the trail (and Davinci) was that the prices were high at the store because they were 100 percent on generator power, but they had ice cold drinks, hot food, public restrooms, and homemade ice cream, basically it was Heavan! You could even plug in your phone. ?This was also our first opportunity to camp as there weren't any campgrounds behind us in Baxter other than the one at the base of Katahdin, but we weren't staying at Abol. It was just before 2 pm when we got to the store and we still had 4 hours of daylight, we wanted to get into the 100-mile wilderness by nightfall. We had a quick lunch with Davinci, his girlfriend, and their sleeping dog, and we were off again.

As I suited up Davinci stared at me, critically scrutinizing my pack with squinting eyes. “They're called “pack tighteners” he said, “they're these little straps at the top of your pack on your shoulders right here and here, “they need to be tightened.” ?As he reached out, he gave each strap a strong tug like tightening a girdle and my pack instantly felt lighter and more secure, “thanks a lot!” I said with a grin and a bounce of my feet.? I’m sure I had known about pack tighteners at some point but had forgotten about them and my pack had not been in its optimal position, causing me pain and fatigue.? We had met Davinci (sort of) the other day with his hiking partner, and their dog while scaling Mt. Katahdin. We didn’t actually speak that day, other than managing to get out a courteous grunt and quick eye contact as we hiked past one another several times on our way up the mountain, overtaking them (and their dog) and then them overtaking us, it was all business as we huffed our way up the steep ascent.? The interesting thing about our loose (and silent) alliance that day was that while neither of our co-mingling parties had time for dialogue or pleasantries as we hiked, being as close as directly behind or in front of one another and as far as an eight of a mile away, there was still communication.? And their dog continually split its time hiking either with us or with them, effectively keeping us together, running point in front of us and then behind, guiding both groups up the mountain.? Out of all of us, that border collie mix that glided effortlessly over rocks and roots was in their element and a beacon of power and strength.? I can't say what the dog was consciously experiencing that day but at the risk of anthropomorphizing human behavior upon a beast, I would say it was acting as our leader and responsible for the safety of our combined mountain expedition.?

“Hand me your phone and I’ll take your picture” he said on the bridge, reaching over the railing and the 3-foot expanse separating the south and northbound lanes of the bridge.? “After I get a picture of you I’ll run around to where you are and we’ll take another one together.”? Honestly, if I had met Davinci on a city street and he offered to take our picture I wouldn’t have given him my phone, but here I handed it over without a second thought, it could have easily fallen in the river below or worse, I wasn’t worried, I trusted him completely. That’s one of the positive “business” byproducts of life on the Appalachian trail, clarity. When you're out there you are shown the answers to life's biggest questions.

The (biggest) questions

What’s the nature of reality? What’s the purpose of life, and what constitutes a happy life? Does consciousness come from the brain or from somewhere else? Are we separate from nature or are we part of it? ?And is life determined (determinism), or do we have free will and the ability to make choices? These are the biggest questions in life which we have, and will, talk about in these articles about hiking the AT but for now let's just focus on one of them, what makes a happy life? ?The answer to that question is relationships. The above picture is my son Anthony and me with our trail mate, mentor, and photographer, Davinci. ?

?Relationships

Life, and happiness, is in relationships. The longer I live the more I am convinced of this and undertaking an activity like hiking the Appalachian Trail brings out this truth like nothing I have done before, but it might not be in the way in which you would assume. Why? It’s a little more nuanced than you might think and also far simpler than we try to make it, I equate the nature of relationships to a three-legged stool.? In a recent video interview, I watched with Psychiatrist and neuroscience researcher Dr Iain McGilchrist the host quoted a list of five things from late Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung on what Jung thought constituted a happy life, the host then asked McGilchrist if he agreed with the list.? McGilchrist agreed, distilling the list down further to the three things he thought were the most important. ?A happy and contented life sits on three different types of relationships: a relationship with others (other souls), a relationship with nature (which includes us), and a relationship with the sacred or the divine (which includes faith, acknowledgement of things which are unknown or unknowable, openness, and a mental empty space set aside for discovery).

I won’t go into detail why these three relationships are so important to nurture and maintain for happiness in life but if you review each leg, unpacking them, I think you will agree that everything can be found in one of the three. ?McGilchrist says a communion with each is vital, watch the complete fascinating interview HERE.??

Orthoganility and nature

Last month I quoted Alfred Korzybski, Polish American scholar when I said that language was simply an approximation of the reality we encounter and so for that reason we shouldn’t take it, language, too seriously, because we might be (approximately) wrong about the things were naming, classifying, and experiencing.? A frequent reader whose great work I also read, Luiz Von Paumgartten was captivated by this discussion and commented with his own contribution. Luiz agreed that we don’t know exactly what that which we are seeing in the world truly is, but we make up words and definitions for these things regardless in order to best describe them hopefully pinning them down for our use, comfort, and understanding. In most cases our best approximations seem to work fine.? However Luiz additionally suggested it could be more complicated than this and hinted at the need to consider that not only might we be wrong about the “approximate” naming of things but also in their ontology (categorization) , and our own epistemology about them, our capacity and ability to know and understand them, “its not simply that our minds hold approximations of the world “out there”, Luiz says “approximations imply were aiming at the same dimension within things”, we’re in the same ballpark so to speak. Luiz says instead what we are unwittingly encountering are orthogonal representations. Hidden variables, uncorrelated signals and right angles, events that may be statistically independent or not even affect one another in terms of outcome, being independent of or irrelevant to each other. What does all this potentially mean regarding the world we experience? ?Luiz says orthogonality is like finding a key to a lock that we didn’t even know was there and it’s about learning how entirely different frameworks might interact. So, while we might not have things appropriately named and specifically defined, we also might not understand their correlation to other things around them, like ourselves and other aspects of nature, or of their fundamental make up altogether. For more on the subject of orthogonality you can read HERE. ?What does orthogonality mean when applied to things like the outdoors, the universe, matter, physical space, and time? It suggests to me that we should be even more humble in our conjecture about the world around us than we already are. Intriguingly, Luiz also says considering orthogonality is one way in which to become “free of mind”, giving a nod to my 2023 book UNTHINK, all you have to do is nothing, a book about greater cognitive self-management. ?I will definitely be interested in hearing more about that hypothesis and how orthogonality fits in the nature of human thought. ?See you next month!

Dr Zabiegalski is available to talk to your organization or venue about ambidexterity research or speak informatively and eloquently about organizational culture, leadership, strategy, learning, complexity, business neuroscience, creativity, mindfulness, talent management, personal success, emotional intelligence, Action Learning, and storytelling. Contact Eric on LinkedIn about a talk, keynote presentation, or workshop today!