Most of the Estonian women were able to adjust. They were accustomed to “making-do”, to adjusting, to living everyday life. The revolution did not really change their routines. The revolution only changed the ideology. With the collapse of the “grand narrative” in Western culture, we may similarly find our colleagues, and perhaps ourselves, wandering about, unable to find a new source of spirit and guidance.
At the highest point in our career (maximum ego inflation and ego gratification) we are likely to fall from grace like Icarus, even if we don’t go “mad” like Howard Beale and seek out freedom. We fall from grace precisely because our success breeds envy and power plays. Our age suggests vulnerability to other people. They assume that we are now on our way “out”—or soon will be—or we have already departed and like the Jack Nicholson character in About Schmidt find that our carefully prepared recommendations and succession plans have been thrown in the garbage by our successors. Our long tenure in the organization may breed impatience among those who are younger and waiting their turn to take over. We may even come to realize, painfully, that our own egos and our own internal demons (unattended voices) breed mistakes, miscalculations, and a failure to grasp reality. Like Icarus, we fall back to Earth. We are forced to grovel and return to the mundane. Hopefully, a professional coach is there to ease the fall and to assist us in learning something important from this fall.
Generativity of the Soul
While Generativity of the Spirit is primarily concerned with accomplishment and agency, Generativity of the Soul concerns connection and communion. It concerns discovery of that about which we truly and deeply care. If Kotre is correct in suggesting that the primary motive behind the generative impulse is a desire to live beyond ourselves, then is the search for soul essentially a quest for some form of immortality? We live in a secular world—does this mean that generativity and deep caring are the ways in which we continue, in some way, to live beyond our death? Does this mean that when we are serving as generative coaches there is an inevitable movement into the domain of spirituality?
Generativity resides “on stage” throughout our adult life, but it becomes more powerful and more often at center stage as we grow older. The allure of generativity might increase as we grow older precisely because we come to realize that most of our life lies behind us rather than ahead. We are facing what Rudolph Otto (1923) calls the “numinous”: a great chasm that is devoid of all meaning and that resides at the end of life. We have a strong desire to live somehow beyond our current self. We wish to fill this chasm with generative accomplishments and a lingering memory of good will among those who outlive us. As coaches are we ready to join our clients in exploring this chasm. Like Virgil in Dante’s Inferno, are we willing to serve as a guide through the numinous-laden hinterland of our client’s psyche? And does this require that we have done some exploring in our own hinterland?
In Its a Wonderful World, George Bailey needed to attend first to his crisis of the spirit. He needed to address his concern about not being a success in life and about facing the challenge of financial insolvency. Then by the end of the movie, with the assistance of his angelic “coach” (Clarence), George could attend to his soul—a soul which was so powerfully represented in the Capra myth of hearth, home and the fabled Christmases of bygone years. George didn’t just want to be remembered after his death as a good and decent man; he wanted to live at the moment, while still very much alive, in a state of generative rebirth. O’Donohue (2004) states this truth in a similar manner:
“The primal energy of our soul holds a wonderful warmth and welcome for us. One of the reasons we were sent onto the earth was to make this connection with ourselves, this inner friendship. The demons will haunt us if we remain afraid. All the classical mythical adventures externalize the demons. In battle with them, the hero always grows, ascending to new levels of creative and poise. Each inner demon holds a precious blessing that will heal and free you.”
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