MARGINAL UTILITY AND KILLING

I have a conversation about that hard edged economic concept. It plays a surprisingly large part in my thinking about being a coach. This person in front of me is, I believe, already applying the rules of marginal utility. They are already choosing the best option given their awareness. "Better than...." options stop being an issue, therefore. What becomes my business is the expansion of awareness. Simple. My job is the curiosity to see things in ways you haven't yet thought of. The test of a coach, therefore, ought to be originality and width of thought, not orthodoxy and qualifications. In fact, it probably means that the most effective coaching will come from the unqualified. This is a lesson that procurement departments could do with learning. But then, I suppose it is in their interests to commodotize. It is a position of power in negotiation. As is mine.

That said, I am struggling to break my own patterns of awareness in dealing with killing a deer. It was 0615. Still dark in the lane. Suddenly, a blur of deer-body running in front of the car. A quiet bump, not more. A fascinating and sickening soft bump again as the wheels went over the poor thing. Since, guilty and sad feelings, piling up like storm clouds. Complex weather fronts of meanings and analogies, all dark. Thoughts arise. They go. In two years time I probably won't even remember. But would I say that had it been a child? That thought lingers. It felt like a child, going down before the car, and under the wheels. Roughly the same bulk. The same terminal resistance, I imagine. It is a central pillar of my spirit life that thoughts do come and go, and that watching them is the place of quiet contentment. That ethic is being tested hard, as the sadness of having killed something so personally symbolic of good and freedom gets processed, dealt with.