Today, I had to walk down Market Street in Manchester.
For those of you who don’t know the city, walking down Manchester’s Market Street at lunchtime is a little bit like the first scene of an Indiana Jones film where he’s trying to get to the end of the road and everyone is hustling and jostling and trying to sell him things or get him to give them money. Except in Manchester, it’s raining.
I cannot tell you how bad tempered it makes me. For all the sweetness and light in my other posts, if (and I am now switching Harrison Ford film metaphors) there was any way I could learn the Jedi Mind Trick (“this is not the passer by you want to ask about charitable giving…”) I would.
So I very nearly walked past a much liked former colleague today and if he hadn’t taken the trouble to call to me I would have done.
So, what tangential lesson will I learn from this this time?
There are probably some tedious links I could make to Market Street Values; Vanity Fair in action. But in truth, it wasn’t the Market-i-ness of Market Street that stopped me noticing what was important; a colleague passing the time of day. It was an over tight focus on the goal. In this case, my goal was to get off Market Street and into the comparative calm of the Arndale Mall. But it could have been anything. My eyes were so tight to the prize I wasn’t noticing the changing (suddenly friendlier) environment around me.
I wasn’t remotely in the minute. I was in the minute I could get away from the over-amplified buskers and street preachers. I very nearly slighted him, and there’s probably a secondary point to be made that if he hadn’t had the confidence to call twice he’d have gone through his day thinking I hated him and I’d have never had a nice chat. But fundamentally, I should have been paying more attention to my surroundings and to the process of going down the street. I wonder what else I’ve been missing?
So, there we go. I need to pay more attention to what I am doing, rather than what I hope to achieve, and the goal will sort itself out. And if you see me in the street and have to call twice, it’s nothing personal.